Forgive me for again posting about something that is a little bit “inside baseball” for me. Many of you don’t know this story; maybe would never have heard of it, because I suspect the readership of this blog is almost devoid of boxing fans. I am a boxing fan.
First, about boxing. Every boxing fan I know grew up with it. I watched with my father as a child — I remember big fights from the early eighties, when I was in single-digits. I’m a serious fan — I keep a scorecard. I’m sure some commenters will say this is a barbaric sport, that it ought to be banned. There’s some merit in this argument, and great fighters are often (though not always) born of poverty and pain that I wouldn’t wish on anyone. I can never quite seem to convey the poetry in this tragic sport, and I won’t try to justify my passion. I merely mean to explain that I know this sport.
Until recently, though I knew the broad outlines, I really didn’t know what drove Emile Griffith to beat Benny Paret to death. This is why:
The last time he and Benny (Kid) Paret — his opponent tonight at Madison Square Garden — met at the weigh-in scales, before their fight six months earlier, Benny did the unthinkable. Swished his limp wrist and hissed that word, maricón. Thank God the reporters pretended it didn’t happen. Thank God it was 1961.
Then Paret nailed the insult to the wall of Griffith’s heart, winning a controversial decision that night and taking back the world welterweight crown that Emile had snatched from him nearly a half year before. Now it’s their third fight, the clincher. The fear of what Benny might do at the weigh-in climbs up Emile’s throat. “If he says anything to me before the fight, I’ll knock him out,” he mutters to Clancy.
Emile steps on the scales. “Watch out,” hisses Clancy. Too late: Benny’s already slipped behind him, wriggling his body, thrusting his pelvis, grabbing Emile’s ass. “Hey, maricón,” Paret coos, “I’m going to get you and your husband.”
So what? Some macho guy gets offended that some other macho guy calls him a fag? Well, Griffith is gay. He still can’t come out and say it. He still runs from it. He says:
“I’m not gay! It’s craziness. I go to gay bars to see my friends. What’s the difference? I have my drink and talk to people, same as any bar. Then I finish and go outside. I don’t do anything wrong.”
Then he says:
“I will dance with anybody. I’ve chased men and women. I like men and women both. But I don’t like that word: homosexual, gay or faggot. I don’t know what I am. I love men and women the same, but if you ask me which is better … I like women.”
So he can’t bear to say it, even now — he’s bi, or maybe he’s gay, and everyone in the boxing world knew it, even in the 1960’s.
Many fighters pay a price for their ring years. Griffith fought over 100 pro fights (something that just isn’t done today) with little ill effect. He paid the price, instead, for being gay in the wrong place at the wrong time:
He ends up in Hombre, a gay bar on West 41st Street hard by the Port Authority. He can relax more in gay bars than in straight ones, he tells people, because the people there are far less likely to challenge him to a fight. But suddenly he feels so woozy that he wonders if someone put something in his drink. He steps outside. Here comes the smoke.
A gang of men jumps him, beats him with pipes, robs him and leaves him for dead on the street. Later he staggers onto the wrong train, but finally, after hours have passed, he stumbles home. That’s what Emile tells LaPorte, who comes to the Griffith home at the request of Emile’s frightened mother and takes him to the hospital. . . .
He nearly dies in the hospital. His battered kidneys fail, he goes on dialysis, then his spine gets infected. The severity and site of the beating suggests a gay bashing, a hate crime, but no one will ever know. By the time Emile comes home, two months later, he remembers almost nothing of it.
Now, as a boxing fan, I’m a fan of technique, and I’m weary of wars that leave each fighter diminished. I have a vague recollection of Deuk Koo Kim dying in the ring against Ray Mancini, an event that left Mancini scarred (that was 1982, and I was ten). My favorite fighter, Paul Ingle, an English featherweight from Yorkshire and a defensive wizard, nearly died after a bad beating. It’s had an effect on me. I often wince at the fights other people call “fight of the year,” wars in a phone-booth. I much prefer tactical chess matches that other folks think are a snooze — the boxer handily outpointing the puncher.
But I feel differently about Griffith/Paret, now that I know. I remember, in college, reading a small piece in the Washington Blade about a street gay-bash. It went about like this: “Four young men in a Jeep Cherokee assaulted a man they apparently believed was gay. One of the assailants had a baseball bat. The victim sustained hand injuries, but the attackers fled the scene when he seized the bat. Police are asking for tips.” I felt like cheering for the guy.
I feel like standing up for Emile Griffith. I feel like telling him he can come out now. That it’s a different world — but he wasn’t beaten in the 60’s. The street attack was in the 90’s. So maybe he knows better than me that it’s not so different now.
I feel like somebody ought to get mad for Emile Griffith — for all he went through. I don’t know what it’s like to beat a man to death, and I hope I never do. But I’m not satisfied with telling Griffith that it’s okay, that nobody blames him. I’m not satisfied with saying that Griffith didn’t mean to kill Paret. What I really feel is, so what if he did?