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“He called me a maricon. I knew maricon meant faggot. I wasn’t nobody’s faggot.” – Emile Griffith On March 24, 1962, at Madison Square Garden in New York and before a national TV audience, Emile Griffith regained the welterweight boxing title with a 12th-round knockout of Benny “Kid” Paret. Griffith ended the fight by pummeling Paret in the corner with as many as 25 uncontested punches in a matter of seconds. “It was like a baseball bat demolishing a pumpkin,” Norman Mailer wrote of the fight. “Griffith was uncontrollable … he was off on an orgy.” Paret, comatose, was taken out of the ring on a stretcher to a hospital. The 24-year-old died 10 days later, leaving a wife and a 2-year-old son. The death haunts Griffith to this day.
The subtext that binds the story together is Griffith’s alleged homosexuality, which Paret’s taunts of “maricon” before the final two of their three fights were used to exploit and belittle. For a boxer to be considered gay in 1962, was, as historian Neal Gabler notes, “oxymoronic. … This was a society in which Liberace wasn’t thought to be homosexual.” (In another sign of the era, New York Times reporter Howard Tuckner wrote about Paret’s taunts at the weigh-in prior to the third fight. As writer Pete Hamill recalls, Tuckner the next day was “raving about the totalitarians at the [Times] copy desk” who changed “homosexual” in his story to “un-man.”) Paret’s taunts enraged Griffith, so much that he came close to attacking Paret at the weigh-in. And Griffith’s savage beating of Paret, shown in harrowing detail as it was seen at the time, is that of a man consumed by hatred. “When I had him in the corner in the 12th round … I was very angry in the ring,” Griffith recalls. “Nobody ever called me a faggot.” The blows come one after another as referee Ruby Goldstein looks on almost paralyzed, not intervening until Paret flails against the ropes. He never regained consciousness. Griffith does not acknowledge being gay, but his comments and those from others seem to make it clear. Now 68, he is of a generation before Stonewall, and before “coming out” became more accepted (though being openly gay in pro sports is still taboo in sports 43 years later). Griffith is described as being sensitive and wanting to be loved, someone who reluctantly entered the ring for the first time as a teenager after soon-to-be co-manager Howie Albert noticed his impressive physique with a 26-inch waist and 44-inch shoulders. At the time, Griffith was working as a hat designer in Albert’s shop. We are told that Griffith was “sensitive about his personal sexual habits” by one of his handlers, and hear former champion Jose Torres say, “Most fighters believed that Emile was gay … and they would not openly say it.” How Griffith’s sexuality became the stuff of rumors is never explained. Paret’s wife, Lucy, says that her husband “heard somewhere that Emile Griffith was gay. … He was gay and Benny was a man. I don’t know what went on between them.” Griffith frequented New York City gay bars in the years after his brief 1971 marriage to a woman he met in his native Virgin Islands. He says he went to them with gay and straight friends, but one night in 1992, a very drunk Griffith was set upon a group of men who viciously beat him so badly he was hospitalized for a month; he has suffered short-term memory loss since and the attack was labeled a hate crime. “Some people think I’m gay,” Griffith says near the end of the film. “As long as I know right from wrong, I’m not doing anything wrong. I’m OK.” Homosexuality and its intersection with a brutal sport like boxing is only one of the fascinating angles explored in “Ring of Fire.” We get intimate and sympathetic portraits of Griffith and Paret. And we are shown those who surrounded, and in some cases, exploited the fighters. The illiterate Paret, who would “sign anything put in front of him,” was badly beaten in his five fights prior to his last encounter with Griffith, and this may have contributed to his death. His manager Manuel Alfaro, portrayed as the ultimate user, is reported to have said, “Now I have to find a new boy.” The film brings back to life an America before the social turmoil of the 1960s and when television was coming out of its infancy and flexing its technological muscles. Griffith and Paret had become household names for their appearances on “Friday Night Fights” and their much-anticipated third match (they split the first two) was shown live. It is fascinating and horrifying to see announcer Don Dunphy and a victorious Griffith, standing in the middle of the ring as doctors attend to Paret, watch a replay of the final moments of the fight. As the black and white, slow-motion camera zooms in while the fatal blows land on Paret, Dunphy stops to enthuse, “That’s beautiful camera work, isn’t it!” The film traces Griffith’s remorse at Paret’s death (“I still have nightmares,” he says 40 years later), though he had enough skill as a fighter to go on win several more titles before finally retiring in 1977. He has struggled financially and physically since (going from pink Lincoln Continentals to riding the public bus) and now lives in suburban New York City. “Ring of Fire” ends on a note of melancholy and redemption as the former champ shuffles off to meet Paret’s son for the first time. Their reunion will move even the most cynical as Griffith embraces the younger Paret (who tells him “there’s no hard feelings”) and sobs, “I’m very sorry. I never meant to hurt no one.”
Related:
Public conflicted on gays in sports April 14, 2005 |
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