sometimes happens. Outside opinions about the decisions and actions that each choose and makes in his life flying through the mind, at least until everyone who receives them takes the definition of accept them or, simply, to get rid of them. But there are exceptions. As the Boxer Emile Griffith, who until triggered by so many beatings dementia left him, asked again and again why society forgave him killing a man above a ring and not have loved another. What happened the night of March 24, 1962, on the ring of Madison Square Garden, in New York, changed history forever. Griffith killing Benny “Kid” Paret, who contoelpeso his wrath to call him “faggot”. In the twelfth round were one, two, three… 29 consecutive hits, 18 of them in just six seconds. A savagery which counted with the complicity of the referee Rudy Goldtein, that did not stop in time combat and, of course, after that fight not directed anymore. Ten days after the confrontation, the Cuban remained in a coma and died as a result of the beating.
The life of the Boxer born in the Virgin Islands changed forever then that night. And the many others that were not Emile Griffith, also.” The Griffith-Paret fight has a major milestone: the implicit recognition of the first fighter recognized homosexual later what happened. “The fact that his opponent on the ring, provoke him psychologically to take land out of the emotional balance, is to say ‘queer’, homosexual or as you would say in the slang of black boxers, marked a turning point”, told him Ernesto Cherquis Bialo to Filo.news.ademas, the journalist added that “following the death of Paret, other boxers began to speak. A brutality was incident and a reaction that Griffith had not had before with any adversary and did not then.” Today… could another Emilie Griffith there be?
If it were alive, probably, the boxer who was welter and Middleweight Champion in the categories could have knocked down the iconic phrase that confessed in his biography Nine, ten and out, the two worlds of Emile Griffith (nine, ten and outside, the two worlds of Emile Griffith) : “I still think everything is strange. I killed a man and most of the people understood this and forgive me. However, I love a man and for many people that is an unforgivable sin that makes me a bad person. I never went to jail, but I’ve been imprisoned almost all my life.”
“I never went to jail, but almost all my life I’ve been imprisoned,” Emile Griffith.
Of course, that the advancement of society in terms of respect for the freedoms and the legalization of rights was not from one day to the other. As happened in most of the countries of the world, the acceptance of homosexuality in the United States varied significantly in their States. To be considered a sin or illness, to observe it as a natural fact. This conversion occurred so staggered in all 50 States that make up the North American nation. While at the end of the 80s and early 90s there were cities which began to accept records of homosexual couples, in some States, even in 2003, punished acts between two people of the same sex. Until June 2015, all States of the country recognized same-sex marriage, a decision that already enjoyed the Argentina for five years.
“It would be otherwise because there is a different culture. The homosexual is not an object of degradation. A boxer considered homosexual in that time was embarrassing. Today, Griffith would say that so you would assume it, which did not pass at the beginning of the 60. There would be no exacerbation of fury unleashed on it say ‘fucking’ above a ring, because today is luckily admitted by society as an almost natural fact”, said Cherquis Bialo, 78-year-old, who knew Griffith when the Boxer came to Buenos Aires to fight with Carlos Monzón, in 1971.Y, he concluded: “not only was an advance of society, but of the millions of closets open that they won the battle of the community to accept them just as they are and that each one can choose their sex”.
“Not only was an advance of society, but of the millions of closets open that they won the battle of the community to accept them just as they are and that everyone can choose your sex”, Ernesto Cherquis Bialo.
In a scene historically related “males” as it was boxing, Griffith broke a door that many were crossing with the passage of the years. It was the entrance to a world that leaves being, thinking and living to everyone as it feels. A world in which live millions, like Griffith, which inhabits Cherquis, and still takes place for those who are on the other side. In this note:
