Nino Benvenuti vs Emile Griffith 1 - April 17, 1967
Ring Magazine’s Fight of the Year from 1967.
The first in the trilogy between former middleweight champions Nino Benvenuti of Italy and Emile Griffith of the Virgin Islands. Both would win Fighter of the Year honors (Griffith twice) over the course of their careers and are considered two of the top 100-150 boxers the sport has ever seen, which is a huge honor.
Nino Benvenuti was born into the Kingdom of Italy, in what is modern day Slovenia. Before ever going pro, he’d win an Olympic gold medal at the 1960 Olympic games in Rome. While he did mostly fight in Italy, his career brought him to the U.S. He’d headline cards at MSG and Shea Stadium. This was in that era when Bruno Sanmartino was a huge draw up and down the East Coast.
While he wasn’t open publicly about it til much later in life, Emile Griffith is also one of the few openly bisexual champions boxing has had. It was an open secret in the boxing world though. In fact, Benny “Kid” Paret called Griffith a “f*ggot” in Spanish ahead of their fight. Griffith would proceed to beat Paret so badly that he died 10 days after the fight was over from the injuries he sustained. On the incident, Griffith had this to say:
"I keep thinking how strange it is ... I kill a man and most people understand and forgive me. However, I love a man, and to so many people this is an unforgivable sin; this makes me an evil person. So, even though I never went to jail, I have been in prison almost all my life."
After boxing, he also tried his hand as a trainer working with fighters like Wilfred Benítez and Juan Laporte as well as the Danish national boxing team.
