Benny Paret vs. Emile Griffith III was the third meeting between Benny "Kid" Paret and Emile Griffith, for the welterweight boxing championship, held at Madison Square Garden in New York City on Saturday, March 24, 1962. Paret came into the match as the reigning welterweight champion; this would be the deciding rubber match.
The match was broadcast live by ABC on its live weekly boxing sports program, Fight of the Week. The fight was both notable and controversial for the punishment Paret took in the ring at the hands of Griffith which led to his loss by knockout in round 12 of a scheduled 15 rounds. Paret died in the hospital from his injuries 10 days later. The match has been cited as one of the reasons for the decline of boxing as a mainstream televised sport, and led to political calls for bans on boxing bouts.
Background
This fight was the third meeting between Paret and Griffith for the NBA/Ring/Lineal Welterweight title. On April 1, 1961, in his first title defense, Paret was defeated by Griffith in the 13th round by KO. In their second meeting on September 30, 1961, Paret recaptured the Welterweight crown by split decision. Although Paret had been battered in the two fights with Griffith and a December 1961 middleweight fight with Gene Fullmer, he decided that he would defend his welterweight title against Griffith three months after the Fullmer fight. Paret-Griffith III was booked for Madison Square Garden on Saturday, March 24, 1962. With Paret as the reigning champion, Griffith was heavily favored by Vegas oddsmakers as a 2:7 favorite to win and recapture the Welterweight title.
Weigh-in
The morning of the fight, at the customary weigh-in, Paret needled Griffith with an insult in Spanish while Griffith stood on the scales. Contemporary newspaper reports described the exchange without being specific about the insult, but did say that when asked afterward to pose with Paret for photos, that Griffith replied, "I'd better not. I'm liable to swing right now." The insult leveled by Paret was , understood by both boxers to mean "faggot".
Griffith had worked in a women's hat factory, and later designed hats. Griffith would come out as bisexual in his later years, but in 1962 allegations of homosexuality were considered fatal to an athlete's career and a particularly grievous insult in the culture both fighters came from. Griffith was enraged by Paret's taunt at the weigh-in, and it set the tone for the fight that evening.
Fight
In the sixth round Paret came close to stopping Griffith with a multi-punch combination but Griffith was saved by the bell. After the sixth round Griffith's trainer, Gil Clancy, later said he told him, "When you go inside I want you to keep punching until Paret holds you or the referee breaks you! But you keep punching until he does that!".
In the twelfth round of the fight Don Dunphy, who was calling the bout for ABC, remarked, "This is probably the tamest round of the entire fight." Seconds later, Griffith backed Paret into the corner and unleashed a massive flurry of punches to the champion's head. Paret was likely dazed by the initial shots, but at this point still put his gloves up to defend himself. Paret then slumped to the side against the ropes, his head and part of his upper body now out of the ring. Griffith held his opponent's shoulder keeping him in position while using his free hand to hit Paret. As Griffith repeatedly landed right uppercuts on Paret's head, Paret occasionally moved his arms, his head still outside the ring. Referee Ruby Goldstein explained what he was seeing, "From long experience in boxing I have seen on numerous occasions boxers deliberately put their heads a little out of the ring and this sometimes can be used as sort of a means of avoiding getting hit cleanly. Now at the time Griffith was throwing quite a few punches, but Paret seemed to get his hand up and block a number of them and...roll with a couple of them. ...I thought this possibly was his strategy, to roll out of this position and get his head back in the ring. I observed that twice he got his head back into the ring.". Slow motion analysis of the fight accounts for 29 unanswered punches thrown by Griffith during the flurry.