Death in the Ring

I had an interesting – and slightly eerie – experience last week.

I was reading the second of two terrific books by the late William Zinsser. The book is titled Writing to Learn. I had previously read Zinsser’s On Writing Well. I had contemplated using one – or both – books for my writing class at San Diego State University. One of the sections I decided to use was written by the novelist, Norman Mailer.

The passage was well-written and powerful.

The eerie part was that it brought me back 62 years to the evening of March 24, 1962, and a title fight between Benny “Kid” Paret and Emile Griffith. We were, as usual, in Sullivan’s bar in Fairfield, Connecticut. The official drinking age was 21 and we were not quite there (I was still 17). But Mr. Sullivan would eye us across the bar and suggest: “You boys are all 21, aren’t you?” We were (we said).

This was a Saturday night and Sullivan had a little black and white TV perched above the shuffleboard game in the back by the restroom. We’d come for the fight as much as for the beer.

I’d been a fan of Griffith’s for a few years and had his autographed photo on my bedroom dresser at home. His manager, Gil Clancy, lived in my hometown.

At the pre-fight weigh-in, Paret had taunted Griffith, calling him maricon. In those days, sportswriters wouldn’t hint at a fighter’s sexuality, but it must have been heavily rumored within what they used to call “ring circles.”

Paret had a reputation for a strong chin, but he’d been stopped by Gene Fullmer a few months earlier. I’d watched the fight on television and Fullmer, who was not known as a heavy puncher, landed something like ten straight right hands on Paret in the final round.

On this night in 1962, the fight would be close and exciting and last until the 12th round. (In those days, championship fights were scheduled for fifteen rounds. Today, the limit is twelve.) In that twelfth round, Griffith had crowded Paret into the corner and Paret’s right arm stretched over the middle rope. At some point, it became clear that Paret was almost out on his feet. Griffith began a series of right hands to the head, and it was like watching a pile-driver at work on a city street. Paret had ceased all resistance and, because the middle ring rope was under his armpit, he was unable to fall to the canvas.

He just hung there.

Griffith kept punching. Finally – and too late – Referee Ruby Goldstein pulled Griffith away and stopped the fight.

Then came the scary part.

As we all stood there, beers in hand, looking up at the black and white screen, Paret began to slide down from where he’d been hung upon the ropes to the floor of the ring. He went slowly. And in that slow-motion collapse, it became clear to us; “This guy’s dead.”

He was.

Paret died on April 3rd.

Here is the Norman Mailer description of that same moment that I shared with my class:

Paret died on his feet. As he took those eighteen punches something happened to everyone who was in psychic range of the event. Some part of his death reached out to us. One felt it hover in the air. He was still standing in the ropes, trapped as he had been before, he gave some little half-smile of regret as if he were saying, “I didn’t know I was going to die just yet,” and then, his head leaning back but still erect, his death came to breathe about him. He began to pass away.

As he passed, his limbs descended beneath him, and he sank slowly to the floor. He went down more slowly than any fighter had ever gone down, he went down like a large ship which turns on end and slides second by second into the grave. As he went down, the sound of Griffith’s punches echoed in the mind like a heavy ax in the distance chopping into a wet log.

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