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chapter 12 The Ship Goes Down Dismantling the Indian placed Emile Griffith firmly in the uppermost reaches of boxing royalty. He made fifty thousand dollars from the match and was named “boxer of the month” by the National Boxing Association. He bought a house on Long Island for himself and his family. He was “perpetually happy,” wrote the reporters, and now he had “more money than any 22-year old has a right to expect.” But, of course, he had every right to expect big money. He was probably the best pound-for-pound fighter in the world at the time. Plus, Griffith had personality, style, grace. His manager recalls, “He didn’t need much additional promoting. His face was on the tube almost as much as Ed Sullivan’s.” Griffith’s handlers started looking for bigger money fights; they decided to get him ready to move up to heavier weights and greater paydays. Garden promoter Teddy Brenner tried to set up a match between him and Sugar Ray Robinson, but it fell through. Griffith did test a middleweight opponent in July at Madison Square Garden, getting the unanimous decision with ease.1 For Gaspar, the title battle with Griffith was not just a loss. He had let down his family, his country. While Dunphy and Griffith filled the remaining TV time (it ended early, in the twelfth round) with chatter while firecrackers popped in the balconies, Gaspar crept through the ropes, looking like the Elephant Man with his white towel completely over his head and face. Griffith, meanwhile, was all smiles with Dunphy. “I don’t think he hurt you at any time,” says Dunphy. Replies Emile, “No he didn’t, he really didn’t.” “But,” Griffith quickly adds, “he is a very game fighter.” Dunphy agrees. “He’s a wonderful fighter. He’s a real credit.” They 188 Part III. The Hardest Game go on to banter about Benny Paret, about moving up into a higher weight class, about the possibility of Griffith getting his own TV show with that personality of his. Tommy Hart would later admit that he almost stopped the fight in the seventh round, when Gaspar was clearly in trouble and hardly able to defend himself properly. He had allowed it to continue as long as it did because, he felt, “Ortega was a dedicated man fighting for his country.” An ex-pro, Tommy Hart understood a boxer’s heart. He understood that there are worse beatings than mere physical punishment.2 Gaspar returned to his dressing room and cried for twenty minutes. He didn’t care that reporters were there to watch. They recorded him saying , in Spanish, “Oh, mother, why did you make me lose this fight—when you knew I had to win it?” After translating this, Corby added that by “mother,” Gaspar meant not his own mom but “Our Lady of Guadalupe, the patron of Mexico.”3 Gaspar cried because it was all over. He knew he wouldn’t get another shot at the title, not after a beating like that. TV was far too unforgiving. Reporters knew it, too. They were writing him off before he made it back to his dressing room.4 The dynamic Griffith was expected to show even more improvement in his second Paret fight. He was favored 3–1; he seemed confident and cocky. Kid Paret had not fought anyone since being laid out by Griffith in the thirteenth round of their last fight. The Cuban had been paid well to sit out the Ortega-Griffith fight, and now Paret stood to clear another twenty-five thousand dollars for his upcoming title rematch. Red Smith quipped that if twenty-five thousand dollars didn’t seem like a big payout for a title fight, it would have taken Paret thirty-four years and four months of cutting sugar cane at twenty cents an hour to make the same amount. “By then he would be 59 and highly skilled with a machete.” Paret seemed like such a nonthreat that reporters were already talking about Griffith’s likely next title defense, against Argentina’s Jorge Fernandez in Las Vegas in December. The Paret fight was just pro forma, just filling out a previous contract.5 But Paret won. Like just about every Paret battle, Griffith-Paret II was a hard-fought bloodbath. The Cuban seemed to take three punches for every one that he threw, and Griffith proved staggeringly accurate. By the thirteenth round, both of Paret...

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