A piece of our history goes with Nino Benvenuti and nobody says that it is minor history. Epic of boxing trilogy, Nino Benvenuti vs Emile Griffit, which began with the first meeting for the World Middle Title, on April 18, 1967 at Madison Square Garden, is an indelible memory, where sport is a detailmodern version of the equally symbolic Homeric battles, where competition is a universal story that speaks in the world beyond time for underlying life. Like Italy-Germany 4-3, like Coppi only in command in the Pinerolo Cuneo of ’49, as Italy-Spain who made the tank of the Olympic Water Polo final in Barcelona 1992, an infinite story to yet another additional with the defeated wolf in his den.
All the more powerful in Italy that first challenge in the ring, won on the points by Nino Benvenuti, because lived live only on the radio of only words and therefore introjected with the strength of the imagination: it was fought at night, with the spindle of New York and the government was bother to ask Rai not to give the images live for fear for an epidemic of absenteeism at work the next day after. Welcome and Griffith arrived in the houses with the voice of Paolo Valenti, the commentary of Paolo Rosi, came only in deferred: the recovery was in color, already possible in America, but Europe not yet ready had it in black and white. Difficult to distinguish the ring and life: Italian to conquer the American dream. The revenge came to the Shea Stadium on September 29, with Welcome that continued the meeting despite a broken rib and that would repeatedly told that match, as the most dramatic of the career. Instead, he remembered as the most beautiful ever played on the third, on March 4, 1968, won on points. He will defend that title 4 times before losing him in 1970 against Monzon. While he considered his victory par excellence the Olympiad.
And so, in black and white, he remained in the imagination as so much sport of those years that human story as well as sporty, in sport that for his physicality more implies with life and death, which sometimes cease to be metaphors. Benvenuti, born in 1938 in Isola di Istria, exile, was the champion of Rome 1960, almost unbeatable as an amateur (119 wins and a draw on 120 meetings), passed professional the following year (82 wins, a draw, 7 defeats), a deadly left hook and the shielding ability to parry and dodge its weapons.
The only Italian in history to obtain the fighter of the Year recognition, Welcome was a kind fighter, more of technique than of violence, which often distinguished his opponents.
When he knew that Griffith, sick and dysgrazia, had gone in difficulty he worked to help him even economically. There had been a profound friendship between them: Griffith had been the baptism godfather of the son of Benvenuti, the son of Griffith adopted by the reformed, who had witnessed the father until the end, remained the last contact between them when Alzheimer prevented Emil (Emilio for Nino) from recognizing the voice of the opponent of a lifetime.
Around the ring he had united that Italy, he wore inside the wound of the exile he had witnessed, and other family pains of which his life was commissioned, of Griffith said: “You cannot fail to become a friend of a boxer with whom you divided the beauty of 45 rounds!”. Del Boxing said: “You have to know how to predict danger and avoid it, it serves physical and brain”. He considered important to keep neurons on because they knew the dark side of boxing, in those years for many a rough world, of provocations, offenses, reactions, sometimes violent overseas. Of Griffith that in 1962 against Paret, in one of those provocations, of which he was a target for his latent homosexuality, he had fallen beyond all limit, until he lost the measure of the blows without the referee intervene to stop him, welcome: “He fought in a world where not everyone was loyal”.
And fighting was not always a way of saying. And welcome that he had faced Griffith and Monzòn in the ring, who had struck in the ring, he knew it. But when the world turned their backs, one sick without memory the other in prison, Nino did not abandon them.
