Updated Jul 24, 2013 8:31 PM ET
In sports, there’s the historical record: wins and losses, champions and MVPs, records and rosters. Then there’s what happened in the ring March 24, 1962, between Benny Paret and Emile Griffith, who died in his sleep Tuesday at age 75.
It was the third championship fight between Griffith, from the US Virgin Islands, and Benny \”The Kid\” Paret, a Cuban. Griffith took the first, Paret took the second, and it is Paret who, March 24, 1962, is the welterweightchampion.
During the weigh-in, Paret, as he did before the second fight, approaches Griffith, a flamboyant, impeccably dressed, high-voiced fighter, and calls him a maricón, Spanish for \”faggot.\”
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