Onward But Downward

It would be easy to say that Emile Griffith, eroded by time, has lost his usefulness as a fighter. It would be easy enough—but it also would be wrong.

Two weeks ago Griffith lost a fight in Madison Square Garden to a young, tough middleweight named Vito Antuofermo. He lost with honor and a fine right hand to the belly that was overlooked by the officials. But he didn't look tired or bad, nor, most of the time, did he look the 36 years that is his listed age.

This was Griffith's 99th pro fight, his 28th in the Garden and 25th main-event bout there, a record. In losing the battle, he moved down a notch in the traditional categories that make up boxing. There are champions and contenders, and there are hurdles. Now Griffith, for the next two or three years that he persists in fighting, will be considered a hurdle.

Applying this sports clich�, a hurdle is the prizefighter that a young man—Antuofermo is 22—has to clear before he can become a serious challenger for the title. Griffith rejects this labeling, of course; he still thinks of himself as a challenger.

He has had a flamboyant, exciting and tragic boxing career. Griffith never wanted to fight, though he got his baptism in his native city of Charlotte Amalie in the Virgin Islands, battling an array of youngsters who had offended his cousin. The cousin would line up 12 or 15 youngsters to do combat with Emile, and Emile would knock them off one at a time. When Griffith left the Islands in 1949 to join his mother in Harlem, his cousin prudently decided to leave, too.

In New York, Griffith went to work for a hat manufacturer named Howard Albert. His skill at turning out women's fancy creations led to a story that he was homosexual and Griffith had to fight that rumor along with his opponents in the ring. "I am a friendly man," he said not long ago. He says "mahn" for man, a vestige of his Virgin Islands upbringing. "When I stop on the street to talk to someone, I do not think about the mahn I talk to. I like people. So people may say bahd things about me, but they are wrong."

Griffith won world championships five times, twice as a middleweight and three times as a welterweight, and it is an unhappy circumstance that he fought in divisions usually overlooked in the general enthusiasm for heavyweights. He has posted 80 victories in the 16 years he has been a reluctant dragon. "I was perfectly happy working for Howie Albert in his hat shop," Griffith says. "I am not the violent type."

But Albert, once a fighter himself, saw Griffith working with his shirt off one afternoon and suggested that his powerful body made him a natural for the sport. Emile is an oversized middleweight from the waist up and an undersized lightweight below the waist. His spindly legs provide a precarious launching pad for the heavy shots he can deliver from the thick, muscled torso. " Howie entahed me in the Golden Gloves," Griffith says. "I did not really want to do it, but it worked out all right."

Griffith's mother did not want him to fight at first, either. Her name is Emelda and she has been to most of her son's bouts, always sitting near ringside in large and colorful hats and always yelling loudly for her son. "I was very worried abaht him for a long time," she says, "but now I have decided that he can take care of himself. So I do not worry so much."

She was at ringside in 1962 on the night Griffith suffered his most traumatic experience. He killed Benny Paret in the ring at Madison Square Garden, a tragic accident that many observers trace to the hesitation of Referee Ruby Goldstein. Paret had twice called Emile maric�n at weigh-ins, maric�n being Spanish for homosexual. Before the fight, Paret had patted Griffith on the bottom before using the epithet and only the intervention of Gil Clancy, Emile's co-manager, prevented the fight from taking place right in front of the scales.