BoxRec

Not that it matters but was Emile Griffith gay? The reason I ask keep seeing these clips from this new DVD about his life and they make some to him being gay??

Not that there is anything wrong with that.

On a program this year, may even have been 60 Minutes, can't remember. Griffith declined to answer whether he's homosexual or not, which of course tends to lead me to believe that he is. Years ago I thought the reason he beat Paret so mercilessly (27 unanswered punches to the head I believe) was because Paret loudly called him "maricon" (faggot) at the weigh in, but I guess they just didn't like each other.

There has been a lot of info coming in lately that has attempted to suggest that this is indeed the case. I just can never sort out the rumour crap from the real deal. I saw the "documentary" piece that Seamus was alluding to and that was a spin I think was being insinuated very aggresively. I thought it was an espn based item rather than a network if I remember right.

It is pretty common knowledge that Emile Griffith is gay or at least bi-sexual. Reportedly, he lives with a younger man.

Throughout history there have been several gay champions. When Thomas Hauser released his excellent book, "The Black Light" in 1986, he said that there had been seven gay champions up to that point. No names were mentioned, but a little research will reveal a lot.

Kid Chocolate, the excellent featherweight of the 1930s was openly gay. Freddie Mills, 175 lbs. champ in the late 1940s had homosexual affairs. Some say that the tabloid's press discovery of his secret life was the reason for his suicide.
I've heard it somewhere that Panama Al Brown also was gay as well.
Supposedly Donald Curry was gay too, and there have been others.

Great fighters are great fighters. Wheter they're gay or not makes no difference (not that I said anyone did say this, it just something you say to be politically correct you know ).

-KOKid-

I have read almost everything writen in Spanish and English on Kid Chocolate, and I knew Moe Fleischer -his trainer- and lots of Cubans who knew him and not one -not one- has ever said he was gay. This was a guy who spent a fortune on hookers.

The kid himself used to joke that he had spent part of his fortune on booze, weed and broads and the rest of the money he had "wasted."

As for gay fighters - Emile is very obvious with his hat designing and hangers on.... the others I have heard about are a contender who fought Joe Louis and a featherweight champion of years ago...

enrique wrote:.... the others I have heard about are a contender who fought Joe Louis and...

Would that be Lou Nova?

enrique wrote:I have read almost everything writen in Spanish and English on Kid Chocolate, and I knew Moe Fleischer -his trainer- and lots of Cubans who knew him and not one -not one- has ever said he was gay. This was a guy who spent a fortune on hookers.

The kid himself used to joke that he had spent part of his fortune on booze, weed and broads and the rest of the money he had "wasted."

As for gay fighters - Emile is very obvious with his hat designing and hangers on.... the others I have heard about are a contender who fought Joe Louis and a featherweight champion of years ago...

Interesting that you say this, Enrique. My info on this comes from the book "The A-Z World of Boxing" by Bert Blewett, publised in 1996.
In the chapter on "Films", the author writes that the film, "The Final Bell", in which the main character, a boxer, announces to the world that he is gay.
The author goes on to say. "... the story line is not entirely fictional because Kid Chocolate, the handsome black Cuban who won the world featherweight title in 1930, was well known in boxing circles as a homosexual."

Maybe the author is mistaken, or maybe this was just a non-topic among boxers and the people you've spoken to, or maybe he was bisexual.
I don't know what to believe. I do know that he was a great fighter, that's all I care about.
It would be nice to clerify this though.

As for those other gay fighters, Lou Nova was the guy who fought Louis. The featherweight I'm not sure of.

-KOKid-

I have never heard the Chocolate story and I've known morethan thirty people who knew him. I think he was a straight playboy.

Right on Nova. The featherweight stays in he closet because very few people ever mention him and even less know about it.

I have also heard the Panama Al Brown story but without any details.

From what I've read about him I very much doubt that Kid Chocolate was gay. Isn't it true he caught syphillis through his liking of hookers (female).
As for Freddie Millis I've heard the gay rumours and some other darker rumours being said about him but there has never been any evidence given and its possible that these rumours were started as a smear to deflect attention from the possiblity that he was murdered by the London underworld and that this was covered up at the time by certain persons in the pay of those who done it.

I believe there are at least 4 strange theories about Freddie Mills death. 1. He was alleged to have been caught in a homosexual act in a public washroom by police and then commited suicide. 2. He was murdered due to some involvement with his friends the Krays. 3. He was murdered by Chinese gangsters who wanted his night club. 4. The most bizarre one by far, Mills commited suicide because the police were about to discover that he was the London prostitute killer dubbed "Jack The Stripper".

Where's Rubio? He knows the answer

Anyone can start these rumours. I was on a bus and I thought I overheard someone say on his mobile phone that he'd heard from a friend of a friend that it's possible that there might have been rumours that James J Braddock liked to wear dresses in the privacy of his home. Or was it J. Edgar Hoover? Anyway, it's kosher. Believe me, I was almost there.

enrique wrote:I have never heard the Chocolate story and I've known morethan thirty people who knew him. I think he was a straight playboy.

Right on Nova. The featherweight stays in he closet because very few people ever mention him and even less know about it.

I have also heard the Panama Al Brown story but without any details.

Would be interesting to hear where Bert Blewett got his info on Chocolate from. His book, "The A-Z World of Boxing", is a piece of work that I otherwise consider very well researched. This is the first time I have found any errors in it, unlike many other books in that category.

-KOKid-

collins wrote

I was on a bus and I thought I overheard someone say on his mobile phone that he'd heard from a friend of a friend that it's possible that there might have been rumours that James J Braddock liked to wear dresses in the privacy of his home

o man dont let worry rory know that.

Ask Rubio......he could confirm this if true.

Don't know alot about Braddock but the claims about J Edgar Hoover are almost certainly true. Even his close friend Ethel Merman admitted the FBI Director was homosexual.

BrocktonBlockbuster49 wrote:collins wrote

I was on a bus and I thought I overheard someone say on his mobile phone that he'd heard from a friend of a friend that it's possible that there might have been rumours that James J Braddock liked to wear dresses in the privacy of his home

o man dont let worry rory know that.

Hoover wasn't gay. It was that bloke he was screwing, Clyde Tolston, that was gay!