A legend went. This was, in Italy and in the world, Nino Benvenuti, who died in Rome at 87 years old. He was born in Isola d’Istria on April 26, 1938, a predestined, Olympic gold and awarded as best boxing of Rome 1960. It was full of personality and talent, sometimes churned up, beautiful, with an easy word, so as to define as a great chatting “. In short, the boyfriend of Italy in the years of the boom and the newfound national pride. A champion in the ring, with the world title of the superwelters from 65 ‘to ’66 and the Medio between ’67 and 70s. A cover character even outside the square.
For him millions of Italians rose at night to follow the match on the radio with Emile Griffith at the Madison Square Garden in New York, when he also became the hero and defender of the Italians of America. Of that Italian boxer, white and with fame also of Viveur, the magazine ‘Life’ wrote that in America “no champion likes like Nino”. Welcome to Cassius Clay (another hero of the Rome 1960 ring) had even become a comic, artists such as Wainer Vaccari and Gian Marco Montesano painted portraits who ended up at the Boxing Museum and the Venice Biennale. He also made the actor, paired with his friend Giuliano Gemma, in turn Boxeur before dedicating himself to cinema and art. “I was born to make boxing”, he liked to say adding that life, in the ring and outside, had given him as much, “more than I would have thought” and now he delivers him to the legend of the noble art. Welcome he leaves, and with him many Italians lose an idol of their childhood. Those who remained the night to follow the boxes of boxing-myth, and the little ones who had to have the permission to go to bed well beyond Carosello. He also heard of him who, for age issues, never saw him in action: for any Italian boxer who came later, Welcome was the comparison stone, and his heirs have always come out of the distance comparison. At his matches in Italy there was more audience than at the Beatles concerts or at the Cup of Champions Cup, he also made some era certain tuxedo with jacket with silver implications worn on extrasporty occasions, in the period in which he was interviewed for a fee. It happened in the months following the victory in the third clash with Griffith, and ‘era’ headlined: “Welcome to an token”.
Photo Goodbye Nino Benvenuti, when the art of boxing was in black and white But they were other times, “now boxing has not passed in fashion – he said in one of his latest interviews – but it is a sport for connoisseurs, who love beauty and harmony. There is fewer people who follow it, but beauty remains. The greatest of all of us? Sugar Ray Robinson”, to whom at the end of the 1960s it was perhaps a little daring, but understandable for the way in which Nino also interpreted the ‘sche. Classical art, of boxing. Thanks to the blows thrown into the ring he, native of Isola d’Istria and son of a fishmonger, had taken revenge on his life, who had forced him to dispose of 7 years together with the family and many other thousands of Italians chased by the Titini partisans. He settled with the others in Trieste, “badly welcomed in refugee camps and insulted by the Italian communists”, he said. Also for this reason welcome to life has never hidden its political sympathies for the opposite bank. Despite the 300 million lire of the time earned in the ring, Nino’s life was not all gold even when, married and with children, he had a story with Nadia, who would later become his second wife.
So after the world victory he was received at the Quirinale and the Pope also waited for him, but the controversies on his private life pushed Paul VI, or who for him, to erase the hearing, and he collected in silence. His boxing was elegant and intelligent; He won using his head to stop the opponent by pushing him to open his guard. At the Olympics in the final he found the Soviet Radonyak in front of him, who ended up landed by a sudden left hook. Many will deal with that hook, Griffith and Mazzinghi (the one with Sandro was a rivalry that divided Italy in two) Of course, but also the Cuban Rodriguez, a very hard chilling, who in 1969 was about to remove the title in Welcome, but the Triestine electrocuted him by surprise, making him lose his senses. But then that hook did not work with Carlos Monzon, the wild Argentine, churchyard and a mountain of muscles and violence with which, after the retirement of the two, he became a friend, as well as with Griffith, to whom he paid his care and he beat to make him have a subsidy.
Benvenuti himself did with Tiberius Mitri, when he, old and sick, sometimes got lost in the alleys of Trastevere where he lived, and Nino went to pick him up. In 1995 he felt the need, “increasingly stronger”, to do something for the weak and for those who were alone, and went to India a few months to serve in a leper with the nuns of Don Bosco. “I had a lot from life, I wanted to return something – he then told Ansa -, I washed the butt of people who were very badly”. When Mazzinghi died, he said “I will be the next” but also that “the after does not scare me”. Meanwhile, the melancholy for those children of the first marriage that had no longer seen (“they no longer wanted to speak”). Then the devastating blow during the pandemic of the suicide of the 58 -year -old son, Stefano. For welcome nothing was more as before. And Italy now cries a legend.
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Source: Ansa
Brayden White, a veteran sports writer at Global Happening, brings his wealth of knowledge and expertise to the sports section. With over a decade of experience, he is committed to delivering high-quality coverage of the latest games and events.
