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NINO BENVENUTI’S CHARMED CAREER BROUGHT HIM OLYMPIC GOLD, MULTIPLE WORLD TITLES AND THE LOVE OF A NATION by Lee Groves
T hroughout the years, the film industry has produced dozens of boxing movies whose central characters epitomized strength, courage, resiliency and success. To maximize the effect, casting agents hired the most photogenic men possible, including Kirk Douglas ( Champion ), John Wayne ( The Quiet Man ), Tony Curtis ( Flesh and Fury and The Square Jungle ), Denzel Washington ( The Hurricane ) and even the “King of Rock and Roll,” Elvis Presley ( Kid Galahad ). Giovanni “Nino” Benvenuti, who died in Rome on May 20 at age 87, could have chosen to pursue a career in modeling or acting, because he possessed that enviable combination of magnetic good looks and undeniable charisma. And indeed, according to the Rotten Tomatoes website, he appeared in four films between 1969-2008, the last of which was Carnera: The Walking Mountain , in which he played a trainer named “M. Baer” alongside F. Murray Abraham, Paul Sorvino and Burt Young. But Benvenuti, the son of an amateur boxer, opted to become a boxer himself, and from the time he first pulled on the gloves at age 13 until he announced his retirement at 33, he experienced more success than anyone had a right to expect. As an amateur, he was prolific, amassing a record of either 120-0 or 119-1, depending on the source. Moreover, he won five consecutive Italian welterweight amateur titles (1956- 1960), two European championships (1957, 1959) and a gold medal at the 1960 Olympics in Rome. Additionally, Benvenuti was awarded the Val Barker Trophy that is given to the Games’ most outstanding boxer. The men he beat out for the honor included lightweight silver medalist and future undisputed 140-pound champion Sandro Lopopolo, lightweight bronze medalist (and 1956 Olympic champion) Dick McTaggart, junior middleweight bronze medalist Boris Lagutin (a future two-time gold medalist), and a lightning-quick light heavyweight gold medalist named Cassius Marcellus Clay, who would later be known as Muhammad Ali. Bruno Arcari, who along with Benvenuti is considered one of the best boxers ever produced by Italy, reportedly said that Nino was even better as an amateur than he was as a professional. High praise indeed. Benvenuti’s incredible success continued into the pros as he began his career with 65 consecutive victories, the second- longest winning streak from the start of a career in boxing history, behind Julio Cesar Chavez’s 87, and one of only three career-starting strings of 60 or more (Willie Pep was
the other). The 5-foot-11 Benvenuti used his abnormally long wingspan (75 inches), lively legs and quick-twitch reflexes to outbox and out-fox his opponents, and he built the foundation for his future successes with wins over Isaac Logart, Tommaso Truppi (for the Italian middleweight championship), 137-fight veteran Gaspar Ortega and former 154-pound titleholder Denny Moyer. Those wins, in part, earned him a crack at undisputed junior middleweight champion (and countryman) Sandro Mazzinghi, whose 40-1 (28 KOs) record included a 24-fight winning streak. Their June 1965 showdown drew a reported 40,000 to the Stadio San Siro in Milan, and the electrifying atmosphere was only exceeded by the punch that ended the fight in Round 6 – a massive right uppercut that landed on Mazzinghi’s jaw and dropped him like a sack of cement. Benvenuti added the vacant European middleweight championship two fights later by stopping Luis Folledo in Round 6. In the contractually mandated Mazzinghi rematch, Benvenuti’s sneaky power showed itself once again as he floored the former champion with a hair-trigger hook in Round 2, but the remainder of the fight was a bitterly contested nip- and-tuck affair that was reflected in the final scores, which favored Benvenuti (71-70, 68-66 and 69-65 under the five-point must system). Benvenuti’s next three fights were staged at 160 as he outpointed Don Fullmer and Clarence James, then successfully defended his European title with a 14th-round TKO over Germany’s Jupp Elze in Berlin, Benvenuti’s first professional fight outside Italy. Six weeks later, Benvenuti returned to 154 and trekked to Seoul, South Korea, to face Ki Soo Kim, whom he had defeated by a 5-0 decision in the third round of the 1960 Olympics. Kim was so incensed by that verdict that he remained inside the ring for an hour before being persuaded to leave, and he reportedly vowed that the decision would be reversed someday. June 25, 1966, ended up being that day, thanks to a confluence of circumstances. First, Benvenuti admitted he took Kim lightly. “When I trained to fight Ki Soo Kim, I wasn’t so focused like when I trained for Emile Griffith,” he told The Sweet Science writer Luca De Franco in 2005. “Who the hell was this Kim? I’m supposed to knock him out fast.”
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