Prizefighting: Anything Goes

The heavyweights are everybody's heroes, with their tomato-red Cadillacs and gold-lamè sport coats, their 18-in. biceps and sledgehammer fists. When they fight, the whole world watches. So what happens? One punch, and it's goodbye Charley, let's do this again next year. It doesn't even seem to matter where the punch lands: Cassius Clay taps Sonny Listen on the arm, and Sonny takes the pipe sitting on his stool.

Humbug. For old-fashioned prizefighting, nothing beats the welterweights. Take Emile Griffith and Luis Rodriguez, both 146 Ibs., soaking wet. Griffith, a soft-spoken Virgin Islander, makes ladies' hats; Rodriguez, a Cuban refugee, sings Yiddish songs in nightclubs. But when they meet in the ring, as they did for the fourth time in Las Vegas last week, anything goes.

Rarely have two fighters been so evenly matched. Twice before, they had traded the welterweight title on controversial decisions, one of them split; and in 40 rounds neither had been able to knock the other down. But they insisted that things were going to be different this time. "I am the matador," boasted Challenger Rodriguez, 26, "and I will kill the black bull." That brought accusations of race-raking, to which Rodriguez retorted: "I should call him maybe the blue bull?" Champion Griffith, 25, shrugged it off: "I'll knock him out in five."

Both should have known better. For 15 frantic rounds, Griffith and Rodriguez pummeled, wrestled, gouged and butted each other—amid bloodcurdling screams from Griffith's mother, who was sitting at ringside. In the third round, Referee Harry Krause penalized Rodriguez for punching below the belt, and Rodriguez' manager, Angelo Dundee, chased Krause clear across the ring. "What are you doing, Harry?" he yelled. "Remember the other guy is fouling, too!" How could he forget? In the clinches, Griffith raked Rodriguez' face with the laces of his glove. Luis retaliated by throwing uppercuts with the top of his head. Three times the two fighters kept slugging after the bell.

Referee Krause scored it 69-67 for Griffith; Judge David Zenoff had it 71-70 Rodriguez; Judge John Romero 70-68 Griffith. By the narrowest of split decisions, Griffith had kept his crown. Said Luis: "If I can't win this title back, I'll just have to win the middleweight championship instead."