Ringo Bonavena would have turned 80 this Sunday. He was born in Parque Patricios on September 25, 1942 as the sixth son of the great family formed by his father Vicente and his mother, the unforgettable Doña Dominga. Y It is hard to imagine him as an octogenarian, meek and surrounded by his grandchildren, who was a rascal from Buenos Aires, anti-Peronist despite his laborious origins, sexist and recalcitrant racist, owner of a very sharp tongue and a disused neighborhood mischief.
In the 1960s and 1970s, under the protection of the powerful magnet that he exerted before the media, Bonavena said about women, sex and politics, things that now would not have been tolerated and that before caused smiles or passed by. If on the rings, Ringo was one of the maximum exponents of handsomeness and courage, below them it must be recognized that he never sinned as a hypocrite: He said what he thought regardless of the consequences.
But it doesn’t make sense to evaluate that foul-mouthed Bonavena with today’s eyes. 46 years have passed since his death, on May 22, 1976 at the doors of the Mustang Ranch brothel in Reno (Nevada) and everything is different: the world, the country, customs, ways of thinking, journalism. In his house and in the neighborhood, Bonavena was the “Titi”. Ringo, in any case, was the media character that he was building to become rich and famous. “I did Ringo Bonavena. We boxers are no longer gladiators, now we are artists,” he once said in one of the many reports to which he lent himself. And what he did and what he said, over the years he was transforming him into one of the most beloved and remembered boxers.. He was never world champion, he always lost the fight he had to win and he wasn’t a virtuous guy either. But for those strange goblins that lodge deep inside memory, Bonavena today has the unmistakable profile of a popular idol.
Ringo belongs to everyone or almost everyone. And different cultures recover it: his name and his legend summon the old, the young, the tangueros, the rockers, the murgueros of Parque Patricios and even the distant tribes of heavy metal. He is venerated even by those who did not know him because they were born thirty years after his departure. Perhaps because it represents a porteñidad in extinction. Or because at the moment of truth, with the whole country looking at him, he put his body forward, went beyond his courage and as long as he won, he did not mind losing by knockout to Muhammad Ali, on the unrepeatable night of December 7, 1970.
On that unanimous night, in that Buenos Aires abandoned to the fate of an odd sporting spectacle (perhaps one of the four or five most important of all time), much or all of the phenomenon of Ringo’s validity is explained. The streets were emptied and Channel 13 scored 79.1 rating points because millions of Argentines wanted to see how a loudmouth like Ali punished another loudmouth like Bonavena, who many found unbearable and irredeemable.
But at the end of those indelible 15 rounds, they had to bite their tongues. Ringo watered the Madison ring with the most courageous of sweats, he made the great former champion of all weights tremble, he made the country vibrate like few times before and after, and He only went to the canvas in the last round, after one of the most remarkable manifestations of sporting good looks and honor that have been seen on a ring.
Bonavena was so big that night that the aftermath no longer mattered. Neither his subsequent 15 fights, nor the disorders of a turbulent life nor the reasons never properly clarified as to why he ended his days near a mobster like Joe Conforte and far from a family he loved (and who loved him) with craziness. If Ringo had not been the one he was, if he had been satisfied with that night of glory despite the defeat, perhaps he would never have received that final shot at the gates of the Mustang Ranchwould have grown old without ever shutting his mouth and on the day of his 80th birthday, he would be receiving the greetings of an Argentina that learned to love him after his death.
But the story was as it was. When he was killed, at the age of 33, Ringo had already gone and come back, he had already done everything, he had everything and he knew that heHistory had saved a place for him. But she did not know that she had reserved another in the hearts of the people. Even of those who were not born when he fought. And that, beyond his most criticizable sides, even today they recognize in Bonavena an authentic type and without duplicity. That he left his skin above the rings. And that below, he said what he thought because it was the most wrong of a wrong time.
