The night Ringo Bonavena gave a hell of a beating to a Nazi who ended up as a villain of Ghostbusters and Die Hard

The gloves are

.

The passage of time put them on the ropes and

.

Their glory days were in the past beyond the reach of any arm, but

?

They were

in a house in Ciudad Jardín, in the province of Buenos Aires, for more than 40 years.

In his youth, however, they were

, the legendary Argentine boxer who made history, among other things, for having fought Muhammad Ali.

The house where the gloves live on their own nostalgia

who worked in the newsrooms of Clarín, Olé and Télam, among other media.

Luis, Daniel's father, was also a journalist, but specialized in boxing.

Together they went to boxing evenings countless times at Luna Park and in as many other venues as they could.

The gloves that Ringo gave to the journalist Daniel Ponzo.

The story of a singular fight of the Argentine idol.

Through him, the

gloves came into the hands of a young Daniel.

The idol decided to send them as a gift after learning that the person who wanted them

.

A short time ago Ponzo Jr. decided to look for the gloves and

.

The objective: to make a painting to decorate his house.

"I kept them among my most cherished memories. They were light brown, from the Berg brand, and they weighed an incredible 9 ounces -today they would be prohibited, since those used in that category are at least 12 ounces-, the smallest that used Ringo throughout his career", says Ponzo about the legendary boxer, assassinated in 1976 in the United States and now turned into a series.

Ringo Bonavena and the night of the beating of a Nazi

Von Homburg was Ringo Bonavena's rival in Berlin in 1969.

It is the night of September 20, 1969 in the Palace of Sport in Berlin.

The

was the scene of Bonavena's victory

in the third round against the German Wilhelm Von Homburg.

It did not have much diffusion in Argentina and, according to the owner of the gloves, that fight had the objective of

of his: the one on December 5, 1970, at Madison Square Garden in New York

.

platform has just turned

has made it clear that, if not almost everything, is stored somewhere in the largest audiovisual archive that humanity has ever had available.

Ringo Bonavena leaves the bench and goes looking for the German to give him a tremendous beating.

There, Ponzo found

And there he discovered a situation that explains Bonavena's furious victory in a Berlin that had just been rebuilt after World War II.

What happened?

After they both got into the ring, the lanky German, before taking off the white coat that he combined with his blond, almost albino hair,

.

He kissed some kind of medal.

.

And he did it in the same stadium that decades ago had served as the scene of numerous acts of the dictator and genocide

during Nazi Germany.

was launched

in the voice of his Propaganda Minister,

.

Von Homburg, actually born under the name and surname of

(1940), was the son of Richard, a German soldier of the Third Reich, who also

, 300 kilometers from Berlin.

From that fight, Ponzo remembers the dizzying attitude of the Argentine heavyweight.

"

in just three rounds -he illustrates-. He hit him with true fury, he knew he was hurting him and he hit him again and again to make him fall, but waiting for him to get up, to attack him again, with an unusual coldness in him, a sanguine but loyal boxer, until finally the corner took pity on the German and threw in the towel".

"There it was revealed that Ringo had wanted 

, as if he were emulating Emile Griffith when seven years old he literally beat Benny Kid Paret to death because the Cuban had called the American 

" contextualizes the journalist.

And he reflects: "Not only did the way he hit him catch my attention, but despite the tremendous beating he had given him, at the

, literally taken out, with the clear intention of continuing to hit him and he had to be contained by the referee to prevent him from doing it. There was something. But why so much anger, why

in a guy as mouthy as good-natured as Ringo?

Ringo's Fury Trigger

After watching the fight over and over again, the journalist understood.

"The German had shown himself as the representative of the superior race and

of him against the Latino of the inferior race, something that Ringo must have sensed or even heard in the previous days.

For this reason, perhaps he has also prepared

for the victory above the ring by emptying

the contents of a bottle of

.

Ernesto Cherquis Bialo, a journalist who is also specialized in sports, confesses that he did not cover the fight, but remembers it as "an unpleasant fight from an aesthetic point of view

.

The German challenged Ringo Bonavena with an unpleasant gesture.

"The German was striking for his long blond hair, unusual for the time, but it was not a milestone in Ringo's career," he adds.

Bonavena had come from “going to the hype” in a fight in Montevideo, Uruguay, to help

, who had asked him

in a rematch for the title he had lost.

It was to be able to rebuild his career, he told her.

.

In addition, he served him to help finance his fight against Ali, which would take place a year later.

The controversial Von Homburg: from wrestling to the big screen

Remembered by the German press of those times for sitting in a TV studio for an interview and remaining silent before each question about the fight he lost against the Argentine and 

, the German is the protagonist of a striking history.

His real name was Norbert Richard Hartmut Grupe.

He had changed his name in the United States where he had emigrated, after World War II and the fall of Nazi Germany, with his father Richard Grupe, also a former boxer and wrestler.

"It is that

and changing the last name will surely have been something that was recommended to him in the United States...", says Ponzo.

Grupe, turned actor, was the villain in Ghostbusters II

Therein lies the explanation of why that swastika was displayed in the ring seconds before the fight and that perhaps it was not only an inherited gesture but also

.

Von Homburg, characterized by most of the journalists of the time who knew him as a

, suffered that defeat as an almost intolerable humiliation and

.

He once declared that

, a

to pave his acting career.

In that function he played different roles,

in as many war movies as he could and evil characters, such as the tyrant

, the villain

and

.

He liked the role and did it well.

In real life he was also

.

He was even accused by her father of abusing her stepmother and even having a daughter with her, whom he called her sister.

The last years of him he lived alone in Santa Monica, California, with his dog Kiss of him.

He died of cancer in Mexico in 2004, at the age of 63.

DS

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