Benny Paret - in Popular Culture

In Popular Culture

Paret's death was chronicled in a 1962 protest song by folksinger Gil Turner. The song, "Benny 'Kid' Paret", was published in Broadside magazine that same month and was recorded later in the year by Turner's group, The New World Singers, for the 1963 Folkways album Broadside Ballads, Vol. 1.

The emotive poem "Muerte en el Ring" (Death in the Ring) by Afro-Peruvian poet Nicomedes Santa Cruz recounts Paret's life, to the moment of his last breath.

Paret is also one of many boxers named in the lyrics of Sun Kil Moon's album Ghosts Of The Great Highway. The album builds several songs around the stories of boxers who died young deaths.

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