Come out fighting has been given a whole new interpretation after the admission by the world-ranked Puerto Rican featherweight boxer Orlando Cruz, who competed at the Sydney 2000 Olympics, that he is gay.

When Welsh rugby hero Gareth Thomas, a former Lions captain, "came out" in 2010 many could not believe this was happening in a world as macho as rugby.

Yet if there is one sport even more macho it is boxing, surely the last place you would expect to attract gay men other than as spectators. However, 31-year-old Cruz is by no means the first gay boxer, although calling them such has, in one instance, had tragic consequences.

Emile Griffith, born in the United States Virgin Islands, was a six-times world champion at welterweight and middleweight in the sixties, now installed in boxing's Hall of Fame.

There was always speculation about his sexuality – he talked with a lisp, had an effeminate gait and had worked as a milliner designing women's hats. We certainly raised our eyebrows when Griffith was fought at Wembley against Britain's Brian Curvis.

When we went to his dressing room afterwards he was passionately kissing one of his cornerman. But those were the days when no-one asked questions (as it was despite all the then speculation about the late Jimmy Savile's now known sexual aberrations with young girls) and to admit to being gay, especially in an environment like boxing, would have been professional suicide.

Emile Griffith was the first fighter from the US Virgin Islands ever to become a world champion but he is perhaps best known for his controversial third fight with Benny Paret in 1962 for the welterweight world championship

Griffith, now 71, has finally declared the homosexuality that was always an unspoken backdrop to his career. Unspoken, that is, except, tragically, for the man from who he first won the welterweight crown, the Cuban Benny "the Kid" Paret. They fought three times and on the third occasion, at Madison Square Garden, Paret taunted him with the word "maricón" – Spanish slang for faggot.

An outraged Griffith had to be restrained at the weigh-in and in the 12th round he battered Paret unconscious and while the Cuban was propped up against the ropes angrily struck him repeatedly for several seconds before referee Ruby Goldstein belatedly hauled him off. Paret never regained consciousness, and died ten days later.

In his biography, Griffith says: "I keep thinking how strange it is...I kill a man and most people forgive me. However, I love a man and many say this is unforgivable and this makes me an evil person. So, even though I never went to jail, I have been in prison most of my life."

"Maricón" was also used by another boxer, Argentine heavyweight Oscar Bonavena – against none other than Muhammad Ali. It transpired that Ali had put him up to it to boost ticket sales.

Yet early in Ali's career (as indeed in Mike Tyson's) there was speculation that he too was gay because he was rarely seen with women. This notion he later scuppered rather emphatically with his philandering – as did the lisping Iron Mike.

Google "gay boxers" and you will find quite a number of American club fighters who claim to be gay – and here in Britain one who went public was the White Collar boxer Charles Jones. Forget The Dark Destroyer, The Real Deal, The Hitman, The Hayemaker. He was the Pink Pounder. "I'm not a gay man who happens to box," said the then 43-year-old London architect whose bout with Igor the Pianist at London's Real Fight Club was the subject of a 2003 ITV documentary. "I'm a boxer who happens to be gay and doesn't give a toss who knows it."

Ronnie Kray (L) killed gangster George Cornell after he called him "a fat poof"

One gay boxer who did give a toss was Ronnie Kray, one of the notorious twins who terrorised London's East End in the sixties. He had six pro bouts at lightweight in 1961, winning four. Brother Reggie won all six of his before they retired to employ their violent ways in more frightening directions.

Most of East London knew that Ronnie was "queer" but only one man said it to his face. Gangster George Cornell called him "a fat poof" before Ronnie shot dead the Blind Beggar in London's Whitechapel.

When Mickey Duff, their erstwhile promoter, banned them from his shows, his wife received a present from the twins – two dead rats in a box.

Innuendo has enshrouded a number of other British fighters, most famously Lennox Lewis. Following gossip that he was having an "affair" with an England footballer, Colin Hart, of The Sun, bravely asked Lewis before his fight with Evander Holyfield whether he had heard what was being whispered.

"You mean the one about me being gay?" responded Lewis, thankfully with a laugh. "Let's put this silly rumour to death once and for all. I'm certainly not gay. I love and adore women. I date girls, not boys." The Miami-based former world heavyweight champion is now a happily married father of three.

By its very nature, boxing attracts more than its share of gay followers, many from show business. I still dine out on the tale of an encounter during the weigh-in-before the first Ali-Frazier fight in New York in 1971. John Condon, the wonderfully laconic PR for Madison Square Garden, asked some of us whether we would like to meet Burt Lancaster, who was intently watching the fighters strip for the weigh-in. Burt Lancaster? Macho star of Trapeze, the man who snogged Deborah Kerr on the beach in From Here to Eternity. You bet!

It would seem that even Burt Lancaster enjoyed watching boxers strip for the weigh-in

With Hart and the late Reg Gutteridge, the Cockney commentator then with the London Evening News, we walked across with Condon. "Hey Burt," he called. "I want you to meet some Limey friends." Lancaster turned, his lips red with lipstick, cheeks rouged and eyelashes mascara-ed. "Hi fellas," he simpered. "Don't you just love their muscles?"

"F... me!" exclaimed Gutteridge. "He's a bleedin' iron."

Lancaster, father of five, was later to be arrested in Hollywood dressed as a woman.

Funny old game, fighting. Women's boxing star Christy Martin announced she was gay just as her legendary career was ending.

Boxing may be the oddest sport to have gay participants but there have been – and still are – many lesbian and gay athletes in professional sports, from golf to gymnastics.

American tennis players Bill Tilden, Martina Navratilova and Billie Jean King, Olympic diving champions American Greg Louganis and Australia's Matthew Mitcham,  British Paralympian Lee Pearson and England Test cricketer Steven Davies were quick to declare their sexual orientation, as was British basketball star John Amaechi, the first NBA professional ever to do so

Donal Óg Cusack, the Cork All Star hurling goalkeeper, came out in 2009 when his autobiography Come What May was serialised in an Irish newspaper. He wrote: "This is who I am. Whatever you feel about me or who I am, I've always been at peace with it."

American diver Louganis is this week attending the first South Asian Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Inter-sex (LGBTI) Sports Festival, in Kathmandu.

Featuring athletics, football, volleyball, karate, kabaddi and basketball, around 570 athletes are expected to take part in this event, which includes a beauty contest for transgender women.

Louganis, 52, won gold medals at the Los Angeles 1984 and Seoul 1988 Olympic Games on both the springboard and platform. He is the only male and the second diver in Olympic history to sweep the diving events in consecutive Olympic Games.

Opening gay Olympic diving champion Greg Louganis mentored the US diving team at London 2012

In 1984, Louganis received the James E Sullivan Award from the Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) as the most outstanding amateur athlete in the United States. Since 2010, Louganis – diagnosed as HIV positive – has been coaching divers of a wide range of ages and abilities in the SoCal Divers Club in California. He was also the mentor to the US diving team at the London 2012 Olympics.

In Britain, there are at least three contemporary Olympic stars, all household names and one a gold medallist, who are widely known to be gay, although they have not come out.

Just about every Olympic sport has acknowledged or accepted gay competitors but, so far, Justin Fashanu is the only British professional footballer to have been open about his sexuality, suffering years of abuse and eventually taking his own life in 1998.

Unquestionably, there are gay footballers but they daren't come out because of the stick they would take in the dressing room, on the field and from those Neanderthal elements among the fans.

It is a situation of which, among many other things, our national sport cannot be proud.

Despite the efforts of Luis Suárez and John Terry, it is doing its best to kick out racism.

Now is the time to rid itself of its inherent homophobia, as most other sports commendably have in a year, which has been such a magnificent watershed for equality and diversity.

Alan Hubbard is an award-winning sports columnist for The Independent on Sunday, and a former sports editor of The Observer. He has covered a total of 16 Summer and Winter Olympics, 10 Commonwealth Games, several football World Cups and world title fights from Atlanta to Zaire.