We must learn from senseless boxing death
By Linda Robertson
[email protected]
Boxer Leavander Johnson planned to leave his championship bout in a limo. He left in an ambulance.
Now, six days after doctors cut out a piece of his skull to relieve the swelling of his brain, Johnson will leave Las Vegas in a coffin.
''I've puked twice tonight,'' promoter Lou DiBella said Saturday night after watching Johnson absorb 409 punches from Jesus Chavez.
The fight was not close headed into the 11th round. Johnson, defending his International Boxing Federation lightweight belt for the first time, had been pummeled in the head. He had no chance of winning. Yet he fought on.
Johnson's father and trainer, Bill, stood in his son's corner, looked into his son's eyes and discussed throwing in the towel, but decided not to. The ringside physician, Dr. Margaret Goodman, checked Johnson and found his neurological signs to be normal. She warned referee Tony Weeks not to allow him to endure much more punishment.
Then, 38 seconds into the 11th, after Johnson was struck by 20 straight blows, Weeks stopped the fight. Johnson was alert and wanted to keep going.
A blood clot was already forming. As Johnson walked to his dressing room, he began dragging his left leg. He complained of an excruciating headache. Within two minutes, he had slumped off the rubdown table. Forty minutes later, he was in surgery.
He rallied for a couple days, but in the end, his brain could not overcome the trauma of slamming from one side of the skull to the other, according to his surgeon.
Johnson was a father of four from Atlantic City, N.J. After 16 years as a pro, he was to collect his biggest purse -- $150,000.
Prior to the fight, he told a reporter: ``If this guy is going to beat me, he is going to have to kill me.''
PREVENTION IMPORTANT
Boxers don't stop their own fights. To do so would be contrary to the core of their being that drew them into boxing in the first place. They are in the ''hurt business,'' as Mike Tyson called it. They train themselves to ignore signals of surrender from their bodies.
So when DiBella says Johnson was ''victimized by his own bravery,'' he is wrong. Johnson was victimized by a sport -- and an audience -- that values the smell of blood and the threat of death over the ''sweet science'' of a safely-contested match. Consequently, fights tend to end a round too late rather than a round too early.
Boxing is on a bad run. In the past six months, four boxers have died and two have nearly died. But this is not a plea to ban our most elemental sport. It is inherently dangerous, but it needn't be eliminated any more than football, hockey or rugby should be eliminated. Skiers and jockeys die, too.
It's just that boxers die more often. They don't have to. We don't have to shrug and say, ``That's boxing.''
''Almost all ring deaths are preventable,'' said Ferdie Pacheco, the Fight Doctor for Muhammad Ali who eventually left the corner because the brain-damaged Ali wouldn't retire. ``When a guy starts to take a beating, stop the fight. Put it on a scale and tell me which is more important: a thrilling, gruesome fight or a person's life?''
FAILING TO HELP
Referees should be rewarded, not booed, for stopping fights. Pacheco suggests opening a referee school, instituting a rigorous exam and licensing a select few.
Fighters are permitted to enter the ring without sufficient recovery time and despite cumulative damage. ''Their brains are like overripe tomatoes,'' Pacheco says, recalling Benny Paret's death against Emile Griffith.
Johnson was 35 and had fought two months ago. Riddick Bowe, 37 and battered, somehow got a license in Oklahoma. Roy Jones Jr., 36, fights in St. Petersburg next week even though he was knocked cold in his past two bouts. The foolish comeback of Thomas Hearns, 46, should be blocked.
Goodman, chief of the Nevada State Athletic Commission's medical advisory board, advocates mandatory prefight CT scans paid for by the promoters. The commission has formed a panel to review the deaths and seek reforms.
''Something is wrong,'' Goodman said. ``We need to re-evaluate the entire way we approach the testing and treatment of boxers. These kids trust their lives to us, and we're failing them.''
It's time for those who oversee boxing to be as courageous as the boxers
