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Out of Left Field |
 Muhammad Ali once was boxing's noisiest character, but today he speaks in a nearly inaudible whisper |
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If ever a sport needed reform,
this is the one for sure
of TheColumnists.com
“Yesterday I was
lying, today I am telling the truth.”
. . . Boxing promoter Bob (Harvard graduate) Arum
JACK NEWFIELD, a muckraker of the old school, has written an
exhaustive cover study of boxing in the pages of a place not
exactly associated with sports precincts: The Nation Magazine
of Nov. 12. The report, entitled “The Shame of Boxing”--a
play on Lincoln Steffens’ classic “The Shame of the
Cities”--is a cry of anguish by a man with a love-hate relationship
with boxing. I share Newfield’s feelings.
At the core of boxing is one man’s attempt to beat up another
person. It can be the art of hitting and not getting hit, but
that is not what drives the business. The best way to be assured
of winnng is to inflict hurt on the opponent. And the crowd wants
to see that hurt, not the “artistry of a ballet with blood,
geometry and guile” that Newfield talks about and was often
evident in such as Ray Robinson and Muhammad Ali.
Newfield co-produced a documentary about Robinson for HBO in
1998. He writes, “The causal relationahip between thousands
of blows to the brain and diseases like Alzheimer’s and
Parkinson’s is accepted by most doctors involved in sports
medicine. In 1993 a detailed report was published in the American
Journal of Sports Medicine that analyzed all the existing information
on brain damage to boxers. The study concluded that dementia
pugilistica (the scientific term for the layman’s ‘punch
drunk’) afflicts nine to 25 per cent of all professional
boxers. The symptoms include tremendous memory loss, inattention,
impaired hearing, paranoid ideas and ‘a decrease in general
cognitive functions.’ Doctors believe that repeated blows
to the head are one of the triggers of Alzheimer’s.”
Consider that three of the greatest fighters of all time ended
up with tragic medical problems. Joe Louis, Robinson and Ali
all made ill-adivsed comebacks. They got hit too much at the
end.
Newfield records that “Louis suffered from paranoia and
dementia, and was confined to a mental hospital for a time. Robinson
suffered from Alzheimer’s the last 15 years of his life.
Ali suffers from Parkinson’s. “The man with the fastest
hands and legs in the sport,” Newfield says, “now moves
as slowly as though he were under water. The wittiest athlete
now whispers inaudibly.”
Ali was a golden youth of the ring, the most arrogant one. I
recall watching him sparring for his first bout with Sonny Liston.
He stood in the corner of the ring and made sport of it by allowing
his sparring mate to bang dozens of punches off his head and
body. It didn’t matter that he was wearing a headguard.
He was taking heavy punches just to show off. Those blows must
have had some cumulative effect. He did this frequently in training.
I think of this whenever I see Ali now. I wince along with Newfield,
who says of “Ali’s trembling hand lighting the Olympic
torch in Atlanta becoming our mute, iconic, bloated Buddha.”
Talking of the “velvet sewer of professional boxing,”
Newfield writes:
“I see the fighter as the exploited worker, the gym as the
factory assembly line, the promoters as the robber barons. I
see the television networks and the gambling casinos as the bankers.
I see the arenas as the mine shaft, where the occupational hazard
is a bleeding brain instead of black lung. I see boxing as a
dangerous, unregulated craft.”
There is a simple answer to dealing with all this: ban boxing!
But, ah, it is not that simple.
If boxing were banned, most of the evils would not end. Boxing
would go from what Jimmy Cannon called the red-light district
to the shadows and dark alleys. It would become an illegal activity,
a brother to illegal drugs, cigarette high jacking and any other
dodge where there is dirty money to be made. Make no mistake:
boxing would go on, just as promoters in the early 1900s staged
fights on barges when they were not permitted inside municipalities.
For all of the shame of the boxing setup now--corrupt matchmakers,
scurrilous promoters, incompetent boxing commissions, uncaring
politicians and inept physicians--things would be worse because
there would be absolutely no supervision of boxing.
Periodically, just as Newfield does now, there have been calls
for a national boxing commission under the aegis of the federal
government to conduct the sport and give it the orderliness and
respectability of baseball, football and basketball. For all
the ills and hypocrisies of those sports, they boast workable
administrative bodies with standards for health and safety and
protection of athletes’ finances.
There have been many futile appeals to Congress to set up a national
commission to regulate the sport. As Newfield writes, Congress
has more serious and universal priorities to attend to, but “attention
must be paid.” I am cynical enough to add that Congress
hasn’t done such a terrific job in addressing such issues
as ending poverty, establishing campaign finance reform or preserving
the environment. It might be more fruitful if, for once, it turned
its attention to boxing.
Congress doesn’t need to do any studies to tackle boxing,
the sport that has always been the ticket out of slum poverty.
It’s all there in what Newfield calls his “Bill of
Rights for Boxers.” To wit:
* Create a national commission with enforcement power to regulate
the sport.
* End all recognition of the international alphabet soup sanctioning
organizations that are at the heart of the corruption of the
sport.
* Establish a pension system for boxers that includes health
plans and death benefits.
* Health and safety standards should be improved with competent
doctors and such rules as forbidding a boxer who has lost more
that 10 fights over two years to retain his license.
* Create a poll of boxing reporters and broadcasters to generate
impartial ratings.
There would be a need for a boxing commissioner or czar to supervise
all this. I can think of nobody better than Jack Newfield.
© 2001 by Stan Isaacs.
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