A recent Greg Page article.

[KOJOE90]

I found this

http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/story ... 5455c.html

Greg Page's days fall into two categories - painful and excruciatingly painful.


It has been that way since Page woke up from a coma three years ago after suffering a stroke in the final round of a 10-round heavyweight match against Dale Crowe in Erlanger, Ky.


Page, who is paralyzed on his left side, has a catheter that runs inside his spinal column and feeds painkillers to his brain. The reservoir in his right side has to be filled every six weeks. When it gets low, Page hurts more.


"He can get belligerent when he's hurting," says Patricia Love Page, Greg's wife.


She can deal with that.


It's knowing that her husband's condition might have been avoided had the Kentucky State Athletic Commission provided a basic service on the night that Page and Crowe fought - a waiting ambulance and, as is required by state law, oxygen at ringside.


But there was no ambulance at Peel's Palace, the location of the bout, that night.


There was no oxygen. The ringside physician, Dr. Manuel Mediodia, had never worked a boxing event, was not licensed to practice medicine in Kentucky and was just coming off a license suspension in Ohio. When Page slumped on the bottom rope at the conclusion of the fight, Mediodia claimed the fighter was "exhausted" and popped an ammonia cap under his nose before bolting the arena.


The commissioners ignored state and Association of Boxing Commissioners regulations that night, and allowed the show to go on.


"I should have called the police and tried to stop the fight that way," says James Doolin, Page's longtime trainer and friend. "It tears me up inside everyday. It hurts me to see him that way. I blame myself for the way that he is. I should have stopped it."


The Kentucky boxing commission will fall under scrutiny again this week as former heavyweight champ Mike Tyson takes on British heavyweight Danny Williams at Freedom Hall in Lousiville on Friday night. The bout will be broadcast on Showtime Entertainment Television pay per view.


Just as Tyson's presence has created a political firestorm (Kentucky Gov. Ernie Fletcher and Louisville Mayor Jerry Abramson have come out against him fighting at Freedom Hall), most of the changes at the Kentucky commission have been of the political nature - more organizational than regulatory.


"They can change the athletic commission because Tyson is coming to town, but they can't make any changes when someone goes down with a serious brain injury," says Doug Morris, the lawyer who is handling the lawsuits that Page has filed against the venue owners, the commissioners at the time and the promoter, Terry O'Brien. The case could go to trial next spring.


Mike Cunningham, who was the referee in the ring the night that Page was injured, is the new chairman of the Kentucky commission. He replaced Jack Kerns, who authorized the show to proceed, even though he knew there was no oxygen at ringside, no ambulance present and that the doctor was not licensed in Kentucky. Kerns refused to comment on the Page situation, citing the pending lawsuit against him.


Cunningham says there have been some changes in the way the commission conducts business - it has adopted the ABC standards, which include a waiting ambulance and the presence of emergency medical techicians, for all matches - but there are some new regulations that are stalled in the legislature, held hostage by political infighting. Right now, Kentucky does not have a rule against substances banned by the ABC - illegal narcotics and performance enhancing drugs - for boxers fighting in the state. The regulation is tied up in a legislative committee.


The rules on the books, however, would have been enough to protect Page on March 9, 2001, Cunningham says.


Because he was 42 at the time of the fight, Page was supposed to take a full physical and provide a recent MRI to the commission. Kentucky rules state that all boxers over 39 are supposed to do both 14 days before they fight. That rule was not enforced, perhaps because some members of the Kentucky commission were simply trying to help O'Brien, the promoter, save some money and salvage his show, according to a person involved with the fight.


The absence of oxygen, EMTs and an ambulance are more difficult to explain.


Kerns stated in a deposition in Page's lawsuit that he knew there was no oxygen at ringside, nor an ambulance at the venue. He said that he asked someone in the audience if there were EMTs present and that they said yes, but that he didn't know the person and he wasn't exactly sure where the EMTs were.


"He said that he asked a representative of Greg Page if they wanted to go on with the fight if there was no ambulance there and they said they were willing to go forward," Morris says. "But he didn't ask anyone else fighting that night if they were okay with that. It's interesting that he asked Greg's representative but no one else."


No one in Page's camp recalls having that conversation with Kerns. Doolin said he had a list of complaints for Kerns that night that he had written on an envelope, including the absence of an ambulance, but he says Kerns and another commissioner, Emmett Igo, laughed at him.


"Kerns told me that I could mail the complaints to his office and that he would schedule a hearing to discuss them," Doolin says. "We shouldn't have gone on with the fight."



* * *

Greg Page grew up in Louisville wanting to emulate the other great heavyweights from the city - Muhammad Ali and Jimmy Ellis. When he was 15 , he got a chance to spar with Ali. He won the WBA heavyweight title in 1984 after traveling to South Africa and knocking out Gerrie Coetzee in the eighth round. Five months later he lost the title to Tony Tubbs, a Cincinnati product. Page never fought for the title again.


He continued as a journeyman for the next several years - and one of the high points of his career was knocking Tyson down in a sparring session when Tyson was preparing for Buster Douglas in 1990. After getting KO'ed in the ninth round by Bruce Seldon in 1993, Page walked away from boxing.


"I left to be Mr. Mom to my daughters in Las Vegas," Page says. "I was still working with other boxers, training Oliver McCall."


In 1996, he returned to the ring. Patricia Page says that Page came back to earn money and because he was training boxers to beat guys that he felt he could beat.


He was active leading up to his bout with Crowe, fighting mainly around Tennessee, North Carolina and Virginia. In 2000, the year before his fateful match against Crowe, Page fought three times, going 2-1, and boosting his record to 58-16-1 with 48 KOs.


The 76th and final bout of his career came against Crowe, a 22-year-old up-and-comer with a 21-4 record. A savvy veteran, Page held his own for seven rounds. But he began to tire badly in the eighth round and Cunningham had to give him a couple of warnings about excessive holding. By the 10th he was spent. When Crowe pushed him off in the 10th round, Page fell back into the ropes and slipped to a sitting position. Cunningham counted him out. Some believe Page may have hit the back of his head on the rope as he slipped to the canvas, possibly rupturing blood vessels in his brain. Whatever the case, his brain was severely damaged and bleeding as he sat on the canvas.


"People were jumping around in the ring, celebrating and Greg was just sitting there," says Patricia Page, who was at the fight but couldn't get to the ring because of a crush of people. "Greg was just staring off into space. You could tell he wasn't there. It was like he was in a fog. I knew something was wrong right away."


Mediodia told Cunningham that Page was just exhausted. The doctor then quickly left the ring. Doolin and the other people in Page's corner tried to revive him but couldn't. Doolin began screaming for Mediodia to return to the ring, but when he got back to the ring, it was a chaotic scene. Patricia Page was trying to talk to her husband, but he wasn't responding. Mediodia snapped an ammonia capsule under his nose. It didn't work.


Cunningham asked one of Crowe's cornermen to dial 911 and get the paramedics there. As the precious minutes ticked away, the bleeding and swelling inside Page's brain increased and he suffered a stroke. There was no oxygen for him. Once the ambulance got there, the EMTs had to fight through a crowd to get to him.


They left with Page strapped to a stretcher and headed to a hospital in nearby Covington, Ky., because he had gone into cardiac arrest. But that hospital didn't have a trauma unit, and they had to take him across the Ohio River to the University of Cincinnati Hospital's trauma center.


Nearly two hours elapsed between the time that Page fell in the ring and went into surgery at the University of Cincinnati Hospital. "He got into surgery at 1:30 in the morning. He should have gotten to the hospital by 11 o'clock," Morris says.


"This time was critical, crucial to his recovery. Now he's confined to a wheelchair or the bed."



* * *

Page alternates between cursing that wheelchair and the bed he lies in. "I have never laid in the bed all day in my life," says Page, whose speech is slurred because of the stroke. "When I start walking again, I'm gonna shoot the wheelchair and blow up the bed."


Page says he has no regrets about stepping into the ring that night. He has befriended Crowe and even traveled to watch him box in North Carolina two weeks ago.


"It was God's plan and it worked out the way that it was supposed to work out," Page says of what happened to him that night. "It's a chance for me to get closer to Him. I was up for the challenge (that night). But that was the exit and I took it. God got my attention."


Page says he has severe pain in his hips and in his left arm and his left leg. Sometimes it is unbearable. He deals with it by using dark humor.


"A good day is a day that I don't have so much pain," he says. "My left leg is Lazy Bastard and my left arm is Lazy Bastard, Jr. I can't wait to run. I always loved to run because it relaxes my mind."


He undergoes rehab twice a week at the Frazier Institute in Louisville, which cost $3,000 a month. Eighty percent of the cost is covered by his wife's medical plan; she began working at the rehab center shortly after Page was transferred there from Cincinnati. Last week, strapped into a harness, he stood for 35 minutes. It is the first step toward walking on his own, and as Page believes, running.


He still watches boxing and doesn't blame the sport for his condition. He attended the press conference for Tyson in Louisville three weeks ago and presented his former sparring partner with a birthday cake.


"If it wasn't for boxing, I probably would have given up a long time ago," Page says.


Patricia Page doesn't know how much her husband will recover.


"Before we left Cincinnati to bring him home to Louisville, the doctors told us that he would be a vegetable," she says. "When he got to Louisville he was a blob in the bed. He had a trach tube, a feeding tube in his stomach. He couldn't turn over in the bed. To get to where he is now is miraculous."


She has become a crusader for her husband and for reforms in boxing. She said she was chastised by a lawyer representing one of the commissioners Page is suing. They suggested that she was looking to reap some kind of financial gain from his condition.


"As soon as Greg started to talk again he said, 'I can't box anymore, but you can't let this happen to anybody else,'" she says. "Greg puts a face on the need for boxing reform. Greg puts a face on massive brain injury. I will tell his story to anyone that wants to hear it, every chance I get. The more I talk about it, the more people I can reach."

Originally published on July 24, 2004

[silkov]

Very disturbing... that 'doctor' should be strung up!. The only good thing in this story is the courage of Page and his wife which is quite uplifting... with such determination hopefully Greg can make the sort of recovery that Micheal Watson has.

[overhand_right]

it pains me to hear of poor old greg in this condition. i've spoke to greg and what a great guy, plus sharp humour too.

maybe he'll come along way back, just as watson has done?

[KOJOE90]

it pains me to hear of poor old greg in this condition. i've spoke to greg and what a great guy, plus sharp humour too.

maybe he'll come along way back, just as watson has done?

Overhand, has Gregs speech been effected much?

And indeed lets hope he continues to make a recovery from his injuries.

[Sweet Scientist]

Very sad story....

Also, it just seems odd that modern referees try to protect the fighters more today...quick (at times) to stop fights...no more 'saved by the bell'...they don't hesitate to get the ringside doctor to look at a cut...(can you imagine what a modern referee would do in the Marciano-Charles fight when Rocky's nose was sliced like Jack Nicholson's in 'Chinatown'?)...but they didn't have oxygen...or an ambulance????

I'm also troubled about licensing guys over 40...yeah, yeah I know Foreman won the title back at 45, and that Archie Moore was champion over 40...but these are exceptions...seems like most guys just get pounded at that age...I don't like seeing it...a guy that old getting pounded...it's not a sport for those of diminished skills and brain damage...disasterous results like this aren't worth it!!!