BoxRec

I'm preparing to write an article (partly) concerning the morality of boxing. Don't worry, as a fight fan it isn't going to be a hatchet job. To assist me:

1. Does anybody have any reliable and recent figures on ring fatalities or ring incidents that have left a fighter permanently disabled? These could be global or UK related.

2. Is anyone aware of any cases in which a fighter 'won' a fight and later died/suffered severe injuries as a result of that 'win'?

Many thanks in advance.

Ian 'Mr' McNeilly wrote:I'm preparing to write an article (partly) concerning the morality of boxing. Don't worry, as a fight fan it isn't going to be a hatchet job. To assist me:

1. Does anybody have any reliable and recent figures on ring fatalities or ring incidents that have left a fighter permanently disabled? These could be global or UK related.

2. Is anyone aware of any cases in which a fighter 'won' a fight and later died/suffered severe injuries as a result of that 'win'?

Many thanks in advance.

http://www.geocities.com/thirdman_boxin ... g_politics

Try this link I found on Google. There's a few in there with guys who won but died afterwards, but as commons sense would have you believe, generally it's the guy who's been catching the most leather who tragically ends up on the critical list, or worse.

http://ejmas.com/jcs/jcsart_svinth_b_0700.htm

As much as I'm a fan of the sport, I don't think there is a way to come out on top when it comes to a moral argument. You can compare the statistics all you want when it comes to injuries/deaths in other sports, but boxing (martial arts, K1 etc not included) is the only sport out where the idea is to bash the other guy's face in. Although you can bend the rules and do that in rugby and to some extent football, that's not the name of the game and you generally get punished for violence.

All that stuf about boxing being 'like a game of chess'? Fook that, it's a simple case of some fighters being able to KTFO of someone and in doing so, displaying considerably more skill than others.

I only had a short amateur career but it felt like KTFO of the other guy or get KTFO yourself when I was in between the ropes. Chess match my ass!

Boxing's never going to be banned. There's too much money involved, and better to have it in the open and (wherever possible) properly regulated compared to the unlicenced game. If someone dislikes the sport, then don't watch it. It's the guys who take part who take the risks, not them and anyway, as the years go by, boxing will batter itself into submission.

I'm of the belief that fights should be stopped earlier rather than later and that a fighter should not be allowed to take a sustained beating, regardless of how tough he is and his previous record. Every fight a referee gets involved in, he should ref that particular fight on its merits and how a fighter reacts at that moment in time.

I love the sport to bits, but I don't like seeing a fighter take a drubbing. For example, the Michael Gomez v Alex Arthur fight made me very angry.

Despite his amazing comeback the other week, I think Carl Thompson should have been stopped. He was taking a sustained beating throughout, and so what if he had a punch, that doesn't mean he should be allowed to carry getting his head punched in until he fell or was knocked down.

To me, there is a fine line between a boxing match being a sport and a public execution. Once a guy is allowed to take round-upon-round of punishment, you cannot argue with anyone who says the sport is barbaric. I am of the belief that a fight can never be stopped too early, only too late. If it's stopped too early, at least the loser can come back and try again. That's not always the case when he's stopped too late. Example: Paul Ingle.

Ian, I have an old article which may interest you, I'll find it for you, it was actually in a june edition of boxing news, or july, but I should still have it on PC.

I interviewed Ian Irwin the olympic boxing head honcho, and asked him about the safety of amateur boxing in one of the questions...

He gave me an excellent reply, including stastics from the government body that compiles statistics, the national bureau of stats or whatever the fornicate it's called, with a breakdown of the total number of deaths in boxing amateur and professional, and a comparison with other dangerous sports.

In fact boxing only placed 35th on the list. Canoeing has more deaths than boxing.....only 1 in 4 million boxing bouts ends in a death.

Alternatively, contact the boxing board of control, their legal department may well have a compilation of statistics, provided they can afford a legal department these days.

Good points Sugarman....

I am in agreement with you, there are some fighters whose whole careers are based on soaking up a barrage of punishment in order to ram home fight turning shots, Micky Ward being a pretty good example.

I have heard on numerous occasions referees saying things along the lines of 'well as champ you've got to give them a chance,' or 'well, Mickey's a tough guy you know, you give him a little more leeway than some other fighters.'

To me this is a disaster waiting to happen, as you say Thompson should really have been stopped earlier, even though he won that fight, he took a lot more punishment than his opponent, and two weeks later is probably in a lot more pain than Rothmann.

Refereeing needs to be as uniform as possible, with everyone clear just what is going to get them stopped, and fights stopped earlier rather than later.

I know this sort of thinking offends the purists who hark back to a golden age of tough guys from the 50's like Zale, LaMotta, Graziano and Robinson, guys who could take a hell of a beating and roar back to win.

Many of those classic fights would have been stopped in our day and age, Marciano would almost certainly have been stopped with that cut eye against Ezzard Charles.

However, boxing has enough of a bad time as it is without bad injuries and deaths tarnishing it's less than sparkling image, and a lot of those famed warriors ended up sad dissipated shells, Robinson's name might live on forever, but he ended his life almost deaf, blind and stricken with memory loss, all his ring accomplishments meant shit all in the end.

Boxing in the scheme of it is safer than many other sports in terms of actual deaths, but it's much harder to guage the overall effect is has on the long term health of many of it's less well known figures, many of whom are probably trembling wrecks.

I don't think boxing should or will be banned in the near future, not to say it never will, because I think boxing is kind of out of step with the shiny clean vision of the future which certainly most European governments have of the world, boxing is a bit of a hangover from a bygone age.

All you can do I think, is have stringent medical check ups, earlier rather than later stoppages, and make sure fighters are fully informed of the risks they take when they step in the ring.

Certainly there needs to be something done about the whole weigh in procedure, fighters are taking big risks with their long term health by dehydrating their brain tissues, and the only way to stop this is to have more than 1 weigh in to gauge how much weight a fighter would have to strip off to make weight, and if this is too high not allow the fight to go forward. A weigh in a week before the fight, and then one on the day of the fight would prevent the kind of things we see now, with fighters coming in totally weight drained, or fighters coming into the ring 20 lbs heavier than their opponent in a featherweight fight.

I don't think two fighters should be allowed to fight with big weight disparities like that especially at the lighter weights. Look what happened to Joey Gamache.

It would be incredibly poorly received by most fighters I feel, but it would encourage more general fitness in fighters, rather than the likes of Hatton who really used to balloon between fights. Fighters unlike a lot of other atheletes don't compete that regularly, and so get away with slobbing out and then getting in fighting shape when need arises, which is actually very bad for you physically.

Larry O'Connell always says the moment to stop a fight is when a fighter has stopped thinking in there, so I agree with Dirt that the Gomez-Arthur fight was allowed to go on too long. When Arthur grinned stupidly at the camera after the first knockdown in the fifth round, it was obvious to everyone he wasn't in the right state of mind to continue.

agree Bennie saw that and was amazed (pardon the pun on arthurs name) at the way he was carrying on. Bad news man, I thoght he took too much by the end of that fight personally.

I can't think of a recent case with that type of outcome, but The Thrilla In Manila springs to mind.
Ali outlasted Joe ( just ) but it's hard to believe he didn't suffer permanent damage as a result.

Like the man said, it was "The closest thing to death." Of course all those other Ali epics have to be taken in to account too ( and his brutal sparring sessions ) but that 3rd fight was as hard as it gets.

bennie wrote:Larry O'Connell always says the moment to stop a fight is when a fighter has stopped thinking in there, so I agree with Dirt that the Gomez-Arthur fight was allowed to go on too long. When Arthur grinned stupidly at the camera after the first knockdown in the fifth round, it was obvious to everyone he wasn't in the right state of mind to continue.

Bennie, I agree with you, but then referees can't win can they...

Had the ref (perhaps wisely) stepped in at that point he would have received a torrent of abuse perhaps a day or two later for not giving other the chance to come back in the fight.

With Arthur being the unbeaten champion at the time, the Scots would have gone berzerk.

Unfortunately it seems that circumstances dictate, particularly when a belt is on the line, that someone will have to lose by coping a serious beating.

Loftgroov wrote: Had the ref (perhaps wisely) stepped in at that point he would have received a torrent of abuse perhaps a day or two later for not giving other the chance to come back in the fight.

Maybe, but no-one would've taken it seriously. Arthur was finished and only a few maniacs would've argued otherwise.
That was a seriously bad call by the ref.

Here's a bit more info for your article, Ian.

An Indonesian lad died yesterday as a result of brain injuries received in a fight a few days ago.

Lightweight: Syamsul Hidayat W TKO8 Jack Ryan

"Jack Ryan suffered from subdural hematoma and soon conducted a brain surgery in the nearest hospital. Jack Ryan (born as Sriyanto) died on February 19, 2004 at 2.00 AM local time."

It was only his 2nd pro fight.

There's a lot of fights in Indonesia, but there is a worrying number of fatalities, it needs to be looked into. 2 fight novices shouldn't be in 8 rounders +. That's obvious.

RIP Jack.

Just as a follow up to my post above:

I got the quote from here on boxrec, I presume it's by an Indonesian writer hence the slight errors. If you read part of it again:

"Jack Ryan suffered from subdural hematoma and soon conducted a brain surgery in the nearest hospital."

It means he had brain surgery, he wasn't operating on somebody else. :)