No one can enjoy, much less examine any of the hazardous human endeavors without confronting physical, emotional and ethical problems. Sometimes it’s a brick wall and we turn away. In other cases we somehow find a way to rationalize our attraction and continue. In November of 1982 when the Korean boxer Duk Koo Kim died of a massive brain injury following his fight with lightweight champion Ray “Boom Boom” Mancini, I was afraid I’d met my brick wall for boxing. I spent months reading medical reports, research data, and learned commentary, interviewing experts and participants, trying to understand the peril of the sport. There is no denying it. Then I tried to understand why I, like so many others, am drawn to it despite or maybe because of the danger. The results of my cogitations appeared in Willamette Week newspaper on April 15 of 1983.
Boxing is a dangerous sport. This is not exactly news, of course. It’s been two hundred years since the English half-jokingly labeled boxing “The Sweet Science.” In those days a man of the world was expected to be familiar with four combat techniques: cudgel fighting, swordsmanship, pistols, and fist fighting. Fists were considered the least lethal of the four, the gentlest. The Victorians would sneer at how soft the fight game has since become. The padded gloves and three-minute rounds would seem like sissy stuff to the old bare-knuckle champs, but boxing is still no game of ping-pong. Few of us are punchy enough to deny that getting clocked in the cranium is hazardous to one’s general well being.
It’s not safe even for the boxing fan. Nothing brings out the vociferous belligerence of the humane and pacific type like the word “boxing” uttered aloud in mixed company. The New York Times may not know where it stands on nuclear disarmament, but it’s quite sure that boxing should be banned. We have known refined and cultured people to fling skillets at the heads of spouses who were caught defiling the sanctity of a civilized home by watching a boxing match on TV. It’s a subject that triggers a lot of emotion, both pro and con.
Those who love the sport and those who hate it share at least one anxiety, and that is the danger of brain damage from the cumulative effect of repeated blows to the head. The symptoms can range from minor motor or vocal discombobulation to massive personality changes, paranoia, memory loss, and even complete dementia. The medicos call it traumatic encephalopathology. It’s more commonly known as the “punch-drunk” syndrome and for boxing it is definitely the scorpion in the ointment.
Despite the yowls of the alarmists, there are not legions of drooling demented ex-boxers mumbling at ash cans and living on welfare. Before the 1950’s, punch-drunk symptoms were recorded in as many as 15 percent of professional boxers whose careers spanned between six and nine years. Since then, ring physicians believe there has been a dramatic reduction in the incidence, because of better medical supervision and because the average boxer’s career now includes far fewer bouts. Sugar Ray Robinson, for example, retired in 1965 after 201 professional bouts. Sugar Ray Leonard retired in 1982 with a total of 33 pro bouts. There is NO reliable documentation of contemporary incidence of the syndrome, but any percentage of boxers going “slug-nutty” is not a cheerful prospect.
Though punch-drunk syndrome is rightly associated with this punching game, there are reports in medical journals of the same condition in soccer, rugby and football players, jockeys, professional wrestlers, mountain climbers and even parachutists.
The widely published warning to parents not to punish children by shaking them is based on the punch-drunk effect. A whack on the padded posterior is less harmful than causing that small egg of a skull to whip back and forth on its scrawny stalk of neck. The implication is, clearly, that any activity that causes an abrupt jarring of the head entails a possibility of brain damage.
Examination of the available medical literature by an admittedly lay reader suggests that:
My conclusion: On the volatile subject of boxing, doctors can be just as hysterical as the rest of us.
There are some sober efforts among the literature. A 1982 report by the American Medical Association Council on Scientific Affairs Advisory panel on Brain Injury in Boxing is bound to affect the future of the sport. Chaired by Portland, OR surgeon Jack E. Battalia, M.D., a longtime member of the Portland Boxing Commission, the panel concluded that the incidence of punchdrunk syndrome in boxers had decreased since the 1950’s and may be prevented by sound medical and administrative supervision of the sport. The panel’s report to the American Medical Association offers nine recommendations for increasing the safety of the sport.
Medical help may be on the way, but administrative supervision is still a problem. The frequent complaint among boxing circles is that, though the participants govern baseball, tennis and other sports internally, boxing alone is governed by commissions whose members are usually political appointees. The nature of boxing itself has made this necessary. It has always been the least organized and most anarchistic of sports. Though amateur boxing is strictly conducted by amateur association rules and officials, there is no comparable structure in the professional sport. Every pro boxer is a freelancer. Pro boxers are not protected by any union. As isolated individuals held loosely by an Old Boy system, they are at the mercy of any group or person with power and money.
The long reign of organized crime over boxing ended in the ‘60’s, but the reputation for corruption hangs on. The current power structure of the sport is in upheaval. Dissatisfaction with a decade of domination by Mexico (home of the World Boxing Council) and Panama (home of the World Boxing Association) is spawning a host of splinter factions in the United States. Each new sanctioning organization lobbies for its own supporters and publishes its own meaningless rankings. The only real power at the moment is in the hands of the major television networks, which foot the bill. The current controversy over the sport has inspired Congress to use a noisy investigative folderol as a pre-election year publicity gambit. It’s hard to imagine any solid benefits resulting from federal involvement, and there’s no telling at this point who will end up holding the reins. For all we know, the AMA will take over supervision of the sport. Stranger things have happened.
The sleazy past and the half-wit chaos of the present boxing administration obviously do little to enhance the sport’s image. Even so, the voices raised against boxing seem peculiarly emotional and, in my eyes, hypocritical. But the vehemence of the reaction is far from new. It is a bitterness that has always surrounded this always-controversial sport. And it intrigues me, suggesting as it does that boxing tweaks something sensitive at the core of society.
For much of the nation Saturday, November 13, 1982 was a cold, rainy day. The football strike was in progress and the television networks had plugged empty air slots with, among other things, a lot of boxing. However, Ray Mancini was the first white American boxing champion in years. He was also a polite, personable, blue-collar kid riding a G-rated soap opera to the stars. His fights were always in prime viewing time on a national broadcast network. Thus many of those watching him defend his WBA lightweight crown that day were not regular boxing viewers. For some of them it would be the last boxing match they would ever watch voluntarily.
Duk Ku Kim, the challenger, was a Korean boxer unknown in the United States, even to close followers of the game. It’s no reflection on Kim’s character that his presence in the ring that day was not due to his accomplishments. The nefarious skullduggery that brought this unknown, untested fighter to a No. 1 world ranking is a world-weary political tale in its own right. But the twenty-three year-old Kim knew only that he’d been given a shot at the championship of the world. He’d worked years for this chance. His skills, his heart and his will were certainly adequate for the task. What was meant to be a walkover display for the Champ turned into the roughest, and greatest, fight of his life.
Kim went down in the 14th round of that bout, never to rise again, and the shock of his fall was felt in millions of living rooms across the nation.
A wave of revulsion swept the media. Editorials, features, reportage, and letters to the editor expressed indignation and disgust. The murderer was not, in the public mind, Mancini himself. The young fighter was horrified and grief-stricken. He was pitied rather than blamed. Nor was much blame laid at the feet of promoter Bob Arum, or the sanctioning officials of the WBA, who were vague shadowy figures. In the angry eyes of the public the villain in the case was boxing itself.
Much that was said and written at the time was emotional gibberish. Old grudges were revived. Long-harbored resentments surfaced. The bitterness at having been made party to Kim’s death, the angry guilt of those who had watched, mesmerized by the ferocious drama of the battle, all spewed out. The usual quota of sports reporters suddenly discovered that the game that had helped pay their salaries for years was unconscionable. A number of people who had never before revealed any interest in, or concern for the sport became instant experts in time to suck up the money and publicity that rewards artful denunciations.
Boxing’s businessmen panicked. Death is bad for business. Hundreds of band-aid proposals for safety improvements appeared overnight. Many of the suggestions were well intentioned. Some might even be effective. The WBC announced that it would limit championship bouts to 12 rounds, like architects leaving the 13th floor out of a building to avoid irritating the superstitious. A proposal to lengthen the rest period between rounds from one minute to 90 seconds delighted the TV networks that could have sold fifty percent more advertising for each bout.
In the storm of breast-beating, the voices raised in defense of the sport seemed frail, disorganized and bewildered. But in the midst of the melodrama there were, inevitably, a few deeply considered, wellwritten, and selfless indictments of the sport. George Will of the Washington Post expressed his concern with dignity: “… a sufficient reason [for the extinction of boxing] is the quality of pleasure boxing often gives to the spectators.” This pleasure, said Will, involved the stirring of “unworthy passions including a lust for blood.”
It is my conviction that a fight crowd differs little from spectators of other sports. The excitement and passions roused by football and soccer are probably identical to those expressed in boxing matches. It is notable that in most criticism the boxers themselves are not seen as culpable. The fighters are depicted as innocent victims of the crowd appetite. Perhaps if the sport were conducted spontaneously and privately in alleys, schoolyards, or taverns it would be considered as honorable and innocent as mountain climbing.
“Estimates of the fatality rate in boxing are calculated at 0.13 deaths per 1,000 participants. Calculated fatality rates per 1,000 of other sports were: College football (0.3), Motorcycle Racing (0.7) Scuba Diving (1.1) Mountaineering (5.1) hang Gliding (5.6) Sky Diving (12.3) Jockeys and sulky drivers in Horse Racing (12.8)”
—From the final report of the AMA’s investigative panel on brain injury in Boxing
The real complaint is NOT that boxing is dangerous but that it is obvious. It INTENDS to be dangerous. Every opposing argument rides this refrain: “Boxing is the only sport in which the avowed intention of the participants is to do their opponent bodily injury.”
In the minds of those who are horrified by the sport, it is completely irrelevant that far more frequent and critical injury is done to jockeys, race drivers, football, soccer and hockey players. It is immaterial that more football players get knocked out more often and that rodeo riders suffer a higher incidence of brain damage than do prize fighters.
Boxers, like other athletes, are primarily concerned with the verb “to win.” The lore of the sport is that, if you hurt an opponent seriously, it will take the heart right out of you. If you are the instrument that causes another boxer to die you might as well quit immediately because you’ll never be the same again. Boxing is singularly ineffective at accomplishing its bad intentions. Other sports and many non-athletic professions injure more often and more critically, but it is the intention that is condemned rather than the actual result.
Games more lethal than boxing are exonerated because death and maiming are a result of the action, but not the avowed object of the action. When your stated purpose is to cross a finish line first or to move a ball down a field, whatever happens along the way can be classified as an accident. Everybody knows that football, for example, actually intends to injure. It is a war game with collision tactics and damage strategy. However, it has advantages over boxing. Even with televised close-ups, the armor-plated uniforms make the players look more like Marvel Comic Super Baddies than humans. Helmets and face grids finish off the disguise. We are not subjected to grimaces of malice or agony or to the unseemly spectacle of splintered bones jutting through shredded flesh. The uniform hides everything until the guy can be whisked away in an ambulance. All we see is a foundering tank, a short-circuited robot being helped from the field.
Then too, the game doesn’t screech to a halt if one player gets broken. A substitute is always available to plug any holes in the line. These details help us ignore the damage, but the crucial element that allows football to escape the censure of the sensitive public is that, despite injury statistics, despite obvious tactics, there is the enveloping pretext that the whole thing is about controlling territory and getting a ball to a goal.
Our society condones violence and courts danger in a thousand ways. In a consideration of dangerous ways to make a living that includes lumberjacks, miners, firefighters, commercial fishers, taxi drivers, cops, steel construction workers, industrial painters and other respectable jobs, boxing couldn’t get near the top 100. Compared with a lot of perfectly honest professions, even jockeys get off lightly and are well paid for the risks they take.
On the other hand, many of us are so urbanely insulated from nature that it’s a status symbol to do something hazardous in our spare time. We pay for the right to fling ourselves out of airplanes with a sophisticated hanky to cushion the fall. We shoot rapids. We go hunting and shoot each other. We climb mountains and fall off them with dismal regularity. More fashionably, we ski down them at high speeds with nothing between us and demolition except a millimeter of designer nylon. We send our adolescents to remote and expensive boot camps where they are taught to eat maggots and survive in the wilderness equipped with nothing but a jack knife and a length of string. Those of a sedentary disposition can achieve a convincing version of punch-drunk syndrome without the inconvenience of exercise by simple over-indulgence in alcohol.
Why do we play these rough games? I’m not qualified to say, but like everybody else, I have a theory. I figure that far from being an unworthy passion, the capacity for aggressive violence is crucial to the survival of the species.
We all learned in school that humans are clawless, fangless, slow, and weak compared with either the cattle we eat or the felines and canines who would gladly eat us. The teachers claim that one gift alone makes Homo Sapiens the masters, and scourges, of all living creatures. That gift, we are told, is the magnificent human brain.
So how come we’re not swimming around in the tropics, humming the heavenly bebop of the spheres like dolphins? The fin fans claim dolphins have much more cranial capacity than we have and are too Zenned out on wisdom and the spirit of cosmic play to bother manipulating their environment. In my opinion brains, opposable thumbs and upright posture don’t begin to explain all the things humans get up to.
Consider, however, our intense inclination to survive. Consider our capacity for ruthless calculated violence. Consider that, frail, ridiculous little brutes that we are, everything from the elephant to the tiger runs like hell when they smell us coming because we are the baddest beasts on the planet. Brains combined with aggression are why we’re not extinct.
It’s a tribute to focused intelligence that millions of fierce human animals live crammed together in urban proximity without mass slaughter on every city block, every day of the year.
It’s a delicate balance. We suppress individual impulses and limit individual survival instincts so as to survive better with the benefits of cooperation. If we don’t bite each other we get refrigerators, miracle drugs, designer jeans and the joys of plumbing. But if we get too mellow and obliterate the old individual survival instinct along with its main tool—aggression—we all die of chronic and progressive milque-toastery in the first crisis that happens along. In the past, of course, we’ve had trouble suppressing aggression and little danger of eliminating it. But the recent technological advances in personality-blasting drugs and genetic meddling make a bovine population seem like a genuine option.
So we play hard and dangerous games. If we knew in advance that we’d be maimed or killed in a given sport, we wouldn’t play. But we ride the odds because we feel immortal and the games do a lot for us. They teach good scout virtues. They are safety valves for tension and energy which, unchanneled, could shred the fabric of society. Sports are a continual testing of our strength as individuals and our resilience as a species. The more risk in the game, the closer it carries us to the limits of our own possibilities. Games are powerful art forms that offer us greatness and hurl us deeper into life by their drama and beauty. Sometimes we choose the game and sometimes the game chooses us. We watch games for the same reasons we play them. And, because we are strange half-creatures stuck awkwardly between tigerish individualism and the cooperative security of civilization, we like our games to veil their risks, however thinly, with some homely pretext like a finish line.
Which brings us, naturally, to the Sweet Science.
“Boxing is honestly violent,” says Texas referee Steve Crossen. “There’s no pretense of trying to push a ball across a goal line…. Boxing falls victim to its own honesty. People don’t like to admit there’s a violent side in all of us…. It’s wrong for boxing to be a target. It shows a lack of intellectual integrity. If you’re going to ban boxing, let’s ban all sports in which participants are injured or die.”
In an interview published in a recent issue of OUI magazine, heavyweight contender Randall “Tex” Cobb discussed boxing with writer Barney Cohen. “The thing you got to realize,” said Cobb, “is the thing Larry Holmes brought up so pointedly during the last three quarters of an hour I spent with the man. And that’s that this boxing-match business ain’t no point of honor, darling. This ain’t no fight-and-die concept. Son, this is a GAME. There is a way it is played. The man just ain’t interested in no stand for honor. He ain’t interested in playing last man standing. The man says, ‘No, fool, this is a game of hit-and-don’t-be hit.’ And he’s good at that.
“The problem is not with the right and wrong of the sport, but with the emotional attachment people apply to the judgement. People have all these tremendously negative emotional connotations of fighting which come from the experience of the street situation. Their concept of a prizefight is really the fistfight. The feeling is you’re put in a corner, out of fear or anger or intimidation, where your honor has been besmirched or, for whatever dumb reason you’ve decided that you simply cannot take another backward step. And now you’ve got to fight and you don’t want to and you can smell your own revulsion of yourself, of the other guy, of the stupidity of the situation, and you’ve got all this hatred and all this fear, and darling that ain’t what it is I’m doing in the ring and I wish to god somebody would explain that to you! I hit people. But I ain’t mad at them. If I want to quit I can. If I get scared I can sit. I don’t because that’s part of the game. Hell though, if this were a real fight you think I’d be out there in front of thousands of witnesses with leather on my fists? I’d be out behind a bar in some alley with a bat. I’d be tearing the guy’s lungs out. Maybe that stuff ought to be banned. But this ain’t the real thing. It’s a game.”