Passing on Pacquiao

“Boxing is the only sport you can get your brain shook, your money took and your name in the undertaker book.”   Joe Frazier
"Fist fighting is here to stay.  It's just the old American way."   Bob Dylan from "Who Killed Davey Moore.

My family and friends will be getting together tonight to watch Manny Pacquiao’s latest coronation.  I was invited but like most every other time I decided to beg off.  My wife and I have hosted a few fights at our house; uh, so to speak.  I guess what I mean to say is that we’ve purchased the HBO broadcast and invited family and friends to join us for dinner and enjoy the, uh, festivities.  I’ve enjoyed the food but passed on the fights; opting to go upstairs and read or watch something else.  I’ve become the family’s designated pugilism party pooper.

My nephew Carl once asked me why I don’t stay to watch the fights and I resisted the urge to pull out my soapbox.  I simply told him that I don’t like boxing.  Now you shouldn’t conclude that just because we’ve bought nearly every Manny fight in the last couple of years that I have a family of boxing aficionados.  Under normal circumstances most of these folks would be as likely to watch a prize fight as they would try to swim the English Channel.  The attraction isn’t so much the “sweet science” as boxing is sometimes called, as the fact that Pacquiao is Filipino and the entire group that gathers is; Filipino.  I’m not saying that there’s anything wrong with that.  They’re jumping on a nationalistic sports bandwagon. I've hitched a ride on some bandwagons myself.  Americans do it every time the national soccer team seems to be making a run at an important world title.  That USA soccer bandwagon creaks and it’s axles bow under the new found weight right up until the team does its traditional crap out at which point the wagoners jump off like rats from a sinking ship and soccer is once again berated in sports talk radio, blogs and taverns as “that boring, namby pamby, Euro game where the players flop like fish and there’s not enough scoring.”

And so you might ask, “Why do I usually just toss down a couple slices of pizza and then disappear?”  Well simply put, I find the sport, and I use that word loosely, to be corrupt, exploitative and barbaric.  I've taken a hit for climbing on my moral high horse and if that's the perception then fine, I suppose I've joined the moral cavalry.  By the same token I'm not intimating that those family and friends are brutal and barbaric. As I said earlier if Manny were a pug from Ireland or South Boston or a sweaty Oakland gym they would be watching the Food Network or Idol or whatever else might happen to be on. I don't know that they've ever cared enough about boxing to really notice it's sleazy side.  

I was nine years old in 1962 when I watched Benny “Kid” Paret get pummeled by Emile Griffith, taking 29 punches, 18 in six seconds alone, before the fight was mercifully but belatedly stopped.  Paret went into a coma and died days later.  I was shocked to find out that these big strapping men could die in a boxing match; right in front of the nation on television. With the naivete of a suburban kid I guess I just chalked it up to some anomaly.  I don't recall that my dad ever explained it.  We just followed the news until it was announced that Paret was dead and then he was never mentioned again.  It was like he had never existed.

A few months later, Heavyweight Davey Moore died from injuries suffered in a bout with Sugar Ramos.  Moore is remembered in Bob Dylan's song, "Who Killed Davey Moore."

Who killed Davey Moore,
Why an' what's the reason for?
"Not us," says the angry crowd,
Whose screams filled the arena loud.
"It's too bad he died that night
But we just like to see a fight.
We didn't mean for him t' meet his death,
We just meant to see some sweat,
There ain't nothing wrong in that.
It wasn't us that made him fall.
No, you can't blame us at all."

At some point it became clear to me that boxing reeks of corruption and sleaze.  One need look no further than one of boxing’s most famous promoters, Don King, to get a good sense of some of what’s wrong with the sport.  The flamboyant front man started his career as a bookie and managed to kill a couple of men while on his way to becoming the well-known front man with the electric shock hairdo. After making it big in professional boxing he was accused by a number of prominent fighters of bilking them out of millions of dollars.  No less than Mike Tyson, not known for being a fair minded gentleman himself called King, “a wretched, slimy, reptilian motherfucker.  This is supposed to be my 'black brother' right?  He's just a bad man, a real bad man.  He would kill his own mother for a dollar.  He's ruthless, he's deplorable, he's greedy, and he doesn't know how to love anybody."  

In 2009, Evander Holyfield who reputedly earned over 200 million dollars in the ring saw his house foreclosed.  In the same year Riddick Bowe who was at one time worth 15 million dollars was seen at flea markets trying to sell mementos as well as his autograph; he was broke and punch drunk.  Joe Louis was dogged by the IRS in his last years and even Tyson lost much of the fortune he made in the ring.  Well they should have taken better care of their money, they should have kept better track of the books, hired accountants and in short, been more business savvy. 

It’s all well and good to wag a finger, cluck and chastise these men for not being more sophisticated.  That’s until you realize that’s just the problem; they aren’t sophisticated.  By and large boxers come from poor backgrounds, many taking up the sport to try to get out of poverty only to come to the end of their lives not only poor again but addled from taking too many punches.  In a BBC story on boxers going broke, Heavyweight David Haye offered, “I think a lack of education is the primary reason (that boxers go broke).  Not that boxers are stupid, but most aren't educated beyond high school, haven't studied business and have spent most of their lives in a gym trying to be the best fighters they can be.”

Unlike many professional athletes such as football or baseball players, boxers are on their own.  There aren’t coaches and teammates to mentor them on how to handle their finances.  For the most part, promoters and the peripheral characters are there to see the fight through, take their cut and then cut and run.  In the BBC story, undisputed welterweight world champion Lloyd Honeyghan explained: "People see these big numbers, but don't realize how it actually works.  Standard deductions come to around 40% - and then the taxman's coming for his 40%. So it's not that the boxer had it and lost it. Often, they never had it!"

I recall being put off one evening when I watched the whole spectacle from beginning to end starting with the pre-fight festivities.  There were the luminaries, the actors, singers, athletes and the famous that are famous for no apparent reason than that they somehow became famous; the Kardashians come to mind.  All of these folk, well to do, dressed up and there to see and to be seen. They pony up the big dollar to watch a couple of common, simple guys get in the ring to try and beat each other senseless.  They watch the contest like the citizens at the Roman Coliseum; booing and catcalling if the fight doesn’t provide enough action and then cheering and screaming in a crescendo of excitement when a fighter lands a flurry on an opponent hopelessly pinned on the ropes.  It’s disturbing to watch the anticipation and blood lust of fans seeing their hero jabbing, punching and boring in on an opponent’s cut; working it to keep the blood flowing or maybe close that swelling eye.  Is this characteristic of a society that calls itself civilized?  And at the end of it all two fighters are left to get patched up, of no further use to the big spenders who long ago abandoned  the arena to go to the bars and the after parties to drink up their winnings or drown their sorrows.

And the patching up is only superficial; suture the cuts and ice down the swelling.  That the irreparable damage goes beyond the lacerations and bruises is not subject to debate.  Look no further than Muhammad Ali and Pacquiao’s own trainer Freddy Roach who both suffer from Parkinson’s Disease.  Others who developed symptoms of brain damage include Joe Louis and Sugar Ray Robinson who suffered from Alzheimer’s when he died.  Coming out of a 38 day coma after a fight with Chris Eubank, Michael Watson found himself confined to a wheelchair.

An article in the journal Neurology Now, ironically titled "The Bitter Science," describes a long list of brain damage symptoms; slurred speech, lack of coordination, slow movements, a weakened voice, rigidity, poor coordination, poor balance, tremors, poor concentration, memory deficits and slowed mental speed. As the disease process advances, the boxer may exhibit dementia typified by amnesia, profound attentional defects, prominent slowness of thought, and impaired judgment, reasoning, and planning. Behavioral symptoms include irritability, a lack of insight, paranoia and violent outbursts.”

The journal goes on to cite a study which found that “one in six retired professional boxers suffered serious brain damage, symptoms began to appear an average of 16 years after a fighter's career.”

Neurologist Friedrich Unterharnscheidt in his study of boxers noted the permanency of the damage; “The destroyed neurons are replaced by glial scar tissue, which cannot perform the functions of the lost neurons. It is a process which is called partial necrosis of brain tissue. There is no reparation or restitution of the destroyed neural tissue of the brain. What is destroyed remains so, a restitution ad integrum does not occur. As the result of the diffuse loss of neurons in the brain a cerebral atrophy exists.”

And then there are the deaths that occur in the ring or a few days after a bout.  There have been numerous since Benny Peret in 1962.  I watched Duk Koo Kim get pounded by Ray Mancini on November 13th 1982, Kim absorbed 39 punches in the 13^th round before the fight was stopped in the 14^th.  He collapsed in the ring and never woke up.  He died four days later and any interest that I had in boxing pretty much died with Kim.  A story by Steve Carp in the Las Vegas Review-Journal describes the tragedy of the Kim bout that didn’t end with the Korean fighter's death.  Four months after Kim died his mother took her own life.  Less than a year after the fight referee Richard Green committed suicide.  Mancini’s daughter was taunted in school, classmates calling her father a murderer. Mancini himself sadly commemorates the date.  In an ESPN documentary Mancini said, “November 13 is a day of grieving for me. I grieve for that day in remembrance of Kim and his family.  And I always will."

On the evening that Pacquiao knocked out Ricky Hatton I watched a replay of the second round.  When I saw the knockout punch my first thought was that could have been the proverbial kill shot.  Said the referee, “I didn’t have to count.”  I’ve often wondered how my family would have reacted had Hatton not survived; had he laid there, comatose with a brain on the way to flat lining.  Glee would have quickly turned to, “Oh my God. What just happened?”  I’m not sure that in their Manny exuberance they realize that death in the ring is a haunting possibility.  Carp's article quotes Jim Hunters reportage of the Mancini-Kim fight; "Before the bout, there was almost a festive atmosphere," Hunter said. "But at the end, there was a noticeable pall over the crowd. They filed out quickly knowing they had seen something they wish they hadn't seen."