“I want a body on my record. I want one. I want one, I really do.”
-Deontay Wilder
Boxing is a brutal sport. There were three major deaths in the ring in 2019. Called “the sweet science”, sometimes there is nothing sweet about it. With the recent stoppage in Wilder-Fury II, Deontay Wilder has ignited a flurry of controversy for a number of reasons. His excuses for the loss notwithstanding, his repeated declaration that he disagreed with his corner’s stoppage, and that “he wanted to go out on his shield” have raised a number of eyebrows.
It is very possible that his trainer Mark Breland saved his life that night. Wilder is upset at that fact, and in some circles, people have at least understood his unhappiness with the stoppage. Some even used this rhetoric to rationalize his infamous quote about wanting a body on his record. If he is willing to die, is it okay to be willing to kill? This whole incident, the conversation surrounding it, and the slew of deaths in 2019 have raised two difficult questions that we face as boxing fans. Why are we okay with death in boxing, and what can we do about it?
When the object of the sport is to hit the other person, most often in the head, there is no way to fully safeguard combatants from injury. Brain injuries are par for the course. It’s understood that boxers understand those risks. In the case of the highest tier of stars, these athletes are earning generational wealth. Is that a risk most of us would take? If you had the abilities, would you take the chance for the reward of fame, money, and satisfaction of competing at the highest level, while risking the harm of a traumatic brain injury? What about the thousands of fighters who are just scraping by? Who aren’t earning millions per purse? This is the real question we must ask ourselves: at what point is death acceptable? Because realistically, death is acceptable for all boxing fans. If it wasn’t, there would be no sport of boxing, because there is no way to completely eliminate death as a possible outcome. The same could be said for the NFL as well. If you spend decades getting hit in the head, you will have effects later in life, and the only way to eliminate that is to eliminate football. So let’s accept as fans and athletes, that we are okay with death in boxing because we believe it is an accepted risk.
But are we doing all we can to prevent it?
In all sports, there are acceptable risks. Horseback riding for example, has at least 100 deaths a year. When people engage in sport, they agree to take the risks associated and we accept that for boxers as well. However, if everything is not being done to ensure the safety of the boxers, that risk skyrockets.
Take Hugo Santillan. Santillan was an Argentinian boxer who died on July 23, 2019, four days after collapsing in the ring after a 10 round draw against Eduardo Abreu on July 20. Santillan began to stumble as the scores were being read and then collapsed. He suffered three heart attacks before dying on July 23rd.
Santillan should not have been in the ring on July 20.
His previous fight had been a grueling UD loss in Germany on June 15, 2019. He suffered multiple knockdowns and was shut out on the scorecards. His license was revoked in Germany and he was given a six month suspension. Just over 4 weeks later Santillan was fighting again in Argentina, where the suspension was ignored. This is the kind of unhealthy practice that needs to be eliminated from the sport. The kind of practice that elevates the risk of boxing exponentially. Argentina should never have sanctioned Santillan’s fight. If all the organizational bodies could align on that, lives would be saved. Santillan’s isn’t the only life that could have been saved in 2019.
On July 19th, 2019, Maxim Dadashev was fighting Subriel Matias on a Top Rank card. After the 11th round, Dadashev’s trainer Buddy McGirt pleaded with him to let him stop the fight, and then stopped it anyway. Max collapsed on his way out of the ring, fell into a coma and died four days later. You can still watch this fight. It is still up on YouTube. And if you watch even just the 11th round, you will see Dadashev is still game. His legs are slightly gone, but he isn’t out of it. McGirt had a very hard decision to make, and he made it, albeit a few rounds too late. Dadashev was not a star, he was fighting for a green card so he could bring his family over to the United States and he knew the risks. But what if he didn’t? What if he was at a greater risk than he knew?
In the state of California, the boxing commission allows MRIs to be valid for up to five years. In the state of Maryland, where Dadashev died, there is no MRI requirement. A boxer must get a neurological exam before their first fight and that is the only neurological requirement. What if the MRI requirement was every six months? After every fight? Would there have been signs that Dadashev could not have handled the trauma of a 12 round bout? The argument always comes down to money. Where would the money come from for fighters to receive MRIs this often? If promoters committed 1% of card profits would that cover the cost? These are the questions that need to be asked.
With each of these previous two cases, the fighters were trying to make a living. That is another way we justify boxing. A common phrase is “Boxing saves more lives than it takes”, helping athletes out of the lowest levels of poverty, allowing poor kids an outlet to escape from gang violence and drugs. But what about when they aren’t in poverty?
Patrick Day suffered a traumatic brain injury in his loss to Charles Conwell on October 12, 2019. He had recently lost a punishing fight to Carlos Adames on June 29, 2019. Patrick didn’t need to be in the ring. He didn’t come from poverty, and he had other options. He had an associates degree in Nutrition and a Bachelors in Health and Wellness. An article in the Guardian by Ryan Songalia titled “Patrick Day Didn’t Need to Be Saved” concludes with “The dangers of boxing, inherent to its very nature, are often justified by the direction it offers to many wayward youths. Boxing saves, but what about when it takes somebody that didn’t need to be saved?”
The insinuation of this phrase is a dangerous one. Are we to only allow those who are poor and destitute to fight? Do we want to create some kind of hunger games style society where only those in poverty are allowed to fight for a chance at riches? Is Patrick Day’s tragedy one that is more sad because he was not in the ring as a necessity? That cannot be true. Patrick Day had every right to be in the ring, and while he didn’t need to be there financially, he needed to be there to satisfy himself and his own ambitions.
There are a lot of questions to be asked about both boxing and ourselves. It is a unique sport, where the competitors life is literally on the line. It can be brutal, yet beautiful, and the risks are clear when two people step inside the ring, and while people attack Deontay Wilder for his brash statements, it seems he understands the risks better than most. We as a society can do more to lessen those risks, and if we refuse, then maybe it does mean that we are okay with these deaths in boxing, and the inevitable more deaths to come.
