Fight reservations

Boxing is little more than a ring of dire consequences

By now you may know the name Stacy Young, and wish you didn't. She's the 30-year-old woman who stepped into a boxing ring for a Toughman competition in Sarasota, Fla. on Tuesday night to have a little fun. "This was just a lark," her sister said. Young's dead now, beaten to death in three rounds. "The other girl was punching her repeatedly in the head," her sister said.

If you didn't know the name Stacy Young, you more likely know Micky Ward and Arturo Gatti, a couple of junior welterweights who got together for a big payday two Saturdays ago and beat each other gaga. Sports Illustrated's Franz Lidz likened the fight to "some relic from the era of bare-knuckle brawling." They pounded each other round after round (Gatti broke his right hand) and the crowd responded with standing ovations. As usual (they've fought before, with equally bloody results), both boxers wound up in a trauma unit.

You all ready for the Lennox Lewis-Vitali Klitschko fight this Saturday!

OK, Toughman isn't quite the same as what qualifies for the regulated arms of boxing. The pre-fight medical screening isn't as stringent. About all you have to do to qualify as a Toughman is be between the ages of 18 and 35, have the ability to stand and be able to get 16-ounce gloves onto your hands.

Toughman is a step down from Friday Night Fights, but it's the same idea. It's boxing's equivalent of sandlot baseball, of pickup hoops. Stacy Young leaves two daughters and husband behind.

Boxing people try to distance themselves from Toughman competitions but you'd have to be a fool to buy it. After Young was killed, Florida Boxing Commission Chairman Alvin Entin told The Associated Press that Toughman boxing is "pretty stupid. It's quasi-barbaric."

Mr. Chairman, look in the mirror lately? Last time I checked the object of sanctioned boxing was to batter your opponent's brain against the inside of his or her skull. That's what leads to a KO. You want barbaric? You already have it.

In the Toughman competition's defense, its promotion company sent out a press release Tuesday that said, "Toughman contest deaths per participant over Toughman's entire 24-year history has been well below that of other forms of boxing."

Have fun trying to check that fact. We know that boxers are dying in small, sanctioned bouts all over the world. In April, a 16-year-old boy died in a Vietnamese kickboxing tournament. You only have to go back to last June to find a big-name boxer who was killed on U.S. soil: WBO super flyweight champion Pedro Alcazar, who died after a bout with Fernando Montiel.

A report in The Detroit News last month said that 12 men have died in Toughman-style amateur fighting events since the sport's inception in 1979. By contrast, The American Medical Association estimates that you have a chance to see someone beaten to death about once every 3,800 legal boxing matches in the U.S. Hey, watch a few boxing cards each week (easy to do, on cable) and in a few years, the odds are ...

Because of Young's death there will be a lot of well-intentioned hand-wringing over the evils of the Toughman competition. People will argue, rightly, that it should be abolished. But so should all boxing. Anyone who thinks that Toughman is very much different from the sport that made a superhero out of Ali just isn't thinking at all.

We know about boxing's artistry. About the fancy footwork. About the parrying and feinting, and the subtle wearing down of your opponent and all the other nuances that get aficionados steamy on the sidelines. But there's no changing the essential fact that the aim is to put a bruise on the other guy's brain and maybe bang up a stomach organ or two along the way. No skill in sport rewards more richly than the knockout punch. You've seen heavyweight paydays.

Stacy Young suffered swelling and hemorrhaging in the brain. Pedro Alcazar died from significant swelling of the brain. Brains tend to swell when you're getting hit in the head.

You've heard the cries against boxing before. But that can't stop us. As long as boxing exists, we have a moral duty to rail against it. And I've yet to hear a compelling argument for why boxing is legal in the U.S. and, say, bull-fighting isn't. The most common defense -- that boxers box of free will, that they don't have to fight if they don't want to -- borders on flat-out idiocy. Boxers box because they need money and a livelihood. Give them a chance at those without physical anguish and watch the pool of fighters shrink. Boxers box because they have few alternatives.

Toughman or sanctioned boxing, it's all the same game. And it should all be abolished.

Sports Illustrated senior writer Kostya Kennedy takes sides each week at SI.com.

 

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