Rhoda Koenig: Ban women's boxing – and men's too
I cannot share this enthusiasm for 'girl power' or 'ladies who punch'

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/co ... 69967.html

Various sports writers expressed their delight over the weekend at the likelihood that the International Olympic Committee will decide this week to allow women's boxing in London in 2012. I cannot, however, share their enthusiasm for the "girl power" of the oxymoronic "ladies who punch". Like the members of the American Medical Association and the British Medical Association, I think that boxing should be banned for women – and men.

As the trail of human wreckage shows, many boxers, though they may not be seriously injured by a single knockout, deteriorate under the rain of chronic punishment. Brain damage, detached retinas and internal bleeding await the participants in this "sport," as legitimate as a crap game played with crooked dice.

The odds are against anyone coming out of a career in the ring in good health, as witness Muhammad Ali, known for his defensive tactics but imprisoned by Parkinson's Disease to which, like Alzheimer's, the boxer is easy prey. There may be regulations, but their purpose is to avoid the boxer's collapse too early in the match so as not to cheat the spectators of a full evening of fun. Padded helmets appear to offer protection, but the effect of repeated blows to the head is the same.

For the amusement of those watching, the boxer takes a beating that, if it happened on a street corner, would brand them as cold and cowardly for not trying to stop it. But in the ring, say defenders of the sport, he – or she – is not set upon but fights out of choice. Yet how free is that choice?

One of the women to whom the Independent on Sunday spoke said she boxed because "there's nowt else to do where I come from," the same reason that black men from poor families, barred from the education and jobs reserved for whites, put on the gloves. Is our society so poor in both money and spirit that young people today have no better way out of poverty than the one taken by Jack Johnson and Joe Louis, the son and grandson of slaves?

But even if the boxer is middle class, the more important question is not one of choice but example.

The Puritans, said Macaulay, opposed bear-baiting not because it gave pain to the bear but pleasure to the spectators. What seemed a good joke against the Roundheads in his time, however, makes good sense in our own.

We have long banned cruelty to animals, out of self-interest – we recognise that a tormentor of animals is likely to move on to humans, and that it is not good for a society if its citizens can look on suffering unmoved. While we campaign to help the tortured bears of Asia and women who are beaten by their husbands in Africa, we ignore the men and women right here who perpetuate the debased idea that inflicting pain is fine entertainment.

Which of course ignores the context of violence in boxing. It takes place between two trained athletes, under rules, and with a referee to stop the fight as soon as someone can no longer defend themselves. We should well doubt that the average person is going to be morally corrupted and turned into a sadist from watching boxing! Of course, you can't rule out that some idiot will watch a combat sport and will then want to get into a street fight because of it. But then, you can't rule out that some idiot will watch motor racing and will then want to race on the public roads because of it.

With regard to the risks of boxing, I was watching a former Welsh rugby player being interviewed, and he said that every day he was in pain from having played the game, and that his knee had been smashed up from it. (Didn't regret it however, as he got to represent his country.)

This issue doesn't have a clear cut answer; for every position you will find it's detractor, sometimes from the participants themselves; i know former european-level fighters who regret having taken the sport, some even advocating it's ban !!

Here's a recent doc about the fate of some former fighters:


http://afterthelastround.com/

DAMAGED GOODS
Documentary exposes harsh reality of life after boxing

By STEVE BUFFERY

Last Updated: 20th July 2009, 4:03am



There is a scene in the documentary "After The Last Round" when an old man named Harry Moyer wanders over to his son Phil and begins to wipe Phil's face with a tissue, precisely as he would have done years earlier when Phil was boxing and Harry was his trainer.
Phil suffers from dementia and stares past his father, unfocussed and lost.
"You're all right," whispers Harry to his aging son.
Phil, however, clearly is not all right.
In his 90s, Harry is in much better shape than Phil and his other son Denny, who also was a world-ranked fighter out of Portland, Ore., in the 1950s and '60s.
The camera then pans out to show Denny and Phil sitting in adjoining chairs, starring blankly ahead, brothers bound by the brutal sport of boxing and the wretched consequences the so-called "sweet science" exacts on those who embrace it.
Everyone who has ever watched a round of boxing generally is aware that the sport is -- particularly at the professional level -- dangerous and potentially lethal. But what we don't see is what happens to these damaged fighters after they walk away from the ring.
Denny and Phil Moyer were legends in the Portland area, world-ranked middleweights, charismatic and handsome.
Now, they are broken, suffering from dementia, living together at a nursing home, in need of constant care, their conditions deteriorating.
Laura Moyer, Phil's daughter, describes how when they first took her father to the home, the tough ex-fighter, who fought the very best of his day, including Sugar Ray Robinson, began crying.
"He said: 'Please don't leave me here,' " said Laura, breaking down in tears. "But we couldn't take care of him anymore."
The executive producer of After The Last Round is Tom Moyer, a cousin of Denny and Phil.
Now a resident of Santa Barbara, Calif., Tom grew up in Portland, where the Moyers were the first family of boxing. Tom's father also trained Phil and Denny. But what was once a source of pride for the family has turned into tragedy. And not just because of Denny and Phil's dementia. Harry also is a victim, as he spends his remaining days dealing with the fact that he put his boys in the ring and is, in a way, the architect of their demise.
Decades later, having witnessed his cousins' downward spiral, Tom Moyer encouraged his own son Patrick and Patrick's friend, the filmmaker Ryan Pettey, to take put together a documentary, not just about the Moyer family, but on what happens to fighters after the final bell has sounded.
Patrick is the film's producer and Pettey the director.
The film shows that not only are many ex-professional fighters, perhaps even the majority, damaged goods, most are destitute, or nearly there -- cast away like broken toys, treated worse than greyhound dogs.
There is no pension for ex-fighters. Most walk away with nothing, in fact, less than nothing, because they leave boxing with less than what they had going in.
After The Last Round profiles boxers who are in the advanced state of dementia, or blind, or broke, but also examines why some fighters, including many who waged tremendous wars in the ring and absorbed untold punishment -- such as Canadian heavyweight legend George Chuvalo -- have survived seemingly unscathed, at least physically.
Tom Moyer is justifiably proud of the film, but equally frustrated, as he is attempting to have the movie included in this year's Toronto International Film Festival. But as of yet, he has had no luck.
Near the end of the documentary, the camera focuses on Denny's wife, Sandy.
"He's living over there, but really he's dead," she says of her husband. "And nobody cares. Frankly, nobody ever will care. But I care."
Tom Moyer's reason for producing After the Last Round, and for pushing for its inclusion in this year's TIFF, is so more people will care.