One of the subjects that I am continually drawn to
in the sport of boxing is fighter safety. While I love a great back-and-forth
scrap and covering the colorful personalities this sport has in abundance, it
is important to remember that not only is this entertainment but one that
leaves the entertainers irrevocably changed physically and oft-times mentally.
There are many voices to speak to on this subject from the fighters to the trainers
to state commissioners but one voice I have been eager to hear from is Dr.
Margaret Goodman, who served as a ringside physician from 1994 to 2005. Dr.
Goodman, a licensed and practicing neurologist in Las Vegas, NV, was also was appointed by Nevada's governor, Kenny
C. Guinn, in September of 2001 to serve as Chairman of the Medical Advisory
Board to the Nevada State Athletic Commission, a position she held until her
resignation in 2007. Most recently, Dr. Goodman’s name has been mentioned in
connect with VADA, (Voluntary Anti-Doping Agency) which is rumored to be
entering the “better drug testing in boxing” fray. While Dr. Goodman declined to
discuss VADA until everything with the group is ironed out and in place, she
was more than happy to discuss fighter safety and the issues of PED use and
testing in the sport. In Part One, we delve into fighter safety and more
pointedly, the licensing of fighters unfit to fight.
While Dr.
Goodman has been away from the sport in an official position for four some-odd years,
I was curious how she felt about the recent rash of mismatches that seemed to
be taking place both in California (where most of my work is focused) and
Nevada, which she used to oversee. Fights like Jessie Vargas vs. Vivian Harris,
which ended in an inevitable stoppage loss for Harris (who quit on his stool
after taking several hard blows to the head), are commonplace. A sadder example
would be Antwun Echols, a 39-year-old former middleweight/super middleweight
contender who has fought 15 times since 2005. In that time, his record is
1-11-3, with one knockout against then-0-8-2 Fred Thomas. Of his 11 losses in
that span, Echols has been stopped seven times. Echols has fought in 11
different states during that period, somehow managing to get licensed as late
as last February in Nebraska. He lost that fight by third round technical
knockout and, by all accounts, was a shot fighter.
However, this
is the fight game and young fighters are built on the scalps of older or inferior
fighters. It is what it is but at what point do we step in and say enough is
enough? What it the tipping point with a fighter? While it is easy for me to
sit here and say, “Just deny a license to a fighter; how easy or hard is that?”
I first asked Dr. Goodman if she felt things were worse, better or the same as
when she was head of the Medical Advisory Board in Nevada.
“I would love to be able to answer that but I don’t
think I am in tune enough, especially about the undercard matches to give you
an educated answer and a fair answer,” Dr. Goodman replied. “The one thing that
I do notice- and this is just me- but in Nevada, I think some, and I can’t give
you specific names, but I wonder and have some concerns about the licensing of
some individuals. I wonder if they still should be given a license to compete
given that a license is a privilege and not a right and I know it is a very
difficult thing. I think that when I was with the medical advisory board for
[NSAC] and even before that time when I was just observing how the commission
acted, the most difficult thing in the world was to deny a fighter a license.
Especially now, when they come with attorneys and a whole host of outside information
trying to prove they deserve to be licensed. It is a very difficult thing. It
takes a lot of energy, a great deal of work on not only the part of the medical
advisory board, which I don’t see being used all that much in Nevada anymore,
which I think is a real shame. And it takes a great deal of work on the part of
the Deputy Attorney General’s office to really research these cases and have a
real hearing. It’s hard. And it’s not just Nevada; I do see California do it on
a fairly regular basis, which I commend them for. They’ve stepped up in many
instances but I don’t think I am able to answer it in the way that you posed.”
Dr. Goodman went on to explain about the Medical
Advisory Board and its role in the licensing of fighters in Nevada.
“It’s a five-member board that is appointed by the governor,”
Dr. Goodman explained. “What it used to be- and maybe in some respects it is
better now- but initially, when Dr. Flip Homansky was there, the Medical
Advisory Board and mainly Dr. Homansky would be the determining one who would
go before the commission. Sometimes after the situation had been heard by
the Medical Advisory Board, [Dr. Homansky] would go before the commission and
recommend to the commission whether [a fighter] be licensed or not. The way
they do it in Nevada, a fighter over a certain age [35-36] has to undergo more
stringent testing.
“But irrespective of the fighter’s age,” Dr. Goodman
continued, “there are really extensive tests that need to be done based on
somebody’s MRI studies, neuropsychological testing, neuropsychological exams.
Like I said, I am just not privy to that to tell you exactly how they go about it
but I still see fighters that I have concerns about, not just in boxing but
also in MMA. Some of these athletes that have continued to compete year after
year after having so many knockout losses that it takes a great deal of effort.
What would happen before is that the commission would request the advisory
board to review a certain fighter. It wouldn’t be on a match-by-match basis, in
other words, determining whether or not a fight was a mismatch but to see
whether or not this guy should hold a license. That case of the athlete,
whoever their representatives were, would present their case to the Medical
Advisory Board. The board would hear that and make a determination and then
report back to the commission.”
When Dr. Goodman left the Medical Advisory Board,
she gave them a list of improvements she’d like to see. Among them was to hire
an outside physician to oversee the medicals of all the fighters, making
recommendations to the commission as well as the Medical Advisory Board. While
Nevada has done that, something else has slipped through the cracks. For Dr. Goodman,
a commission licensing borderline fighters just to see if they still have it
fits that bill. In many cases, if he is a name, a borderline fighter will be
given a license and matched against a lesser fighter where he will look good.
With the win, the fighter moves on to other fights and more danger if he is
matched with someone fresher and/or with greater skill. The “gimme” fight
serves as a dangerous smokescreen but in a way, it’s also a hand-washing of
responsibility by those who should be looking out for him. While we can do any
number of tests to determine if a fighter has suffered brain damage of some
kind, oft-times to the layman, the damage done to a fighter long-term is right
there in front of us in the fights themselves.
“The other thing that I think is a negative- like I
said, nothing is perfect- but this is something that I saw that I thought was
important and I know Dr. Homansky did when we discussed these issues before the
Association of Boxing Commissions, was determining licensure not just on
medical past but whether somebody’s performance had dipped,” said Dr. Goodman.
“Too often, I see commissions may license a guy for one fight. And then, if
they don’t look horrible for that one fight, especially if they are in against
a not tough opponent, then they fall by the wayside and they will either
relicense them or the fighter may go somewhere else. That’s a really big
problem, [the commissions] licensing a fighter for one fight to see how he
looks and not standing up and saying, ‘Wait a minute. This guy is shot or
shouldn’t be in the ring anymore or retire,’ and really dealing with it
headlong and saying, ‘We are not going to grant this guy a license.’ One of the
reasons it is tough to do is because of fear of litigation for those decisions
to be overturned and it takes so much effort. But that, to me, is the biggest
problem, as far as licensing guys. They may pass all these tests and that
indicates to you and to the boxing aficionados that the tests are not the right
tests. Guys can pass these tests.”
One example of this problem Dr. Goodman brought up
is former middleweight champion Jermain Taylor, who recently announced a
comeback to the ring. Taylor has lost four of his last five, three of those by
knockout. It was reported he had mild bleeding on the brain in his last loss, a
12th round knockout at the hands of Arthur Abraham. More than
likely, Taylor will undergo a battery of tests and be found fit to fight
despite his recent record, all in an effort to make more money off a name.
“One name is Jermain Taylor. He had one more fight
with Showtime, suffered a cerebral hemorrhage when he was in Germany and he was
hospitalized, etc.,” said Dr. Goodman. “Even before that happened to Jermain,
he had not looked good in some time. Trust me; I have all the respect in the
world for Jermain. He was a great young fighter but just as of the last few
fights that he had, he did not look good. He didn’t have the legs anymore and
so taking him out of the ring, for however long he has been out of the ring, is
not going to necessarily fix this. So to me, Jermain may go back and pass his
tests. He can go to the Mayo Clinic or wherever they are going to send him and
get doctors that don’t really know him, don’t understand what happens to a
fighter in the gym and in the ring that will say, ‘Oh, he looks OK to take more
punishment,’ without understanding the situation. To me, those are the kinds of
situations where a commission has to stand up.”
To me, one of the bigger borderline cases is 39-year-old
Sugar Shane Mosley. Mosley has been up and down in recent performances, most
notably up back in January 2009 against Antonio Margarito when he scored a
ninth round TKO win. In his next fight, May 1, 2010, against Floyd Mayweather
Jr., Mosley looked like a spent bullet after two rounds. He looked worse in his
next outing in September of that year against Sergio Mora and even worse
against Manny Pacquiao this past May. With Mosley, you can maybe say age has
slowed him down. You can perhaps point to the style of his opponents or their
level of skill and blame his poor performances. But one need only to listen to him
speak after his win over Oscar De La Hoya in 2000 and listen to him post-Pacquiao
to understand some damage has taken place. Plug in that change with all his
recent performances, plus his long history of hard sparring in the gym and his
55-fight, 18-year career and the math is easy to do. On the other hand, Mosley’s
a name and a marketable one (at least until the Pacquiao debacle). Taking a
name license like that won’t be easy if it is done at all.
“That’s the thing,” said Dr. Goodman. “If Shane was
to come before this commission again, they’d give you a whole scenario which
they should do because they have to be fair and hear the case. But I would
agree with you that, even though who doesn’t love Shane? Shane was an amazing
champion and an amazing person in many respects but he is the perfect example
of someone who should not be in the ring anymore. And how do you deal with
that? This is one thing that I have professed and it is a very difficult thing
and before I left, I was never able to put this together. But to me, just like
you said, you gave the perfect reason why he shouldn’t be in the ring anymore but
when it comes down to it, what does the commission want to do? They want to go
by hard facts from tests, so they order a series of tests from a doctor that
maybe has never seen him or doesn’t watch boxing, hasn’t seen how he has
deteriorated from fight to fight over the years. How his speech has gotten more
slurred, how he is not as quick. They don’t sit and analyze the film and that’s
what needs to be done in making that determination. Yes, they have to pass all
the tests like the MRIS or whatever else they send them through. That’s one
part of it but the other, even greater part is just like you said, looking at
what happened to an athlete from year to year. Obviously, you have to adjust
for someone who is a little older. All of those factors will make you a little
slower.”
While boxing has a long and storied history, it will
take some time for medicine to catch up and study all the effects a long career
can have. In fact, Dr. Charles Bernick, of Las Vegas’ Lou Ruvo Center for Brain
Health at Cleveland Clinic, is responsible for initiating his own. While I
applaud the study and hope for the best with his results, Dr. Goodman and I
both agree that reviewing the fighters’ performances is a key piece of data
that cannot be overlooked.
“It’s a center that has been established a few years
ago in Las Vegas to do research that will help individuals with Parkinson’s Disease
and dementia. One of the doctors that is helping to run that is Dr. Charles
Bernick,” explained Dr. Goodman. “They are going to be doing a prospective
study, following athletes over time with serial MRIs and serial neurological
exams. The one thing that I said to Dr. Bernick that is the most important
thing of all is to sit and review the fight films, review the changes in the
individuals’ speech and look at how that has changed over time. And those are
the kinds of things, not only for a study, those are the things that must be
presented to a committee when making a determination.”
One other hurdle Dr. Goodman mentioned- and this
probably spoke to lack of funding and how hard it is to have even a basic
monitoring system- is language. Boxing is a worldwide sport. Not everyone
speaks English. While one can study Shane Mosley for signs of slurred speech,
if he or she doesn’t speak your language, it is going to impossible to
determine how you have changed.
“If you want to go even one step further, how about
the fighters that don’t speak English?” asked Dr. Goodman. “We obviously have a
large amount of Latino fighters that their first language is Spanish and nobody
is really spending time and evaluating those guys. A perfect example is Jorge
Paez- and this is an old example but it’s a perfect example. Jorge Paez, they
weren’t even bringing him to Nevada for licensing but were asking about
licensing him and we saw that his MRI scan was abnormal. I had heard from a
great many people that in the gym he was having issues, that he was slurring
his speech, but how do we detect that if we don’t have an expert in Spanish?
You may not be able to detect that and so they never ended up bringing him to
Nevada for licensing but it was an issue that came before us because Top Rank had
asked for that. But then I heard about a year after that that he was applying
for disability for brain damage and he was having issues in that realm. It’s a
difficult thing that frustrates me to no end.”
In Part Two of our conversation, Dr. Goodman and I
discuss the issues with tightening up fighter safety protocols as well as the
subject of PEDs in combat sports.
