With Quebec boxer in coma, ringside doctor questions safety of combative sport as a whole
MONTREAL One of the doctors who worked the boxing match Saturday night in Quebec City that left Adonis Stevenson hospitalized in an induced coma said he and his colleagues are at a loss to medically justify the sport.
The goal of boxing is to inflict damage on the opponent, often by knocking him unconscious. And that carries important risks for severe head trauma, Jean Dore said.
“I can’t say we can justify it,” Dore said in an interview. “It’s a question a lot of doctors are asking, especially doctors within the sport.”
As of Monday evening, Stevenson, the 41-year-old Montreal-based fighter known to his fans as “Superman,” remained in intensive care in a Quebec City hospital after a knockout by Oleksandr Gvozdyk of Ukraine. In a statement, the hospital described the fighter’s condition as stable. Despite his misgivings, Dore said he prefers to remain ringside rather than leave the sport.
One of his patients was New Brunswick boxer David Whittom, who died last March after being in an induced coma for 10 months following a knockout blow.
Dore chooses to keep attending fights, he said, “to better manage the situation and to try to prevent these events.” On Saturday, Dore was a backup physician and did not directly care for Stevenson.
Dr. Charles Tator, a neurosurgery professor at University of Toronto and a director at Canadian Concussion Centre, said it pains him to watch boxing.
“I can’t really watch combat sports because it bothers me so much when I see the direct hits to the head,” he said in an interview.
He said it’s “tragic” that people willingly get into the ring.
“There’s so many hits to the head that could be damaging, that I can’t take it as a brain surgeon, knowing what happens inside,” Tator continued.
Alain Ptito, a brain trauma expert at McGill University’s Montreal Neurological Institute and Hospital, said it is impossible to make the sport safe.
“When you are knocking out someone, you are essentially damaging their brain,” he said in an interview.
A fighter who stumbles and crashes onto the mat after a knockout punch has suffered trauma to the area around the brain stem, which governs vigilance and consciousness, he explained.
Injuries are cumulative, Ptito added, meaning the more one gets hit in the head, the greater the likelihood they will have an early degenerative disease.
“Boxing should be abolished as a sport,” he said. “I wouldn’t hesitate to say that.”
But any pressure by doctors to ban boxing would trigger resistance from those who say government has no place interfering with consenting adults who understand the risks of professional boxing.
In Montreal, one of the top boxing cities on the continent, the pushback would be particularly strong, said TSN 690 boxing analyst Matt Casavant.
Boxing transcends sport, in part because of the storylines of troubled men who make something of their lives, Casavant said. Stevenson, for instance, served jail time for being a pimp. The boxer has in the past credited boxing for turning his life around.
“These fighters, especially in North American culture — do not necessarily choose this path,” Casavant said. “This is their best way of getting out of trouble — of making a living for their family. Boxing knows what it is. It’s not trying to hide the fact it has big-time risks and health concerns.”