Athlete deaths reminder of courage fighters carry
The sports section offers nothing more sickening than news detailing the death of a boxer.
It shakes me, makes my stomach turn, turns my mind back to my early days as a sports writer, sitting ringside, trying to write on deadline at Foxwoods with blood and spit splattered on my laptop, hearing cornermen scream for their fighters to continue as they took one blow to the head after another after another after another ...
The sights and sounds of the sport up close – the sheer brutality – can be disturbing. Few things have a strange way of both captivating my interest and totally turning me off like boxing, a sport of incredible skill filled with such impressive people, fascinating stories and sometimes truly heartbreaking results.
Two men were beaten to death last week.
Maxim Dadashev, 28, of Russia died July 23, two days after suffering a brain injury during a bout in Maryland. Hugo Santillan, 23, died July 25, five days after collapsing following a fight in his home country of Argentina.
You know they suffered. It’s not as if these guys passed away softly and suddenly and video of their post-fight, pre-collapse moments is haunting. Their brains were bashed and days later they were gone. Hundreds have died from injuries sustained during bouts. Countless others have debilitating injuries. It’s gross and people smarter than me need to figure out ways to make the sport safer.
“Now that I’m retired, I can look at boxing and realize how a regular person could go, ‘How could that even be legal?’” said John Scully, the Windsor fighter-turned-trainer who I’d argue knows more about boxing and knows more boxers than any person on the planet. “But it is what it is. It’s a great sport that has saved more lives than it’s lost.”
This space today is not for an argument over the pros and cons of the sport, though. It is simply to show appreciation for anyone who steps through those ropes, for that action is a combination of bravery, dedication and insanity that exists nowhere else in sport.
“I don’t take kindly to people in the audience who have never fought a cold before telling us who is brave and who is not,” Scully said. “That’s not right. You don’t have to be a fan of everybody. You can say you didn’t think I was a good fighter. But you better know the level of heart that it took for me to do the things I did. There are people reading your article right now who think they can come in off the street and box somebody for three rounds. They’ve never been more wrong about something in their life. It is not possible. What we do is different.”
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