By Ronnie Nathanielsz
Another young Indonesian boxer has died after collapsing in the ring during the sixth and final round of a bout at the RW Monginsidi Hall B in Manado, the provincial capital of North Sulawesi, last Monday.
According to the Box Rec website 22 year old flyweight Fadly Kasim was making only his second ring appearance against Jibril Soamole although there was another report that claimed it was his ring debut. Kasim was rushed to the Prof. Kandou Hospital but died soon after. Kasim was the 25th fighter to die in Indonesian boxing history and the eleventh since 2000 .
Boxing writer Jeffrey Pamungkas reported that Kasim’s trainer Andy Koliangan had asked his fighter to quit in round three but he refused and continued to fight. Kasim apparently took a bad beating in the fifth round and collapsed forcing referee Edward Rompas to call a halt.
WBC president Jose Sulaiman imposed a six month ban on Indonesia following a total of five ring deaths in 2000 and 2001 amidst charges that promoters were negligent in following necessary medical guidelines. Sulaiman said that in his opinion Indonesian boxers had died because they had “not been medically examined prior to the bouts and/or the referees let them punch each other to death without stopping fights when a boxer is seriously injured.” Sulaiman also claimed some promoters had programmed one-sided fights with supervision and approval from the Indonesian boxing commission.
The head of the Philippine Games and Amusements Board and concurrent chief of the Boxing Division Dr.. Nasser Cruz had earlier disclosed that the WBC was set to introduce regulations that would require fighters to undergo tests for the level of APOE4, a kind of protein in the brain which hampers recovery from brain surgery and cerebral hemorraghe while also increasing the incidence of Alzheimer’s disease.
A report from Jakarta at that time said medical experts suspected that at least 75 percent of Indonesian boxers have a very high content of Apolipoprotein E-4 . The report said medical experts believe fighters with a high incidence of APOE4 must be forced into retirement.
