By James Blears
It’s surprising how few people have actually been to a live boxing match and sat ringside. The experience is just so totally different from the sanitized hermitically sealed TV version.
It’s an eye opener for a fan just much as it can be an eye closer for the fighter. You can almost feel the punches impacting, while a reporter’s notebook can be sprayed and splashed by blood, sweat and tears.
It gives you a much deeper humbler appreciation of fighters’ red badge of courage, and the absolutely vital job a referee does.
The fighter’s corner has an extremely important part to play, and so does the ringside doctor. But it’s the referee, who’s the third person singular inside the ropes and the main responsibility must always lie with him.
I’m convinced that the one punch too soon philosophy is better than one, or more than one too late.
Fifteen years on, Referee Richard Steele still gets occasional boos, jeers and catcalls when he’s introduced, because he stopped a befuddled Meldrick Taylor in his first fight with Julio Cesar Chavez, just two seconds from the final bell.
So many critics with fast tongues and thick waistlines were ready to criticize. But the protests died down a little, when it was discovered that Meldrick had ingested a lot of blood, suffered a fractured cheekbone and had to spend a number of days in hospital.
The point is that a champion like Julio Cesar Chavez, is trained and honed to hammer with devastating power and no hesitation. Taylor’s reflexes were shot and allowing Julio to go in for the kill could have transformed those final two seconds into eternity.
Meldrick recovered from the beating to win a unanimous decision against Aaron Davis to lift the WBA welterweight title, less than a year later, and he’s alive, fit and well today, teaching personal fitness and coaching boxing.
In losing his IBF lightweight title to Jesus Chavez, Leavander Johnson suffered the impact of more than 400 blows. More than three hundred were termed power punches.
Exhausted by the eleventh, penultimate round, he took more than twenty unanswered blows to the head and body, before Referee Weeks finally stepped in.
Why did it take so agonizingly long?
Have we learned nothing from ring history, littered with its tragedies, or are we forever condemned to repeat the same mistakes?
Does anyone remember the unfortunate Ruby Goldstein? After a reasonable pro career he decided to become a referee, but with disastrous results.
It wasn’t just one isolated fatal error of judgment with the horrific 1962 death of Benny "Kid" Parret at the hands of an outraged Emile Griffith, following the infamous maricon jibe. As Goldstein stood seemingly transfixed, the unprotected Benny’s life was pummeled out of him, although it took ten more days for it to finally drain away.
No…back in the 1951 rematch between Randolph Turpin and Sugar Ray Robinson, Randy’s 64 days of glory were obliterated by a bloody and desperate Ray, who’s laser like punches had the Englishman doubled over on the ropes and again defenseless. After what seemed like an eternity, Mr. Goldstein stepped in eight seconds from the bell.
In the years to come, Turpin often complained of dizziness and double vision. He was never the same fighter again.
Then we move to 1959, when Ingemar Johansson belted Floyd Patterson to the canvas in the third. A concussed Floyd got up and got knocked down six more times before Goldstein had finally seen enough.
The late great Gene Tunney once admonished a lax referee, when lambasting a hapless challenger. The great man lowered his hands and did the referee’s work for him by snarling: "Don’t you think he’s taken enough!!!"
I am not comparing Tony Weeks to Ruby Goldstein. But what I am saying is that Tony Weeks should have learned from the mistakes of Ruby Goldstein- namely that late in a fight, when a boxer is verging on exhaustion, way behind on points, is taking a severe beating and even more significantly is not hitting back, but just soaking it up, surely it’s time to call a halt ASAP….sooner rather than later?!
Tony Weeks should have heeded the advice of ringside doctor Margaret Goodman who told him to keep a close eye on Leavander, after that torrid tenth round.
Mr. Weeks was recently involved in another controversy, when Diego Corrales stopped Jose Luis Castillo, after gaining precious extra seconds of recovery time by spitting out his gum shield. The ensuing interlude makes the famous "long count" between Tunney and Dempsey, look like a flashbulb instant.
Mr. Weeks did deduct a point, but I feel he should have deducted the fight from Diego. But that is my own opinion, and it was his call in that instance. It is however extremely unlikely that a super athlete as he is, Diego would have been able to inflict such an amazing comeback result, had he not be able to grab a last gasp respite like a drowning man, just about to go down for the third and final time.
In boxing, a champion always possesses and cherishes his champion’s heart. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve heard a title holder grimly stress: "I’d rather die than loose the title," or : "He’ll have to kill me to take my title."
Every time I hear this it frightens me, because I know that the boxer that says it really means it.
Leavander Johnson is reported to have said this prior to this fight.
His promoter, Lou DiBella, is reported to have said if anything is to blame, it was Leavander’s sheer courage.
But a boxer cannot and should not be left to his never say die devices. It’s the job of the referee to save him from himself. To be the older, grayer and wiser head. And if it got that far, to draw him back from death’s door.
The tiny yet fantastic Jimmy Wilde who was 108 pounds "soaking sweat" was the wizard of oz, but he was outweighed and overwhelmed by the 121 pounds Peter Herman in 1921. It was one of only three losses in a 131 fight career with 99 KO’s to his credit.
In a weight discrepancy which wouldn’t be allowed today, Jimmy was battered to exhaustion by Pete. In the seventeenth round, the referee finally intervened by gathering the ghostlike Jimmy in his arms telling him: "Sorry Jimmy. I’ve got to do this, because you don’t know how to lie down."
He was dead right, because following his 1915 fight against Tancy Lee, Jimmy who was weakened by illness, was taking such a frightful drubbing that his corner threw the towel in. Afterwards, a battered Jimmy who went on to avenge the loss, whisperingly warned them through swollen lips to never even consider doing such thing ever again.
That was in the savage old days when boxers fought until they dropped. Pete Herman’s career was cut short by failing eyesight and he eventually went totally blind.
Another victor over Wilde, Pancho Villa- the first Filipino world boxing champion died at the tender age of 24 from blood poisoning following dental surgery.
That was then, this is now.
Following the Benny Kid Parret tragedy, the US networks pulled the plug on televised boxing for almost a decade. But that’s utterly irrelevant compared to the consequences of that tragedy then, and another one now.
Some ring deaths cannot be foreseen or prevented even with the best precautions and the strictest safeguards.
But I think the latest tragedy to hit our sport could have been prevented.