No One Knows Exactly How Boxing Broke Ken Norton’s Brain

Norton got K.O'd a lot When he got stuck against the ropes fighting cooney it was very sickening to watch Norton was ko'd 4 times in 50 fights. I think that hardly constitutes as a lot. 3 of those times were to some of the hardest punchers in heavyweight history. :nonono:

As others have said, Norton's slurring is mainly a result of the car crash he suffered back in the 80s. Still, I find it hard to believe that he didn't suffer additional effects from his boxing career. How badly, of course, it's difficult to say, and which I thought this thread was going to be about.

As mentioned by several posters already Norton's condition is the result of a car accident. As for Spinks, maybe it's me but common sense tells me that abusing drugs while training and fighting probably makes your brain more susceptible to injury.

You beat me to it. People should know these things before they speak on it. This. Damn stupidest thing I've read in a minute.

A good read I saw on Deadspin. After reading the bold paragraph I still wonder how people can say fighters like Floyd, Ward, Hopkins, etc aren't worth watching because they prefer defense over a slug fest. If they can make it a point to not get hit and still make millions, why wouldn't you do it????? LAS VEGAS—Ken Norton never fell down in 39 rounds of professional boxing with Muhammad Ali. But Ken Norton did fall down on Jan. 23, 2012, while posing for a picture after a press conference at the Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health in Las Vegas. I saw it happen. Ken Norton, the esteemed special guest at the press luncheon, shuffled to the front of the room amid the Cleveland Clinic doctors and public relations representatives, let go of his walker, and slowly, oh so slowly, tilted backward and fell through the step-and-repeat backdrop. The doctors helped him up. There's not much else they can do for him. * * * "Brain damage is beautiful," my boxing coach told me. "You don't have those ... interregnums between your thoughts. They just come. It's great if you're a poet." He is also a poet. His brain damage is of the (relatively) genial sort, affecting mostly his memory rather than his motor skills, rendering him a kind of absent-minded professor who can still spar. His opinion is in the minority, though. Most people who box for any length of time, whether recreationally or competitively, have a certain amount of dread concerning what might be happening to their precious brains. "Yes, I worry about it," one young woman at Gleason's Gym told me in between rounds. She works in education. She cast her eyes about the building. "Most of these girls fighting here are like, dog walkers ..." she trailed off. Left unstated: The more you want to fight, the less you had better want to use your brain outside of a ring-based environment. Blood is not the scary part of boxing. Blood is an annoyance, a split lip, a split eyebrow, lending a vivid bit of color to a fight, but taking little physical toll. Far more scary is the thought of the unseen damage being inflicted inside one's skull. Blood is cleaned up with a rag and some Vaseline and adrenaline and stitches and a scar. Brain damage is not cleaned up, ever. For pro fighters, it doesn't pay to voice any concern about this. Once you've made the choice to fight for a living, worrying will only slow you down. For some fighters this manifests as a proud, ignorant bravado; for others, as grim acceptance, another cost of doing business. The Lou Ruvo Brain Center in Vegas is in the midst of multiyear study of pro fighters and their brains, to try to determine just what happens to them, and when, and why, and how and if it can be prevented. Last week they had a press conference to inform sportswriters of their progress. One finds that this is a topic that offers no comfort as you learn more about it. Dr. Charles Bernick, who's leading the study, briefly ran down a list of the things we don't know about brain injuries: what dose of trauma is needed to inflict them; whether damage is a function of the number of impacts, the duration of impacts, the frequency, the intensity, or something else; what genetic risk factors may be involved; why some people are more susceptible to injury than others; how to detect brain damage early; how it progresses; or, of course, how to fix it. Supremely uncomforting. According to Bernick, none of the speculation—over whether boxing is safer than MMA or football, or whether hits in practice are the real culprit, or whether lots of small shots are worse than a few big concussions—is based on real scientific knowledge. We just don't know. After all this had been duly explained, I asked him if he had any safety tips I could pass on to those already involved in these sports, who don't have five or 10 or 20 years to wait for results to come in. He paused. "No," he answered. "I don't have any tips." All we really know about brain damage in boxing is that it happens, and that it will **** you up. This fact was demonstrated by the presence at lunch of Leon Spinks and Ken Norton, two great heavyweights turned shells. They may well have a lot going on their minds, but outwardly, both give the appearance of vacancy. Norton now shuffles forward on his walker and speaks in a low growl that bears little resemblance to language. Spinks seem permanently slack-jawed, uncomprehending, not all there. Halfway through lunch he fell asleep at the table, and was gently roused by his minder. Top Rank promoter Bob Arum, the most powerful man in boxing, was also at the lunch. He said all the right things about the need for a long-term health-care plan for boxers. I would think that if anyone in the world could make that happen, it would be Bob Arum. But in Bob Arum's view, that responsibility lies with the state of Nevada. The state of Nevada's athletic commission does not see eye to eye with him on this issue. Diego Magdalena, an active fighter in attendance, said that he would know when to stop boxing by monitoring his own health. "You can't rely on the athlete to diagnose himself," objected Arum. Meanwhile, fighters still have no long term health plan. -Hamilton Nolan http://deadspin.com/5882136/no-one-knows-exactly-how-boxing-broke-ken-nortons-brain Many years ago, in the late 1950's or early 60's an investigative board of British doctors tried hard to have boxing banned. They said their results, which I believe were published, were conclusive; that a boxer when hit on the head suffers a brain trauma, even though most often very small. But they add up. They were unsuccessful, although sponsored by several influrential members of parliament, and, I think a couple of highly placed ministers. Not enough "punch'......

KEN NORTON IS NOW FIGHTING BACK : Former Champ Is Learning to Talk Again After 1986 Car Accident December 26, 1987|RICH ROBERTS | Times Staff Writer When Jackie Norton met her husband Ken on a blind date several years ago, she was pleasantly surprised. "He was not at all what I expected," she says. "Kenny didn't fit the stereotype I thought of a fighter. There's something about a fighter that looks like a fighter." Or walks like a fighter, or talks like a fighter. Hearing that, Norton would get upset. He would challenge her, "What does a fighter look like?" Whatever it is, Jackie still says, "Kenny doesn't have it. He's very sensitive, very shy--and very funny." She speaks in the present tense. After 50 fights--even after that final, 54-second thrashing at the hands of Gerry Cooney in 1981--Norton was still all of those things. He made a clean getaway from the game, his features and his faculties intact. But wait a minute, a stranger might say, what about the slow gait, the slurred speech? Well, life played a very cruel trick on Norton, a blow well below the belt. On the Sunday night of Feb. 23, 1986, Norton's Clenet sports car crashed off the Vermont on-ramp to the Santa Monica Freeway, leaving him with a fractured skull, jaw and leg, and absolutely no recollection of what happened. Investigators determined that neither drugs nor alcohol were involved. Norton was known as not much of a drinker, anyway. For a time, there was speculation that another car had crowded his off the ramp, but there were no witnesses and no evidence of that was ever found. But in one violent instant, his life was changed. "He was well-blessed, up to the accident," Jackie says. "Ken didn't get into boxing for the traditional reasons. He came from an upper-middle class family. He went to college. He got into boxing when he was in the Marines to stay out of Vietnam. "The ironic part is that the blow to the head affected his speech. People think it's from boxing, but it's not." As Norton says, now he talks "how 98% of people expect an ex-fighter to talk." http://articles.latimes.com/1987-12-26/sports/sp-7367_1_fighter

Trash article doesn't even mention the accident that almost killed him. More ignorant boxing stereotypes.

Norton's health issues is due to a car crash. http://www.kennorton.com/biography.html You beat me to it. People should know these things before they speak on it.

Norton's health issues is due to a car crash. http://www.kennorton.com/biography.html

Norton got K.O'd a lot When he got stuck against the ropes fighting cooney it was very sickening to watch