By Bernard Fernandez
Philadelphia Daily News
Philadelphia – It is not unusual for fighters to proclaim that they are willing to die, particularly if a world championship, a significant payday or national pride is on the line. Given the torture tests in which they frequently have found themselves, maybe such human pain absorbers as Matthew Saad Muhammad and Arturo Gatti actually believe they would make the ultimate sacrifice for their craft.
Boxing is inherently dangerous, but so is skyscraper window-washing, working on high-tension power lines and being a soldier in combat. And don’t think the fight game is unique among sports as to the extent its participants risk their bodies and health.
There’s a reason Jim Murray, the late, great columnist for the Los Angeles Times, in writing about the Indianapolis 500, authored the immortal line, “Gentlemen, start your coffins.”
Large men who labor long in pro football’s trenches, such as Charlie Krueger and E.J. Holub, endure more surgeries than a full roster’s worth of bionic television heroes, and often are too crippled to enjoy middle age, much less their golden years.
But a death in the ring – most recently Atlantic City’s Leavander Johnson, 35, the IBF lightweight champion, in a brutal, 11th-round technical-knockout by challenger Jesus “Famoso” Chavez on Sept. 17 – is a tragedy almost never restricted to one victim. Families and friends are affected. So, too, is boxing itself, because it has the uncomfortable task of tap-dancing along a line between providing the safest possible environment for participants and allowing the thrilling, give-and-take exchanges that fans pay to see.
But the most overlooked of victims are those whose hands are raised in bouts that result in fatalities. For the rest of their careers, and sometimes their lives, the faces of the men they have battered beyond the point of no return can linger, with winners burdened by inevitable guilt and conscience.
Emile Griffith, Ray “Boom Boom” Mancini, Gabriel Ruelas and George “Khalid” Jones were never the same after their opponents lost so much more than mere boxing matches. Can someone in their position continue to pound away instinctively once he has someone else in trouble?
Does he take something off his heavier punches, for fear of delivering another potentially fatal blow? Does his heart and spirit go out of a sport that, perhaps more than any other, demands absolute commitment?
One of the finest documentaries I have seen on death and boxing, USA Network’s “Ring of Fire: The Emile Griffith Story,” dealt almost exclusively with the events leading up to Griffith’s third bout with Benny “Kid” Paret, on March 24, 1962, and the repercussions of the fatal drubbing Griffith administered.
Unquestionably, something inside Griffith (85-24-2, 23 registered KOs) died. The Virgin Islander, a six-time world champion whose gentle personality was in stark contrast to his job requirements, never again brought anything resembling fury into the ring. Of Griffith’s 56 victories after Paret’s death, only 12 came inside the distance.
“He says there are times that (Paret’s death) still haunts him,” Dan Klores, who directed and produced “Ring of Fire,” said of Griffith, who smiles easily but is cloaked by unmistakable sadness.
“He still wakes up with nightmares.
“This was a subject people avoided talking to him about for many years, because who wants to do that? It’s not like going to a guy and saying, ‘I remember when you hit that grand slam in the bottom of the ninth.”‘
Mancini (29-5, 23 KOs) was only 4-4 after he defended his WBA lightweight title with a 13th-round stoppage of Duk Koo Kim on Nov. 13, 1982, but all four losses came consecutively before he announced his retirement at age 31, when he should still have been at or near the top of his form.
Friends and associates have said Mancini, who attended Kim’s funeral in South Korea, fell into a deep depression after the bout and had to be coaxed into boxing again.
Others emotionally scarred by the death of Kim – who, almost prophetically, wrote “Kill or be killed” on his Las Vegas hotel room mirror days before the bout – fight referee Richard Greene and Kim’s mother, both of whom committed suicide in 1983.
Ruelas (49-7, 25 KOs) never made peace with himself after Jimmy Garcia, who had a blood clot on the brain, succumbed 13 days after he was driven to the canvas of an 11th-round stoppage on May 6, 1995.
“Jimmy Garcia is part of my life now,” Ruelas, the WBC super featherweight champion at the time of the fateful fight, said in 1999 as he prepared to launch another doomed comeback. (He was 8-5 after Garcia’s death.) “I will never really be over it. How could you be?”
Jones (23-2-1, 13 KOs) also has contemplated why he, and not Beethaeven Scottland, survived their June 26, 2001, bout, which Jones won by 10th-round technical knockout.
“I was a self-centered person my whole life,” Jones said. “I had a chance to do a lot of soul-searching after that fight. (Scottland) was a guy I have heard nothing but good things about. I kept thinking it should have been me that died.
“He was a family man. After that fight, I knew I was on Earth for a purpose. God took a hero away and made me reborn.”
So now Chavez enters the ranks of the remorseful, over whom a shadow falls each time they lace up the gloves. Only time will tell whether he meets the task of fighting through the recriminations.
“All my prayers are with Leavander Johnson and his family,” Chavez said in a statement released by Golden Boy Inc., his promotional company. “He was a true warrior with a tremendous heart, and every day I will think of him and say a prayer for him. He will never be forgotten.”
