Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Calculating the risk of boxing

As Nevada explores ways to make boxing safer after the deaths of two fighters in Las Vegas this year, other states have begun testing a formula to help determine whether boxing license applicants are at high risk of brain injury.

The Boxing Severity Index, created by Las Vegas Dr. Flip Homansky, calculates a boxer's risk of suffering an acute or chronic brain injury based on his recent record, the number of times he has been knocked out, his age and the length of his career.

The formula is meant only as a tool to help state boxing commissions determine whether a boxer should be licensed.

But its potential effect on the sport could be enormous because it could compel states to eliminate obvious mismatches or situations where opponents are expected to lose to improve another boxer's record.

"The goal is to get rid of unskilled opponents who are brought in as mismatches to build up the local kid," said Homansky, a former member of the Nevada State Athletic Commission who specializes in emergency medicine.

"Nothing will turn off people more than a gross mismatch or someone getting hurt. I understand promoters wanting to build up local talent, but more damage will be done to the sport by a lot of mismatches than by a few losses from the local kid."

Homansky borrowed the concept for his formula from the Glasgow Coma Scale, which doctors use to measure the severity of brain injuries in trauma patients.

The need for refinements in the formula, which Homansky said remains a work in progress, is underscored by the fact that it would not have raised a red flag about two recent Las Vegas bouts that ended in fatalities.

The two boxers who died from brain injuries -- Martin Sanchez in July and Leavander Johnson in September --would not have scored high enough under the formula, called a BSI, to have been considered at high risk of suffering a brain injury. Going into their bouts, both would have received two-point ratings, with three points or greater being the level at which a fighter is considered to be at high risk.

But Homansky and several U.S. boxing officials believe the first-of-its-kind index still is more comprehensive than simply looking at a boxer's record.

"The formula has to be simple, it has to be usable, it has to be objective and ultimately it has to work," Homansky said. "We're trying to identify people who are either at high risk of having an acute brain bleed or problems down the road because of too many head shots."

The Association of Boxing Commissions, which adopted the formula in July, is testing it in Ohio and Colorado. It is possible that the BSI will be used nationwide as early as next year.

The plan is for each fighter's BSI rating to appear on fight records that the company Fight Fax Inc. prepares for state athletic commissions and boxing promoters to use when boxers are licensed and fight cards are assembled.

"It's not going to cost any extra money for commissions to access this information," said Dr. Margaret Goodman, a Las Vegas neurologist and ringside doctor. "There is a lot of pressure on commissions to license a fighter, but the commissions are under extreme liability if something happens to a fighter.

"The BSI gives them another piece of information to say 'no' to a fighter who wants a license. The BSI isn't meant to be the decision-making factor, but it will help commissions determine if a fighter is in trouble."

Association President Tim Lueckenhoff, who also is administrator of the Missouri State Office of Athletics, said the BSI will be particularly helpful to boxing commissions that do not have their own physicians or the level of boxing that occurs in states such as Nevada, New York and California.

"The BSI makes it easier for commissions to approve or disapprove fighters because it is not based solely on their records," Lueckenhoff said. "The record of a boxer is only a small factor when you calculate the BSI.

"I would like the formula to have built into it the types of medical checkups the boxers should have, whether they should have an MRI or a CAT scan."

In Ohio, the state's athletic commission since July has rejected license applications from at least two dozen boxers largely because they scored poorly under the formula, Executive Director Bernie Profato said.

"When you're losing time after time, you're not only doing your job poorly, you're not helping yourself healthwise," Profato said.

"We've been able to use the BSI as a guideline so that if you score in the high-risk category, you have to come before our commission and tell us why you should be licensed. So far we haven't had one boxer question the index."

Nevada State Athletic Commission Executive Director Marc Ratner said he has used the BSI informally for the past year and plans to seek formal consideration for it next year.

"Any tool we can use to look deeper into the fighters' records is good," Ratner said.

archive