Thursday, July 20, 2006 | 7:27 a.m.
In the vernacular of the sport it was supposed to try to make safer, you could say that Nevada's Advisory Committee on Boxer Health and Safety never laid a glove on what truly ails the fight game.
The panel, established in response to a string of fatal and near-fatal head injuries suffered by boxers in Las Vegas last year, recently made recommendations calling for, among other things, penalties for rapid weight loss before fights, additional state funding for random drug and steroid testing, more doctors at ringside, mandatory CT scans after fights and a study of boxing gloves.
But while the Nevada State Athletic Commission adopted the report last week, others have reacted with disappointment and skepticism.
Some of the most serious issues facing the sport were not even touched on in the report. There was no mention of the obvious mismatches that the athletic commission frequently sanctions to fill out fight cards. There was no discussion of requiring more pre-fight head scans, something many medical experts regard as one of the sport's most pressing needs. And the advisory committee also was silent on the growing concern within boxing about alleged phony medical records coming out of Mexico, home to a significant number of boxers who compete in Nevada.
Even in the case of the recommendations that were made, some didn't go far enough, weren't well thought out or won't have much impact, boxing insiders fear.
For a model of what could have been done, the boxing panel could have looked at NASCAR, a sport that got very serious about safety after a high-profile fatality. After the death of racing icon Dale Earnhardt on the last lap of the 2001 Daytona 500, the sport mandated head and neck restraining devices for all drivers and shock absorbing barriers at all of its racetracks, including Las Vegas Motor Speedway. Since then, there has not been one fatality in NASCAR's top three racing series. The sport also is in the process of designing a new race car that would be even safer to drive.
Boxing has been much slower to change.
By the time the 2007 Nevada Legislature acts on some of the recommendations that require legislative approval, two years will have elapsed since boxers Leopoldo Gonzalez and William Abelyan were permanently suspended from fighting in Nevada due to brain injuries. The suspensions occurred only months before Martin Sanchez and Leavander Johnson died of injuries suffered in Las Vegas bouts, the first time since 1933 that two boxers died in Nevada in the same year from fight-related injuries.
There were suspicions from the onset about the credentials of the five men chosen by the athletic commission last fall to serve on the advisory committee, in part because none is a neurosurgeon, an area of expertise vital to the panel's work.
Instead, the committee was headed by veteran political adviser and former athletic commissioner Sig Rogich, whose media relations firm shares the same floor at 3980 Howard Hughes Parkway with Top Rank Inc., one of the world's foremost boxing promoters.
After a half-year study, the advisory committee issued a report notable for its glaring omissions:
Although mismatches occur frequently in sports, they arguably are of much greater import in boxing, given the potentially disastrous consequences for the health and safety of underdog fighters.
In boxing, mismatches generally result from attempts to build up the win-loss record of favored boxers, all for the purpose of grooming up-and-coming fighters for future big-payday televised appearances.
One example of a sanctioned mismatch occurred on March 31 at the Edgewater resort in Laughlin. Welterweight Ray Sanchez of Albuquerque stepped into the ring with a 15-1 record, having scored seven straight wins since his only defeat in November 2002, according to the Web site boxrec.com. Facing Sanchez was Carlos Horacio Nevarez of Longmont, Colo., who came into the fight with an 11-15-1 record. None of Nevarez's 11 victories, however, came against foes with winning records. In addition, he entered the fight with seven losses in his last 10 contests, with the three victories coming against unimpressive opponents with records of 1-7, 5-13 and 2-5.
To no one's surprise - perhaps not even Nevarez's - Sanchez won in a second-round knockout.
A different type of sanctioned mismatch occurred Friday at Las Vegas' South Coast resort when local heavyweight Tye Fields brought his 36-1 record into the ring against 19-14 Maurice Harris of Newark, N.J. Fields had 19 straight victories dating to March 2001. Harris, by contrast, had fought only once in the past three years, winning a unanimous decision against a foe who was 13-31, and had lost three of his last five fights dating to 2001. Moreover, he weighed in at 261 pounds, 32 pounds heavier than his heaviest fighting weight.
The predictable result: Harris "retired" after the fourth round of the scheduled 10-round bout after showing signs of extreme fatigue.
Any serious effort to better protect boxers' health and safety, many believe, needs to find a way to outlaw mismatches. Similarly, a close examination is also warranted of last-minute replacements for fighters who cannot suit up for a scheduled bout. That is crucial, because the fitness of last-minute replacements often is questionable.
A pre-fight magnetic resonance imaging scan could help the athletic commission determine whether a fighter entering a bout has signs of brain damage, such as bleeding or swelling.
It is widely believed that a fighter normally sustains more injuries in sparring sessions than in the ring because fighters typically go through dozens of rounds of training, absorbing more blows - often with no doctor present. A pre-fight MRI could help spot damage caused by years of sparring.
But Nevada Administrative Code 467.027 provides a loophole that allows most fighters licensed in Nevada to go up to five years between MRIs. Because many boxers fight several times a year, that means they could have dozens of fights in Nevada over a five-year period between brain scans. Some argue the code needs to be rewritten to provide for more frequent MRIs - perhaps before each fight.
A further step in that direction would be to establish a form of baseline testing as described to the Sun last year by Dr. David Cifu, medical director of the Rehabilitation and Research Center at the Medical College of Virginia. Cifu's idea is to begin with brain scans of young fighters, followed by repeat scans over the course of their careers to determine whether there is any drop-off in brain function. That information would give regulators the ability to step in sooner to end fighters' careers, possibly protecting them from more severe brain damage.
The Sun reported in November that the athletic commission files on Martin Sanchez, a Mexican boxer who died of a brain injury last July, included medical documents missing his required signature and other records with contradictory information.
When Sanchez applied for his boxing license, he listed a Tijuana, Mexico, address and a professional record of 20-4, with all those bouts occurring in Mexico. But Fight Fax Inc., which compiles records used by the athletic commission, listed him as 13-8, with a home address in Mexico City.
Some boxing insiders believe the Sanchez case highlights one of boxing's worst-kept - and potentially most dangerous - secrets: Mexican boxers commonly avoid required tests and submit phony results. The athletic commission rarely gets reports directly from Mexican physicians, and the commission often has little evidence connecting those fighters to the tests submitted on their behalf.
Noted boxing journalist Thomas Hauser of New York, who received last year's career achievement award from the Boxing Writers Association of America, took the advisory committee to task in a recent story for the Web site Secondsout.com for failing to seriously address the issue of phony medical records.
"A thorough report would have called for immediate measures to protect the integrity of medical data submitted to the commission," Hauser wrote. "Unfortunately, the only reference to the problem in the committee report is an oblique mention in a recommendation that the NSAC (athletic commission) hire a part-time doctor whose job would include, among other things, the responsibility to verify the authenticity of medical tests if requested to do so by the commission."
Among the committee recommendations that do not seem to go far enough, one example involves the proposed purchase of a single portable CT scan machine to be used on every fighter following each bout.
If the state purchases only one machine, obvious problems will arise on days with fights at more than one location. That occurred three times in Southern Nevada last year - on April 22, May 13 and Oct. 8. And even if the CT scan machine is available, common sense dictates that it would be better in certain cases to transport the athletes to hospitals, where they stand a better chance of getting the continuous follow-up care they may require.
Better, more precise wording also could strengthen a recommendation requiring anyone with a boxing license - promoters, trainers and managers as well as fighters - to report to the commission "a serious injury suffered by an unarmed combatant during training about which the licensee has personal knowledge." But "serious injury" is not defined, and "personal knowledge" amounts to self-policing.
Better yet would be for the state to require the licensing of boxing gymnasiums, and to make them subject to random inspections similar to the way health departments check on restaurants. Although the committee noted that many fighters train at home or in foreign countries, keeping an eye on fighters who work out in local gyms would be a positive move.
One recommendation some believe the state should discard is dismantling the current Medical Advisory Board - whose members are appointed by the governor - and replacing it with a board of doctors appointed by the commission. That change, however, would eliminate much of the autonomy that the current board enjoys.
Perhaps the strongest critique of the boxing committee's work comes from the committee itself. In concluding its report, the committee said that while "these first steps are significant in terms of ensuring the health and well-being of the fighters who come to compete in Nevada," panel members "understand that this list of recommendations is not exhaustive."
That poses a thorny question: If two fatalities and two career-ending brain injuries in a year do not justify an exhaustive study on what is literally a life-and-death issue, then what does?
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