Editorial: Another black eye

Wednesday, Aug. 1, 2007 | 7:18 a.m.

In search of a meager payday, fighters have come to Nevada and feinted their way to boxing licenses, which in some cases has led to fatal consequences.

A story in Monday's New York Times detailed how boxers, many from Mexico, are allowed to fight in Nevada and other states because boxing regulators have accepted incomplete or phony medical clearances that, in some cases, were apparently used to cover up a problem.

Federal law requires that fighters be certified by a physician before fighting, but it is apparently easy to get around that.

Dr. Michael Schwartz, the president and chairman of the American Association of Professional Ringside Physicians, told the Times that medical fraud is "quite prevalent" in boxing.

As first reported in 2005 in the Las Vegas Sun by Steve Kanigher, fighters have submitted their medical clearances to Nevada regulators without signing the forms. A fighter is required to sign to verify that he has been seen by a doctor and that the information on the form is correct. Martin Sanchez, a Mexican fighter who was cleared by a Tijuana doctor, never signed his physical -exam form . He died after a 2005 bout in Las Vegas.

The Times reported on eight other cases in Nevada in which the fighters were cleared by the same Tijuana doctor, but the fighters never signed their forms. All nine were allowed to fight. One boxer told the Times that he had never seen the doctor.

An investigator in a federal fight-fixing probe told the Times that one former Las Vegas promoter found the only way to qualify a fighter was to fill out the paperwork himself or pay a doctor $300 to do so - without seeing the fighter.

As well, poor communication among state boxing commissions has allowed fraud to flourish. The Times cited the case of an El Paso, Texas, man who, although not a doctor, medically cleared more than a dozen boxers. Texas officials eventually caught him, but they failed to tell any other state. Fighters he declared fit fought elsewhere, including Nevada.

Such medical fraud needlessly endangers fighters and further mars an already troubled sport. It is long past due that boxing and its regulators clean house if they don't want Congress to do it for them.