Much of the focus following the death of boxer Muhammad Ali has understandably been on remembrances about his greatness in the ring, his flamboyant personality and his willingness to stand up for principle at great personal cost.
His passing, some 32 years after he was initially diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, though, should also prompt some serious soul-searching about whether boxing is a sport that a civilized nation should continue to allow.
The early onset of the progressively awful neurological disease from which Ali suffered — he was only 42 when he started showing the first signs — would suggest that he had a genetic predisposition to Parkinson’s, many medical experts say. He might have come down with the disease anyway, even if he had never put on a boxing glove.
It’s highly probable, however, that the many blows to the head that the three-time heavyweight champ took during his career contributed to his illness and may have triggered its appearance about two decades sooner than what is normal for Parkinson’s.
In recent years, there has been much focus in professional team sports, most notably in the National Football League, on the effects of brain injury on athletes. Most of them have developed concussion protocols that now require athletes to come out of games if they show any signs of a brain trauma and to stay out of any contact until the symptoms clear. A few football teams at the college level have gone so far as to stop contact drills in practice so as to limit the number of times that players are subject to head-jarring collisions.
In football, hockey and the other sports in which large athletes run into each other very hard and very fast, though, head injuries are an incidental, even if unavoidable, part of the contest. In boxing, to deliver a head injury to your opponent is precisely the objective. A knockout or a technical knockout (where the boxer is so dazed and disoriented that he or she has been rendered almost defenseless) is the definition of victory. The referee in the ring is there not to stop brain injuries but to stop death.
Although brain disease in boxers has not been studied as closely as that in professional football players, the link is strong. People who lose consciousness through brain trauma are reportedly at 50 percent more risk of developing Parkinson’s. Other neurological disorders, such as Alzheimer’s and chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), are even more likely to be the result. In a limited study at Boston University, researchers there reported last year that 100 percent of the boxers who had come to them seeking help had CTE.
Although boxing has tried to reduce the risk of severe injury throughout most of its modern history, it hasn’t always worked. Boxing gloves, which became mandatory in the mid- to late-19th century, have more than likely increased the incidence of brain injury, because they have enabled boxers to throw stronger punches to the head without damaging their hands.
It also should be noted that Ali took all these blows to the head, and he was the best boxer of his era. There’s no telling how much worse it has to be for lesser-skilled boxers who serve as punching bags for their better opponents.
There will always be fighters willing to accept the risks for the money, but should the United States continue to allow it? For years, prominent medical organizations, including the American Medical Association and the American Academy of Neurology, have called for the end of boxing.
The nation was sympathetic to Ali’s long suffering, but his memory may be better served by preventing others from risking the same.
