Boxing has very little presence in the mainstream media. The occasional film about boxing makes news on celebrity websites and the annual announcement of Floyd Mayweather?s net worth is trumpeted on Forbes, but the sum total of the corporate media?s interest in boxing is so slight as to be almost negligible.
When boxing wasn?t derided as an outlaw sport, what happened in the square circle was covered far and wide. But now even local papers have deemed boxing unfit for their sports pages, let alone for the front page, and the ?poor boy?s sport? is even poorer as a result.
There are exceptions, of course, and the exceptions reinforce the public?s negative stereotypes of the ?noble art.? One of those exceptions, and the one most often paraded before the man on the street, is when something terrible happens, like when a fighter is killed or disabled, as recently happened to former heavyweight contender Magomed Abdusalamov.
There?s no need to revisit the gory details for the umpteenth time of Abdusalamov?s fight with Mike Perez. We saw what happened. We know what happened. We were there when it happened. Our audience is smart and can make up its own mind. It doesn?t need us to make up their minds for them. But all audiences are not created equal. All audiences are not alike.
One doesn?t normally think of New York magazine as the place to turn for boxing news. Its focus, such as that focus is, is on all things New York. Inasmuch as Abdusalamov?s last fight was at New York?s Madison Square Garden Theater, inasmuch as he is on life support at St. Luke?s Hospital, it?s a story that has New York written all over it. Hence New York magazine?s interest in this gruesome turn of events, that just so happens to show boxing in the worst possible light.
Written by Geoffrey Gray, the article is one of many articles that points fingers at the ostensible culprit, in this case the New York State Athletic Commission.
Abdusalamov?s manager, Boris Grinberg, told Gray, ?It is horrible. I am not afraid to say it. New York State Athletic Commission is horrible. It is dangerous for these people to be so careless and not do anything.?
According to Grinberg, two doctors looked at Abdusalamov after the fight. One took a post-fight urine sample. The other doctor, there to presumably examine the fighter, ?He says, ?Count one, two, three, four, five ?,? and then he tells him to make sure he goes to hospital tomorrow because his nose might be broken.
?They give him no attention! No ambulance!?
There must have been an ambulance at the fight. If I?m not mistaken, it?s the law. But because the doctor was the wrong kind of doctor to be supervising a boxing match, a doctor who couldn?t distinguish a subdural hematoma from an epidural hematoma if his, or in this case Abdusalamov?s, life depended on it, Grinberg and his son were forced to hail a cab to take the injured fighter to a hospital.
Gray writes that ?The closest emergency room was St. Luke?s, nearly 30 blocks north,? which may not be correct. In any event, precious time was lost as they tried to wend their way through the maddening New York traffic.
Anyone who has ever been in a big city emergency room on a Saturday night knows what a zoo it is. Gunshot victims, stabbing victims, and drug overdoses fill the waiting rooms to overflowing. Apparently Abdusalamov, a big strapping fellow with no visible bullet wounds, failed to get attention he needed.
?I scream and I say, ?He is fighter from Madison Square Garden.? He is former champion of Russia.? It was when Abdusalamov collapsed that the ER physicians got their act together.
It was, as it turns out, too little too late.
A spokesperson for the NYSAC said they are reviewing the medical treatment Abdusalamov did or did not receive, which is small comfort to his immediate family, small comfort to those of us who love the fights.
There is plenty of blame to go around, and pointing fingers at the New York State Athletic Commission, while perhaps justified, draws attention away from others who might be equally responsible. Abdusalamov?s corner could have stopped the fight at any time. The referee Benjy Esteves could have stopped the fight. Even Abdusalamov, had he insisted, might have been able to stop the fight, assuming anyone would have listened.
