Boxing injuries and alleged doping

The 16-year old fourth year high school student, Jonas Joshua Garcia of San Miguel, Bulacan, who has gone into a coma (and declared “brain dead”) after competing in boxing at the Central Luzon Regional Athletic Association meet in Iba, Zambales, has triggered calls for a ban on amateur and professional boxing.

Former Philippine Sports Commission (PSC) chairman and Asian Games track and field bronze medalist and now Dean of the college of Physical Education of Foundation University in Dumaguete, Dr Perry Mequi, has long advocated the permanent and immediate ban of the boxing sport. In his countless essays and messages to us, Mequi insists that the sport is immoral in that its objective is to harm, immobilize and maim one’s opponent. Mequi invokes previous pronouncements of the Vatican which has condemned the boxing sport because of its main intent of hurting another human being.

Former Senator and Cabinet member of Pres Corazon Aquino, Atty Rene A.V. Saguisag (who’s a columnist for another broadsheet) has made known his sentiments calling boxing no different from “the art of modified murder.”  Obviously, Mequi and Saguisag, a human rights champion and advocate, share the same belief that boxing has no place in human activity.

In reflecting on Mequi’s and Saguisag’s comments (and I’m sure there are many more out there who agree with them), one recalls a story narrated to me by one of the country’s greatest boxing idols, one who raised his family through the boxing sport, one who got out of his impoverished beginnings through boxing, Gabriel “Flash” Elorde.

We were interviewing Elorde in his Elorde Sports Complex (which boxing built) in Parañaque several months before he passed away, and we talked about his religiosity and spirituality and how close he had become to Roman Catholic nuns in the Parañaque area. In fact, he had a church built from his earnings in boxing. The church still stands proudly, a testament to his devotion to the Almighty and faith in God. We asked him if he felt there was a contradiction between his being a man of faith, a religious man and his being a prizefighter whose main objective in the ring is to hurt his opponent.

Elorde confessed that he had consulted Rufino Cardinal Santos about the so-called contradiction and according to him, Cardinal Santos told him that what he (Elorde) was doing was not a sin as boxing is his job. Elorde added that, that is the reason why there are medical check-ups and other sorts of precautionary measures taken to prevent ring deaths and serious injuries in the ring.

Still, in previous articles we wrote on the boxing sport, there is indeed evidence to show that the incessant bombarding of the brain over a period of time does lead either to serious injuries or fatalities.

The studies and figures are there but there is serious doubt whether such evidence could really lead to a ban on boxing in countries like the US, Mexico, the Philippines and other nations where the sport is a national pastime and, to put it bluntly, big business.

Any attempt to ban boxing must include measures on what to do to with the thousands of boxers who earn from the sport, not to mention the others who depend on boxing: trainers, managers, promoters, sports lawyers, marketing practitioners, etc.

It will take a lot of political will and solid planning to carry out a radical move like a boxing ban. The next target would be all forms of martial arts like wrestling, karate, taekwondo, judo, wushu, Thai boxing and all other mixed martial arts where there is contact and the aim is to immobilize the opponent.

On the other side of the world, Brandon Rios, Manny Pacquiao’s opponent in Macau on Nov. 24, reportedly failed a drug test administered by the Voluntary Anti-Doping Association (VADA). The report stated that Rios, who lost all rounds in our scorecard, was tested positive for methylexanamine, a prohibited dietary supplement used for weight reduction. Other reports state Rios took dimenthylamylamine, a stimulant banned by VADA and the World Anti-Doping Agency.

Rios vehemently denied that he took any banned substance and stressed that everything he took while preparing for the fight was checked to ensure compliance with doping tests.

Rios’s trainer and boxing promoter Bob Arum on the other hand stated that Alex Ariza, Rios’s conditioning coach should be able to answer the doping allegations. In an interview with Ben Thompson of “Fight Hype”, Ariza said, “Robert (Garcia) received a phone call saying that it was just trace amounts, which generally means that it just a very small, almost undetectable amount. I mean, it just seems very bizarre to me. We didn’t do anything different. They tested us throughout the four weeks of camp.”

If proven true, this incident is another big black eye for boxing. We had heard in Macau that Rios had problems making weight before the weigh in and had to rehydrate right after he stepped down from the scales. The whole incident needs a deeper investigation to clear the innocent and to maintain the integrity of bouts at all times.