Damage: The Untold Story of Brain Damage in Boxing by Tris Dixon (Hamilcar Publications) is an important book.

 

Damage: The Untold Story of Brain Damage in Boxing by Tris Dixon (Hamilcar Publications) is an important book.

Here are some disturbing quotes from the book:

CTE progresses steadily long after a fighter has retired from the ring. It's largely irreversible. Also, as Goodman points out, "The most difficult aspect of chronic brain injuries lies in the fact that by the time a fighter is showing symptoms, it’s too late.”

"Some fighters feel they have dodged the bullets and retired unscathed," Dixon writes. "But only time will truly tell." In that vein, he recounts attending an International Boxing Hall of Fame induction weekend in Canastota, New York.

"It was like a scrapyard of high-price vintage cars that had decayed over time," Dixon recalls. "It was heartbreaking. And the Hall of Fame treats the fighters wonderfully well. It gives them more days in the sun when otherwise they would be forgotten. But it’s a fan’s guilty pleasure - posing for a picture with someone who is looking emptily into a camera, habitually holding up a shaking fist in a fighter’s pose, or watching them sign a scarcely legible scrawl. I’ve seen the decline of fighters I looked up to, some I idolized and some I’ve known. And I will keep seeing it. The next wave will be fighters I’ve watched and become friendly with. Then it will be fighters who I have covered from their debut. Then it will be fighters who weren’t born when I started writing about the sport. The brutal wheel will keep turning and fighters will keep getting spat out, broken and damaged. They will be asked to pose, staring vacantly into cameras, to sign autographs with pens they cannot control, using letters they can scarcely remember. This is not all, but it will be some, and more than a boxing man like me should care to admit."

Former Ring Magazine editor Nigel Collins echoes that theme, saying, "I went up to Canastota one year with somebody who’d never been before but was a boxing fan. And he was mortified when he saw all of these broken-down people, that some of them could hardly speak. That was a real shock to him. People have asked me about becoming boxers and I say, ‘You’re going to get brain damage. It’s cut and dried.’”

The boxing media rarely acknowledged the problem of chronic brain damage in fighters until Muhammad Ali's struggle became public. And as Dixon notes, "The old punch-drunk terminology was rarely used with Ali. Perhaps they thought it was too cruel a label for a man who had given so much and who had awed the world with his brutal elegance."

Source: https://www.boxingscene.com/damage-untold-story-brain-damage-boxing--157578