Casualties of Sports - RIP Beethavean Scottland and Korey Stringer

On June 26th of 2001 several boxing matches were staged on the Intrepid, a retired aircraft carrier moored on the Hudson River. The evening of fisticuffs was televised by ESPN 2, and I happened to catch what was expected to be a routine roundup of Tuesday night fights. Instead, I witnessed a tragedy of the sort that no dramatized screenplay or reality television program can truly replicate.

Light heavyweight George Khalid Jones had been scheduled to do battle against David Telesco. When Telesco was forced to pull out due to a broken nose suffered during training camp, the search for a replacement opponent turned up 26 year old Beethavean Scottland. Scottland had been in training to fight Glen Burnie on June 21, but Burnie was injured three days before he was to step into the ring. And so it came to be that George Jones faced off against Beethavean Scottland. Jones weighed in the day before at four pounds heavier than his opponent, but the weight disparity appeared more like ten pounds on fight night according to ringside observers. Being the bigger and stronger man, Jones dominated the action in a brutal contest. Referee Arthur Mercante seemed on the verge of stopping the contest on two or three occasions, but whenever it looked like Jones was doing little more than pounding away on a barely animated punching bag, Scottland would retaliate with a flurry of his own to show that he was still a game competitor with a puncher's chance to turn the tide of the fight. Each round mirrored its predecessor. The undefeated Jones demonstrating his superior ring skills in a merciless manner, the 20-6-1 Scottland showing if nothing else - his great will, pride, and heart. Unfortunately the attributes displayed by Scottland can sometimes result in far more harm than good. An overmatched warrior subjects himself to considerable harm where a more cowardly nature will caution one to run away in order to fight another day.

Scottland's tenacity enabled him to have his best moments towards the end of the fight. By continuing to come forward in the face of Jones' barrages, Beethaeven managed to win the eighth and ninth rounds on the scorecards of all three judges. His chances at victory were quite obviously slim to none, but no one would dare say that this was due to lack of effort. Then in the tenth and final round with a scant 37 seconds left to fight, Jones caught Scottland flush with a vicious, short right. Scottland crumpled and dropped to the mat. By the time he reached a count of three, Mercante saw that there was no need to continue. The courageous Scottland would not be rising to finish on his feet.

Initially he was conscious and attempted gamely to get up. But after a few seconds of flailing about, he became disturbingly still. He had fallen into a coma. He was put on a stretcher and rushed to a hospital where two operations were performed to relieve pressure on his brain. But it was too little too late. Six days later Scottland died in Bellevue hospital, leaving behind his wife Denise, a daughter Chanelle, 8, and a son, Beethavean Jr., 2, earning $7,000 plus expenses for his trouble.

Boxers being killed by the practice of their trade is not something you see everyday. But it is a little too common an occurrence for comfort. Since 1970, more than 50 professional fighters have died from boxing related injuries. The Jones-Scottland fight is but the latest sad piece of evidence that much work remains to be done in order to fully legitimize boxing, whose participants do not yet have a mandatory retirement fund or guaranteed medical coverage. People like Senator John McCain urge the formation of a national commission to regulate boxing. Two pieces of legislation spearheaded by McCain that aim at protecting boxers and cleaning up the sport have passed in recent years. Perhaps the time is soon to come when boxing will more closely resemble the structure of the NBA, NFL, NHL, MLB, etc., and come off less as a merciless opportunity for the few to make millions at the expense of the many who routinely shed sweat, blood, and sometimes their very lives. But even if this time had already come to pass, would the events of June 26th have turned out any differently? Would Beethavean Scottland still be alive? Probably not. As long as boxing remains a sport where men throw punches at one another with bad intentions, there will always be the chance of someone going down for the count.

Boxing is not the only sport that contains the risk of serious injury or worse. Twenty-seven year old Korey Stringer, an offensive lineman for the Minnesota Vikings, recently suffered heatstroke and died during training camp, leaving behind his wife Kelci, and three year old son, Kodie. That a man went from being a Pro Bowl football player to a nationally known casualty of sport is seen mostly as an aberration instead of a call to arms, being that it was the very first incident of its kind in the NFL. It is actually more common on the high school level than in the pro ranks for athletes to pay a grave price for training to be in peak shape. Long gone are the days when pro football players practiced for a couple of hard hours before being given permission to take a water break. It's no longer considered unmanly for a player to listen to the distress signals being sent out by his body. Sure, there are those who are outraged and cry out for radical changes to be made. They want the players to be better protected from their own desire to excel so that they may earn playing time. But the fact is that all of the proper precautions were taken that should have prevented Stringer from meeting such an early demise for so frivolous a reason. Does the existence of the multiple safeguards that were in place but made no difference make this tragedy more senseless or less? Does the seeming lack of people to blame make Stringer's death easier or more difficult to swallow? These are questions without answers. The only thing definitive at the end of these queries is a corpse that was once a young man with most of his promising life ahead of him.

In a sport where huge men ram into each other at full speed; where they prepare for the rigors of a full contact winter season by pushing themselves to the limit beneath the blazing summer sun; it is inevitable that on certain unexpected but fully comprehensible occasions, somebody will go down for the count. And so it goes.