No One Puts Daddy In A Corner
How’s that old brain-teaser go? The one about, “I’m afraid I cannot operate on this boy because he is my son?” Did that involve boxing at all? Because if it did, it would really help this blog introduction.The World Boxing Council’s annual convention came and went earlier this week and one of the more only interesting items to come from it is the president’s campaign to get fathers banished from their son’s corners. The campaign is led by WBC president Jose Sulaiman, who actually reminded those in attendance that such a rule already exists, but is enforced about as much as the two-steps rule in basketball.
The sudden interest in keeping fathers away from their sons during fights arrived because of a study conducted by the WBC’s medical advisory board that suggested lapses in judgment brought about by familial familiarity could – and often does – get fighters killed.
“The most common factor out of all the fatalities that had happened, was having fathers in the corner,” Dr. Paul Wallace, chairman of the WBC’s medical advisory board, said of the study. “Now, that’s not something that’s a medical issue, but it’s something that’s clearly an association.”
This goes back to that brain-teaser that I can only barely remember. There is an alleged correlation between a father looking at someone he loves and not seeing the reality of the situation. My initial reaction is that this would actually make fighters safer, not at risk. Most fathers aren’t inclined to watch their sons get thrashed, right? Wouldn’t the towel get thrown earlier with a father manning the corner?
Then again, neither I nor my father are a part of the fight world. There’s a different code. Different sense of honor. Different meaning of pride. WBC governor Rex Walker also offered up the possibility that it isn’t always about the sons.
“Too many fathers live through their kid in the ring,” Walker said. “They transform from the corner to the kid, and they want to stay in the fight – but they’re not the ones getting hit.”
The WBC plans to establish a body to examine ring deaths and serious injuries. And I’d be interested to know how such examinations (both of future deaths and past ones) will work. There were eight WBC deaths caused by fighting between 1990 and 2001. Even if that number doubled in the last nine years, that’s not a very large sample size (although it’s a huge number of deaths).
And even if the sample size were bigger, quantifying a father-son relationship is tricky. How many fighters have relationships with their trainers akin to that of a father-son pairing?
How would you have described Maggie Fitzgerald’s relationship with Frankie Dunn? He was definitely a father figure to her and look how that turned out.
The WBC death study would have missed that one.
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