A BRUTAL SPORT—The Davey Moore fight is one more illustration that boxing is a brutal sport even under ideal conditions—if it can be called a sport.—GOVERNOR EDMUND “PAT” BROWN of California.
PROTECTING THE TARGET—Moore’s death is a terrible thing, but in this case the public interest can best be served by scientific inquiry, not by the hasty pronouncement of the governor. For a sport so bound up with physical violence, there has been almost criminal lack of controlled, scientific exploration in the area of protecting the target of a fighter’s fists, the human head. Prefight encephalographic examination—which California administers—and a quick look by even the most competent referee during the heat of a championship fight obviously are only part of the answer. If boxing is to survive, its supervisors need to know a lot more about it. More—and fast.—Sports Illustrated, April 1, 1963.
SUPERVISION OR ABOLITION?—Boxing is a terribly dangerous trade, as well as a savagely degrading one. Since 1945, Ring Magazine reports 216 boxers have died of ring injuries. Of this number, 14 lost their lives last year.… No human agency has ever succeeded in divorcing boxing from gangster domination, and on the evidence it must be assumed that no one ever will.… The committee [of the New York legislature] has already admitted that even the power and majesty of New York State is not equal to the task of policing the fight racket. Pending now in the legislature is their plea that the Federal Government take over the supervision of boxing. Washington bureaucracy is not the answer to the malodorous fight racket, any more than it was to prohibition. Boxing is squalid animal atavism, and the only sane answer to it lies in its abolition.—RICHARD STARNES, United Features columnist.
LIKE A PREMATURE MINE BLAST—I won the ring’s most coveted title by stopping a man much larger and stronger than I was—one who outweighed me 65 pounds. I blasted him into helplessness by exploding my fast-moving body-weight against him.… Exploding body-weight is the most important weapon in fist-fighting or in boxing. Never forget that!… I was exploding that weight terrifically against the giant. Even before the first round was finished, Willard looked like the victim of a premature mine blast.—JACK DEMPSEY, Championship Fighting, Prentice-Hall, 1950, p. 3.
A SIMPLE CONCUSSION—When one prizefighter hits another in the head, his objective is to render the opponent temporarily unconscious by a simple concussion, which usually leaves no permanent damage. But a hard blow can also bruise the brain, breaking some of its blood vessels and destroying nerve cells. This kind of damage can kill.… A long succession of moderate contusions (bruises), which cause slow, leaky hemorrhages, may permanently damage small parts of the brain, causing the “punch-drunk” state in veteran pugilists.—Time, April 13, 1962.
HOPE AND ASSURANCE—The hope of “big money” is not sufficient reason for such a serious risk; even the assurance of large profits does not give a person the right to risk his soundness of mind and body to probable detriment.—GEORGE C. BERNARD, The Morality of Prizefighting, Catholic University of America Press, 1952, p. 126.
IS FIGHT-WATCHING SINFUL?—Thomas Aquinas knew nothing of professional boxing; but with an unerring knowledge of human nature he pointed out that to take pleasure in the unnecessary sufferings of another man is brutish. Anyone who has watched professional fights will know what Aquinas was talking about. The crowd has come for blood and the knockout. The knockout is the touchdown pass, the home run of boxing. The nearer it is, the more frenzied the howling of the crowd. As Nat Fleischer said simply of the first Patterson-Johansson fight: “The crowd, sensing the kill, went wild.”—RICHARD A. MCCORMICK, S.J., “Is Professional Boxing Immoral?,” Sports Illustrated, November 5, 1962.
WHEN THE CROWD COMES ALIVE—It is nonsense to talk about prize fighting as a test of boxing skills. No crowd was ever brought to its feet screaming and cheering at the sight of two men beautifully dodging and weaving out of each other’s jabs. The time the crowd comes alive is when a man is hit hard over the heart or the head, when his mouthpiece flies out, when blood squirts out of his nose or eyes, when he wobbles under the attack and his pursuer continues to smash at him with pole-axe impact.—NORMAN COUSINS, Saturday Review, November 5, 1962.
THE RANGE OF OPINION—DAVEY MOORE (the day before the fatal fight): “I’m a fighter because I like the sport. It pays well … it hasn’t done me any harm”; New York GOVERNOR NELSON ROCKEFELLER: “A manly sport”; MRS. DAVEY MOORE: “an act of God … that could have happened to anyone”; California Governor EDMUND BROWN: “I will strongly support legislation asking the people of California to outlaw professional boxing in the 1964 election”; POPE JOHN XXIII: “Fistfights … are contrary to natural principles. It is barbaric to put brother against brother. Christ engaged in neither sports nor politics.”
THE THIRST FOR BLOODLETTING—What annoys us about the sporadic, high-minded campaigns to outlaw commercialized boxing is the tendency to hand the blame for its low estate on racketeers, crooked managers, sadistic fighters, callous referees, etc. They are all, in a sense, only the hirelings, the performers of the game. The responsible proprietors are the public. Without their money, their eager collusion in this legalized mayhem, there would be no professional boxing.… It would be a far more encouraging manifestation of developing decency if pro boxing simply died of malnutrition—if it perished because people grew tired of the bloodletting, or ashamed of whatever in their nature draws them to the spectacle for the vicarious thrill.—Chicago Daily News.
WOULD BANNING END IT?—Banning boxing would not end it, any more than prohibition ended drinking. They would fight in barns and cowpastures, on boats in the river and outside the three-mile limit.—Detroit Free Press.
