On Bloodsport

Boxer Leavander Johnson died yesterday night, after suffering severe brain injuries during his title defense fight in Las Vegas on Saturday, at the MGM Grand. Johnson is the sixth boxer to die in Las Vegas in the last 10 years.

As a rule, I'm not a big fan of professional boxing, for a lot of reasons. Worst off are the promoters: Mike Tyson had no financial sense, but boxers don't get agents - they get promoters. And with nobody with any fiduciary knowledge on the boxer's side, promoters are able to set up multi-million dollar fights and keep all but a few hundred thousand for themselves. Don King is far richer than Mike Tyson ever was, and now Tyson is broke and King stopped caring a long time ago.

And those same promoters refuse to pay for a simple brain scan for their fighters before bouts, because they say it's too expensive. But these scans could detect whether a boxer's brain would be able to take the punishment coming from 15 rounds of beating and being beaten to a pulp, and would be more able to sort out guys who probably shouldn't be in the ring.

So far, the Nevada Boxing Commission, that bastion of propriety and ethics, has sided with the promoters. Never mind that the big title bouts pull in tens of millions of dollars on pay-per-view, and that the paychecks for fighters are determined before the fight starts (that's right - guys know how much they'll make, win or lose).

Leavander Johnson apparently had a minor limp in his stride before the fight on Saturday, something that's usually indicative of a stroke. His trainer noticed it, but either didn't say something or Johnson himself told him it was no big deal, just a little swagger. But a simple MRI would have told the truth, and would have stopped the fight before it happened.

But, I guess that would have been too expensive. Someone be sure to tell Johnson's family that the difference between him being in a casket and him being at home watching football on Sunday is about $2400.