Death and the boxer

On a crisp seaside day at Wildwood in late September 2005, I watched my friend, the light heavyweight boxer Chuck Mussachio, weeping while he read the latest issue of The Ring Magazine.

Chuckie was reading about the death earlier that month of his friend, Levander Johnson, the Atlantic City lightweight who had lost his International Boxing Federation title in Las Vegas to Jesus Chavez and collapsed after absorbing a brutal beating with a blood clot on his brain. Levander, who was 35, died five days later, leaving a wife and four kids. He had 41 pro fights over a 16-year career, as well as more than 100 amateur fights before that.

Levander's father, Billy Johnson, is still one of Chuckie's corner men, and Chuckie had often sparred with Levander, despite their weight difference (bigger fighters often spar with smaller boxers to learn how to handle their speed).

When Chuckie finished the article and dried his tears, he remembered a sparring session shortly before Levander's death. "I just hit him real light on the chin," Chuckie said, "and he went down. The punch was nothing."

The tipping point

Maybe, but all those fights and the countless sparring sessions in preparation had weakened Levander to the point that the Chavez fight was the tipping point. And so he died, another ring fatality.

Boxing isn't a contact sport or even a collision sport. It's a sport of avoiding but finally taking countless hard punches by opponents who are trained for nothing else but avoiding and delivering them. So deaths occur. But boxing can also be a sport of purity and beauty, and boxers are willing to take the ultimate risks to approach those levels, as well as the glory and financial rewards that come with them.

Paret: Ten days in a coma

Perhaps the most publicized ring death in boxing history was that of Benny "Kid" Paret, the Cuban welterweight who took 29 punches in a row and 18 shots in six seconds from the great Emile Griffith in the 12th round of their fight for Griffith's title in Madison Square Garden in 1962.

Paret died after ten days in a coma, and Griffith was never the same fighter afterward. I saw him fight Philly's ferocious left hook artist, Benny Briscoe, at the Spectrum later in his career, and Briscoe never got near Griffith, who boxed him inside and outside, left-handed, right-handed, and turned Briscoe— an accomplished pro at the height of Philadelphia's great middleweight era— every which way but loose. Yet for the whole ten rounds, I could sense that Emile Griffith was holding something back, never in full attack mode. It was enough to outbox Benny Briscoe, and he left it at that. In a moving 2005 documentary, Ring of Fire: The Emile Griffith Story, he said that every time he fought after the Paret fight, he saw the dead boxer's face before him.

At the weigh-in for the fatal fight, Paret called Griffith a maricon, which means "fag" or "faggot" in Spanish. The label alluded to Griffith's high-pitched voice and the fact that he worked as a milliner's assistant. To Hispanics of the time"“ and today"“ it's the ultimate insult in a macho culture, and traditional wisdom holds that Griffith's unstoppable barrage in the 12th round was spurred by the slur.

Paret's death on national television raised a legislative hue and cry to ban boxing, and the networks remained gun-shy of the sport for years afterward. It took the magnificent Muhammad Ali to fully resurrect boxing.

A ring death spawns two suicides

Twenty years after Paret's death, Korean lightweight Duk Koo Kim died of brain injuries five days after being knocked out by Ray "Boom Boom" Mancini in the 14th round of Mancini's second World Boxing Association title defense. This nationally televised tragedy was magnified when Kim's mother committed suicide four months after her son's death, as did referee Richard Green the following July. These widening ripples of darkness no doubt influenced the sport's significant decision to shorten championship fights from 15 rounds to 12. Mancini, for his part, continued to fight until 1992.

Sugar Ray Robinson, the consensus greatest boxer in history, in his first welterweight title defense at Madison Square Garden in 1946, knocked out Jimmy Doyle, who died shortly after. The night before the fight, Robinson had dreamt that Doyle would die, and wanted to cancel the fight. Ironically, a priest and a minister brought in by his management convinced Robinson to go through with the fight. Robinson displayed no effects of Doyle's death in his subsequent long career. He wasn't given to sentiment, according to his first wife, who accused him of frequent beatings.

Violence beyond the ring

Not all boxing deaths have occurred in the ring. Fighters are a varied and checkered lot, many from hard and violent backgrounds. The current editor of The Ring Magazine, Nigel Collins, published a book called Boxing Babylon (1990) in which he chronicled some of the many bad boys in the game, many of whom met violent ends.

South Philadelphia's Tyrone Everett was among them— such a marvelous boxer that little girls in his South Philadelphia neighborhood would chant, "Ty, Ty, Butterfly!" as they skipped rope. As Everett's brother Mike, also a boxer, tells the story, one afternoon Mike Everett was sitting on the stoop of his row house when gang bangers from another neighborhood approached and pulled pistols, intent on shooting him. Before they could open fire, one of the assailants recognized him as Tyrone Everett's brother and called the others off and they passed on.

Mike's brother Tyrone was not as lucky, either in the ring or in life. At The Spectrum in November 1976, Everett fought Alfredo Escalera for Escalera's World Boxing Council featherweight title. Early in the engagement, Tyrone Everett suffered a severe gash high on his forehead that was bleeding into his eyes, hampering his vision. His cut man, Eddie Aliano, stanched the flow, allowing Everett to fight on.

Everett beat Escalera savagely that night, but the split decision was awarded to Escalera in what still ranks as one of the most brazen robberies in ring history.

Six months later, Tyrone Everett was dead, shot through the left eye with a .32 caliber pistol by his girlfriend, Carolyn McKendrick, who reportedly caught Everett in bed with a transvestite lover. Everett was 24 years old.

Foul play in Managua

Just last month, three famous boxers died violent deaths. Two were retired, and one was still active. On July 1, Alexis Arguello, a three-time world champion and one of the true gentlemen of boxing, allegedly shot himself through the heart. Arguello had been mayor of Managua, the capital of Nicaragua, since November of last year. Some have speculated, however, that foul play was involved. Intimates say that Arguello was becoming progressively disenchanted with President Daniel Ortega's Sandinista government.

The beloved retired Canadian fighter Arturo "Thunder" Gatti died on July 11 under circumstances that are still being investigated. His death occurred in a hotel in Brazil, where Gatti was vacationing with his Brazilian wife, Amanda Rodrigues, and their ten-month-old son.

At first Gatti's wife was charged with strangling Gatti with her purse strap while he slept in a drunken stupor. But she was later released and the death was ruled a suicide. Gatti's family is in the process of disputing the finding.

A good man shot down

Finally, on July 25, Vernon "The Viper" Forrest, a former champ as both a welterweight and junior middleweight, and still active, was murdered in the Mechanicsville neighborhood of Atlanta by two men who had robbed him at gunpoint at a gas station.

Forrest was armed and chased the two men on foot and exchanged shots with them. He gave up the chase and turned and started back toward the gas station. At that point he was shot eight times in the back and died at the scene.

Vernon Forrest was a total professional in the ring: slick, fast, and a hard puncher with both hands. He was a champion out of the ring, as well. Forrest was one of the creators of Destiny's Child, a non-profit group that assists people with developmental, emotional and psychological disabilities and needs. He didn't merely raise funds, but took an active hands-on role. Boxing and the community at large are both diminished by his death.

The passing of a boxer is signaled at the next boxing show by a moment of silence while the bell slowly tolls ten times. Listen.♦


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