Muhammad Ali Passes Away

Muhammad Ali has finally passed away, a shell of his former self, at age 74.  All over the television channel spectrum I'm seeing tributes highlighting his boxing career, focusing on his pivotal fights.  Yet it was those fights of his...61 in all...that ultimately severely damaged his brain and reduced him to the deteriorating state that he had suffered for more than the last thirty years.  "Pugilistic brain damage", I believe, is the term given to describe what happens to a boxer's brain when tears and the resulting scar tissue build up over the course of countless blows to the head...and the resulting cutting off of blood circulation in different areas.  The symptoms are Parkinson's-like and progressive...but Ali's was caused by his sport, unlike the Parkinson's disease afflicting people like Michael J. Fox and Janet Reno.  I read in an Associate Press article printed in the Los Angeles Times in 1987 that there is a fifty percent chance of brain damage occurring to boxers with twenty or more bouts...and Ali had three times that total.  Yet in boxing matches, referees in the ring make what should be medical decisions, based on observing the fighters, as to whether or not they have suffered concussions during the match.  The entire premise of boxing, after all, is to batter the other guy's head and knock him out before he (or, sadly nowadays, she) can do the same to you.  Nevertheless, this barbaric sport is strongly rooted in tradition and is unlikely to be banned.  The variant known as UFC is better, but only because it incorporates wrestling into the competition...which slightly reduces the role of the head blows.  But all of these kinds of "blood" sports serve a lucrative market: bloodthirsty vicarious spectators...

Muhammad Ali would probably never have been famous in his younger years had he not excelled in boxing to such an extent.  Had he not been a boxer, his personality, wit and always interesting opinions might never have been known or heard by much of the world...the temptation here is to claim that he never would have suffered a debilitating brain disease and would still be among us, in full command of his thinking and body.  But I don't think you can treat "time" like that: cutting out one aspect of a person's life in hindsight and thinking that all else would have been the same just doesn't work.  Muhammad Ali was a boxer, and that was an essential part of his life's tapestry, for better or for worse.  May this great man finally rest in peace...