Morrison: ‘I Thought I Was Bulletproof’

Tommy Morrison’s voice quivered and his face flushed. Never did he think this could happen to him.

“I honestly believed I had a better chance of winning the lottery than contracting this disease,” he said. “I’ve never been so wrong in my life.”

On Thursday, a second test confirmed that he did, indeed, have the virus that causes AIDS.

“I’m here to tell you I thought that I was bulletproof, and I’m not,” Morrison said.

He described a life of promiscuous sex and how he was ignorant about the way AIDS is transmitted. He also said, however, he believes he could have contracted the virus through bloody bouts in the ring.

“I don’t know how I got it and it’s really not important,” he said at a news conference.

Morrison entered the news conference composed and confident. But his face reddened and his voice cracked as he spoke of an uncertain future and expressed concern for his family and for women with whom he had relations.

“I hope I can serve as a warning that living this lifestyle can only lead to one thing,” he said. “And that’s misery.”

The 27-year-old from Jay, Okla., learned he tested positive for HIV just before Saturday’s scheduled Las Vegas fight against Arthur Weathers. Morrison said he had no symptoms and had received no notice from previous sex partners to indicate he might have the disease.

He spent the past week calling former sparring partners and sexual partners, encouraging them to take an HIV test. So far, none of them, including his girlfriend, have turned up positive, he said.

The announcement of Morrison’s positive test Monday prompted boxing officials nationwide to call for mandatory HIV testing. But the national Centers for Disease Control have received no reports of HIV transmission through athletics, spokeswoman Michele Bonds said.