Time for boxing to hang up gloves

Leavander Johnson’s father almost threw in the towel Saturday night in Las Vegas. His boy was losing a lightweight boxing match to Jesus Chavez, and the father could see it from ringside at the MGM Grand.

But Leavander Johnson is 35 years old, and he was the International Boxing Federation champion with a title to defend. No towel was thrown. Then, 38 seconds into the 11th round of a 12-round fight, Chavez unleashed a barrage.

For what it’s worth, the American Association of Neurological Surgeons calculates that being slugged by a professional boxer is the same as being hit by a 13-pound bowling ball traveling 20 miles an hour, and observers estimate Chavez delivered some two dozen unanswered punches.

That was it for Johnson. Once it was over, he walked out of the ring, only to collapse minutes later in his dressing room. He was rushed to the hospital, where he underwent surgery to remove a clot that had pushed his brain to the left side of his skull. In a desperate strategy to save his life, doctors put Leavander Johnson in a drug-induced coma.

That was Saturday night. By late Monday, it looked like Leavander Johnson might live, might not be the next name on the list of nearly 900 boxers who have died on the job since 1920 – about 10 a year worldwide.

It is time to halt that tabulation. It is time to ban boxing, a sport in which death is the predictable outcome of athletic proficiency.

Tragically, deaths occur in many sports. Usually, however, it’s an accident. Usually it’s incidental to the execution of the game. An improper tackle in football. A spill in a horse race. A mistimed somersault off the high board in diving. Nobody’s trying to render lethal harm upon anyone else.

In boxing, it happens when one fighter does precisely what he’s trying to do, delivers one of those bowling-ball punches to the head of an opponent, and causes enough of a brain malfunction to knock the opponent out. In some ways, it’s surprising that more boxers don’t die.

As it is, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics says that fatalities among professional athletes are five times the rate among the workforce at large. And while other on-the-job deaths are declining, those in the sports world are on the rise.

Even among prizefighters who walk away, the American Association of Neurological Surgeons estimates 15-40 percent of ex-boxers have some form of chronic brain injury, and most professional fighters – whether they have apparent symptoms or not – have some degree of brain damage.

If Leavander Johnson pulls through, he’ll be lucky, although maybe not as much as he would if his father had followed the impulse to throw in the towel earlier. It’s time for boxers to follow the course of gladiators and duelists. It’s time for boxing itself to throw in the towel. And it’s time for lawmakers to deliver the decisive blow.