Fighters who had a disease in the ring

George Foreman had a disease too, it was called Chronic Excusiatis, it was diagnosed when his behind touched the canvas following a combination landed by Muhammad Ali in round 8 on Oct 30 1974. It carries lots of Excuses type of Bacteria that makes a fighter spout thousands of baseless excuses like for example. Denial is a very common symptom which causes Delusional behavior such as seeing the Almighty in a sweaty smelly dressing room. The afflicted insists that the Stars and the Heat were against him in the ring, the affected patient will keep repeating this claim hoping that the violins will begin to play for him. The cure is to get the fighter behind in the gym and work like the dickens to get him in good fighting condition instead of Trick or Treating, dressed up like a Scowling Sonny Liston, expecting that treats will be given out. A dose of Castor Oil should be given to remove the impurities that the disease laden fighter is full of, and it is brown in color. There is no crying in boxing. Ha Ha.

 

Billy Miske and Joe Gans, of course. Muhammad Ali was in the early stages of dementia or Parkinson's or whatever you would want to call it for at least the last four or five years of his career. All you have to do is compare his speech during that period with the first half of his career.

 

Bobby Cassidy entered the ring against Rodrigo Valdez not knowing he had hepatitis and passed it onto Rodrigo during their contest. Also, Art Hafey suffered from Thomsen's disease his entire career. A disease that effected the tightening of his muscles.

 

Tommy Morrison....

 

Tommy Morrison's last 3 fights were all after he tested positive for AIDS.

Also, there was a fellow named Darrin Morris whose last fight was on 7-3-1999, and he died of AIDS on 10-1-2000. I'm not an expert on that disease, but wouldn't that be really quick to catch the disease and die from it in 15 months? I thought it was slower moving than that, but not sure. I believe they test for that anyway, so not sure if he could have entered the ring with it or not.

Was just talking about Morris elsewhere online, but Morris moved up twice in the WBO rankings after he died. He went from #7 to #5, and he only fought once in the last 3 years of his life against a guy with a 17-59-5 record.

 

Povetkin had long COVID.

Luis Ortiz and Tony Thompson had hypertension.

Valuev had a pituitary tumor.

Buster Douglas had type II diabetes.

 

They weren't really testing for it the mid 90s and earlier, hence the entire existence of Morrison's career.

Morris likely was just fighting with HIV. If you drop below the T cell threshold, it's possible to die quickly from something like pneumonia rather than wasting away.

Proud Kilamjaro is another one who died of AIDS. There was a talented middleweight who had HIV in the early 90s and is still alive...Lamar Parks.

 

That's Lamar Parks you're talking about. There's an article online stating that Parks was able to come up with a negative test because he used a friend's blood sample. He knew he was positive, but didn't want to lose his title shot against Gerald McClellan, at least according to the article...

 

HIV has never spread through any type of sport that I know of.

 

Alcoholism is classified as a disease - which opens the door up to an inexhaustible number of examples.

Since he was the first HW Champ under the MOQ, I’ll nominate John L Sullivan as a notable case in point.

Of course the Boston Strong Boy cured himself in later years via abstinence, becoming a teetotaller and speaking out against the evils of John Barlycorn.

Besides his successes in boxing, eventually kicking that habit was quite the achievement.

 

SRL, Roy Jones Jr, Howard Davis Jr, Muhammad Ali and Hector Camacho were all diseased with speed when in the ring.

 

I remember him from Tuesday night fights.

Anyway, when Stiverne fought that disease where he was pissing fat or something, rhabdomyolysis, from being so obese.

Charles fought with the begginings of ALS.

 

Reminds me of the quote from long-ago Green Bay Packers running back great Paul Hornung: ‘When I read about the evils of drinking, I gave up reading.’

Gypsie Joe Harris and Harry Greb both fought while being blind in one eye.

Daniel Jacobs was diagnosed with cancer and treated.

Azumah Nelson had malaria when he fought to a draw (bad decision, should have been a loss for AN) with Jeff Fenech in their first meeting.

 

Ruben Palacio, who beat Colin Mcmillan, was found to be hiv positive after wards.
Colin had to go through the stress of having to wait for the result of an hiv test.
Those were scary times when Aids /HIV were mentioned.