Boxer quits after serious injuries

by Ryan Ernst
THE POST

Friday night at the Palace in Auburn Hills, Mich., the sport of boxing received another black eye, and for once, in what he called his final fight, Mike Tyson was not at fault.

Or was he?

As soon as Polish heavyweight Andrew Golota told referee Frank Garza at the beginning of the third round that he wanted to quit the fight, boxing critics yelled "foul" faster than a first-round Tyson left hook – or a head butt for that matter.

Tyson knocked Golota down in the first round with a right hand, after which Golota got up immediately. Later Golota claimed the knockdown was a partial slip. The second round saw Golota stay away from any real danger and even land a few punches of his own. When the fighters were at their corners between the second and third rounds, however, Golota refused to put in his mouthpiece and threw in the towel.

The Pole was immediately rushed to his locker room amidst a shower of beer and soda raining down from the stands. Although the fight had been over for less than a minute, the jury was back with a verdict.

We had Mike Tyson – fighting as if he was in the prime of his career, robbed of a chance to leave the sport with dignity and without controversy, but innocent of any wrongdoing. Also, we had Andrew Golota – guilty of being a no-good, tomato can, bum that quit and ran away with a $2.2 million share of the fight purse.

What nobody knew, however, was the fact that Golota had suffered several severe injuries in the short course of the fight.

On Saturday he was admitted to a Chicago hospital with a concussion, a fractured left cheekbone and a herniated disc in his neck.

In an Oct. 23 Associated Press story, Dr. Wesley Yapor, a neurosurgeon treating Golota, said the effects of possible injuries to Golota in the third round could have been devastating.

"If he had sustained another serious blow to the head, he could have become paralyzed," he said. "There's no way I would have allowed him to enter the ring for the second round."

In the locker room, Golota complained of head butts he had sustained from Tyson during the fight, one of them apparently opening a cut under Golota's left eye. The referee did not notice the head butts and Tyson was not warned.

Following the fight, Tyson cursed his opponent in the ring and left the arena without talking to reporters. Real classy, Mike.

Let's not all jump on the Mike Tyson bandwagon just yet. His ego takes up too much room for us all to fit anyway.

I'm not saying that Andrew Golota is a saint, and I'm not saying that Tyson would not have won the fight if it were not for the aforementioned head butts. But let's just re-evaluate the situation before we pass judgement.

A fighter knows when he's hurt. Obviously Andrew Golota knew he was hurt, and didn't want to risk serious injury when he was getting no help from a referee who was supposed to control the fighters in the ring.

As for Tyson, it appears that his actions may have worked better than he expected – maybe too well. Instead of riding off into the sunset, on a high note, he will no doubt be drawn back to the ring by the carrot dangling in front of his face in the form of Lennox Lewis, in addition to his financial troubles.

Incidentally, when Lewis fought Golota in October of 1997, he bloodied the Pole and sent him into seizures in the first round.

Could Lewis-versus-Tyson be the fight that brings boxing out of the shadows of scandal and rumors? Or will it be another joke of a fight caused by Tyson's antics?

- Ernst is a senior journalism major who has the code to Mike Tyson's Punch Out memorized. Send e-mail comments to re340397.