by Sam Gregory
08.10 - 43 year old Greg Page fought his first professional fight over 22 years ago in his home state of Kentucky. He fought his last fight in Kentucky in March of 2001.
He held several titles over the 22 years. Even though he fought great fighters he’ll probably never be in the boxing hall of fame. He fought a total of 76 fights over his pro career. Why did he decide to fight a much younger Dale Crowe for a vacant Kentucky state heavyweight title? What did he have to prove? The fight left him paralyzed and on welfare. How could the Kentucky state athletic commission have stopped all that from happening? The ring doctor was twice suspended and was not licensed to perform medical duties in the state of Kentucky.
In March 2003 where does that leave Page? It leaves him wheelchair-bound for one thing. It also leaves his family and fiancée with a multi-million dollar law suit against the Kentucky State Boxing Commission.
However deeper than that, much deeper than that it leaves a whole lot of unanswered questions. For one, why was their no stretcher at ringside? Kentucky State rule clearly states; “A clean stretcher and a clean blanket, placed under or adjacent to the ring throughout each program” and “First aid oxygen or equipment”. Oh, did I mention there was no oxygen on hand either? The fact is Greg Page deserved better than that, way better than that.
The Cincinnati Enquirer ran a story on March 18th 2001, “Dr. Mark Wheeler, an internist in Louisville who has presided ringside at more than 1,000 fights in 14 years, doubted that anything would have been different at the Page fight, even if emergency personnel or oxygen was there”. “This is going to happen given the nature of the sport,” he continued, “it’s an unfortunate thing that comes with a dangerous sport.”
The question remains, who is responsible for this tragedy; Dr. Mediodia the ringside doctor? The Kentucky athletic commission? The commission violated at least three paragraphs out of Section Five of the Professional Boxing Safety Act of 1996.
The bottom line is boxing needs a national standard whose rules at this time differ from state to state. According to Senator John McCain of Arizona “Professional boxing is the only major sport in the U.S. that does not have a strong, centralized association or league to establish and enforce rules and practices”. Senator McCain has introduced the Professional Boxing Amendments Act of 2002. This bill similar to a bill introduced last year by Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada would create a U.S. Boxing Administration within the labor department. As it was described to me it would oversee the licensing of boxers, managers, promoters and sanctioning bodies. This would set a national standard for boxing whose rules differ from state to state.
Hopefully this would stop the fate of boxers such as Page in the future.
We can only hope for the love of our sport boxing can get it’s act together before it’s to late up and coming boxers to fall pry to a tragedy such as Greg Page has.
