Boxing legend laments safety rules being ignored

Former WBA super bantamweight champion Hong Soo-hwan / Korea Times

By Kang Hyun-kyung

Former WBA super bantamweight champion Hong Soo-hwan urged boxers and coaches to take the recent death of 16-year-old boxer Kim Jung-hee seriously, saying their ignorance of the safety rules is going to cost more boxers their lives.

Kim died on Oct. 9, about a month after he collapsed while resting following a quarterfinal match of the 48th National Boxing Championships in September in the mid-western county of Cheongyang. He was taken to the nearby Dankook University Hospital in Cheonan and fell into a coma after surgery.

Hong, president of the Seoul-based association of professional boxers, the Korea Boxing Commission, expressed worries about the tragic incidents involving boxers following the death of Kim Duk-ku in November, 1982, four days after his defeat against Ray Mancini.

After Kim, four more boxers died from injuries sustained in the ring.

“There seem to be hardly any coaches and trainers who know the basic safety rules for boxers,” Hong lamented on October 21. “Unlike the public perception about the sport, boxing is not dangerous. It is a safe sport as long as boxers are fully informed about how to protect themselves from fatal punches from their opponents and follow the safety rules.”

According to Hong, there was another unnamed boxer who was taken to a nearby hospital during the national boxing championships in September. The former champion watched the match involving this boxer and hurriedly ran toward the ring after he collapsed.

While watching the responses of the fans to the incident, Hong said he was frustrated.

“The first thing coaches and trainers around the boxer are supposed to do is to untie the laces of his boots, take off his gloves and loosen his hand-wraps. But no one did that for him. I doubt if there was anyone who actually knew what to do,” he said. “We are so absent minded.”

In the 1970s when he competed as a boxer, he said boxers were required to take safety education every other month.

Hong, 66, warned about the dangers of sparring matches, which are practice matches in which boxers are not going full speed and full force but are still strenuous and dangerous. “Boxers do a lot of sparring ahead of their matches in order to sharpen their sense of boxing. But Korean boxers do too much sparring and I think this is a stupid thing,” he said. “Boxing is a combat sport and they are exposed to injuries as they and their opponents exchange punches in real matches. Too much sparring only works against a boxer’s health.”

Hong rose to stardom in 1977 after his dramatic win in a match against his rival Hector Carrasquilla to grab the WBA super bantamweight title in Panama. Hong was down four times in the second round, only to come back in the next round to beat his opponent by a KO.

The exciting match was televised nationwide and inspired the public to believe that just as Hong did, they could achieve anything if they keep trying to make things work. He has since become the icon of the can-do spirit.

Mother’s prayer heard

Hong recalled the key driver behind his dramatic win against Carrasquilla four decades ago was his sacrificing mother who had prayed day and night for her seven children, including him, and said his win was “the work of God.”

“There was an American referee whose name I forgot. I wouldn’t have made it if he had stopped me from continuing to fight after I was down four times,” he said.

According to him, his mother initially opposed her second son’s pursuit of boxing as a career because she was all too familiar with the potentially fatal consequences of the combat sport. However, she had prayed for her son’s wellbeing since Hong made his debut as a professional boxer in 1969.

“I was determined to come back in the third round mainly because of my mother who was then working as a waitress at a restaurant at the U.S. Army post,” he said. “I came across my single mother carrying heavy dishes in the restaurant to earn money to support her seven children and thought to myself that I must win under any circumstances.”

He said boxing is a promising sport for people like him who come from humble beginnings but who are hungry for success.

In Korea, boxing was once a popular sport. The country captured a total of 17 Olympic medals — three gold, seven silver and 10 bronze. The last Olympic gold medalists in boxing were Kim Kwang-sun and Park Si-hun who won in the Men’s Flyweight and Light Middleweight categories, respectively, at the 1988 Seoul Olympics.

The popularity of boxing has declined since the 1990s following the founding of professional baseball and football teams in Korea. No Korean boxers won medals in the 2016 Rio Olympics.

Hong blamed the former leadership of the amateur boxing association for the decline of boxing.

“In the past, Korean boxers were well-known for their aggressiveness and their boxing style helped them win Olympic medals, as well as world championships,” he said. “There has been a change in boxing styles from a certain moment. Boxers became passive and tried to buy time once they threw a punch at their opponents without making further attacks.”

Boxers losing their fighting-spirit is another reason behind the wane of Korean boxing, according to Hong.

Some 10 local governments host annual boxing championships. Each winner is entitled to some 60 to 70 million won ($53,000 to 62,000) of prize money. “I heard that some boxers give up their participation in the championships if their competitors who are stronger than they signed up for the matches,” he said. “They only get in the bouts in which they feel they can win. Hence, the wane of competitiveness in Korean boxing.”

As president of the Korea Boxing Commission, Hong said he strives to bring the good old days of boxing back to this country.