I love boxing. Though not the most astute observer, I will rarely let my remote control guide me past a fight on TV. I’ve also been fortunate to see a fight or two in person.

Like many libertarians, I have always especially admired boxers Evander Holyfield, Riddick Bowe and Meldrick Taylor for defending their (respective) rights to have their skulls battered again and again in the ring. Each has swam against the corrupt current of boxing’s unique (for sports) state-imposed system of “public-health” regulations, which holds that a state boxing commission knows better what a fighter should be doing than does the fighter, and that the state has ultimate authority over a boxer’s livelhood. (There was a great piece on Holyfield’s fight to fight in the American Spectator last year.)

I was reminded of the struggles of boxers in this country today after reading about Australian Rules football player Brett Backwell, who plays in a league Down Under and who decided to chop off a bum ring finger to save his career. So far, it seems, there’s no outcry in that country over his surgery. In fact, from the press I’ve seen it seems his decision is being treated as, well, his decision. Remarkable.

When columnist Scott Fowler, writing in the Charlotte Observer, posed this scenario to four Carolina Panthers players, each said they’d do the exact same thing Blackwell did if it could magically guarantee them a ten-year NFL career. One player went so far as to say he’d be willing to give up his arm for a decade-long NFL career.

Personally I think that’s crazy talk. But, like Bobby Brown (and later Britney Spears) says…

This entry was posted on Friday, September 16th, 2005 at 3:57 pm by Baylen Linnekin and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.