The fight of your life

Boxers know they risk injury in the ring. But there’s a more insidious danger they don’t often talk about: the long-term brain damage that repeated blows to the head can cause. Lyra McKee meets the families who are breaking the silence.

The footage is nearly 40 years old but you can see him clearly: pasty, red-haired, more Irish-looking than Italian.

“Some of you may have observed the knee brace on the left knee of Johnny Lira,” says the announcer, Howard Cosell. “That is occasioned by the fact that there are pellets in that knee. Remember I told you Lira had a troubled youth? The pellets the result of being a participant in a gang war.” He pauses. “Just recording the fact.”

Lira, a fierce, determined fighter who has previously served prison time, darts round the ring as he and the Venezuelan Ernesto Espana exchange blows. Espana’s using dark brown Mexican gloves, with stitches sewn in where the leather connects with the skin. In round nine, they will rip into Lira’s cheek and tear a gash above his right eye so bad that his face is doused in blood. But he doesn’t know this yet. It’s only round six.

An evenly fought match up to this point, things start to change in the seventh round. “And in a round like this, it seems to me, the more polished style of Espana becomes more visible,” says Cosell.

“Oh! That counter-right by Lira! Knocked Espana down!”

Lira’s friend Fred jumps on the table, screaming, as Al Capone’s ex-driver looks on. Ernesto Espana, the world lightweight champ, bested in the ring by an Italian-American street punk. The first knock-down of the fight.

Espana gets back up. “We will not be going to a station break,” Cosell says.

The seventh round counts down: 15, 14, 13…

“Lira’s got a lifetime at stake here. You can understand the hunger in this young man. Boxing, as I said, turned his life around: the troubled youth, involved in gang wars, involved in crimes and then here he is, fighting for a championship!”

The bell rings.

“There can be no doubt about the scoring in that round. It was Johnny Lira’s round.”

But there are more to go.

In the next round, Espana fights back. He knocks Lira down towards the end. In round nine, both men continue to battle…..

Reference:

• A brief biography of Harrison Stanford Martland, whose description of ‘Punch Drunk’ syndrome in an American medical journal in 1928 is the first known description of CTE as a disease.
• Martland’s 1928 ‘Punch Drunk’ article.
• Video clip of Martland discussing the dangers of repeated blows to the head, 1948.
• Papers by Ann McKee, Robert Stern and colleagues on the progression of CTE (2009), the clinical presentation of CTE (2013) and the current understanding of CTE (2014).
• ‘Head Examiner’ – a Boston University interview with McKee.
• The consensus statement from the first Natinoal Institutes of Health consensus conference on diagnosing CTE.
• A 2009 University of Michigan study of the health and wellbeing of retired NFL players.