Female boxer dies

Wai Jia: The Kung Fu Forum Wing Chun
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A28298-2005Apr5.html

Female Boxer Dies After Knockout Loss
Athlete Killed by Blunt-Force Trauma to Head in What Was to Be Her Last Fight

By T.R. Reid
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, April 6, 2005; Page A03

DENVER, April 5 – At age 34, Becky Zerlentes was ready to stop boxing, and she told her coach that the Golden Gloves bout Saturday night would be her final match. It was a statement that proved tragically accurate.

In the third round of a sanctioned amateur fight, the geography teacher from Fort Collins, Colo., took a right cross to the side of the head and hit the canvas. Sunday afternoon, without ever regaining consciousness, she was pronounced dead. The medical examiner in Denver said she was killed by blunt-force trauma to the head.

Becky Zerlentes, left, and Heather Schmitz fight in a Golden Gloves bout Saturday in Denver. Zerlentes, 34, a geography teacher from Fort Collins, Colo., who started boxing in her mid-twenties, died after being knocked out in the third round. (CBS 4 Denver via AP)

Zerlentes is the first woman to die in a sanctioned amateur boxing match, said Julie Goldsticker of USA Boxing, the oversight organization for U.S. amateur and Olympic boxing. Goldsticker said there are no records of women dying in professional boxing matches to date. There has been a reported female death in “Toughman” boxing, an unsanctioned form of the sport with fewer protections for fighters.

Zerlentes’s death comes as boxing has been gaining popularity among young women. The big winner at this year’s Oscars ceremony in Hollywood was the Clint Eastwood film “Million Dollar Baby,” in which best-actress winner Hilary Swank plays a boxer who is knocked unconscious and ends up paralyzed in a hospital.

Goldsticker said that USA Boxing has sanctioned women’s amateur matches since 1993, and that about 2,200 female fighters are registered to compete. In the professional ranks, Muhammad Ali’s daughter, Laila Ali, has become one of the best-known prizefighters of either gender, with a 20-0 record in the super-middleweight division.

A series of deaths and injuries in boxing matches prompted stiff new rules in the 1980s and '90s from governments and sporting associations. According to officials at USA Boxing, the state Golden Gloves championship match Saturday night that Zerlentes was competing in met all the established safety requirements.

Zerlentes and her opponent, Heather Schmitz, 32, both wore protective headgear that padded their foreheads and both sides of their heads. They wore protective body padding. They had both been given physical exams before the bout, and there were three doctors in the arena, the National Western complex in north Denver.

Zerlentes, a teacher and coach at Front Range Community College in Fort Collins, was a triathlete and an accomplished competitor in various martial arts, state boxing officials said. She took up boxing in her mid-twenties, and three years ago she won a western regional Golden Gloves championship.

According to Goldsticker of USA Boxing, Zerlentes told her training companions at Fort Collins Hard Knocks gym that she was ready to give up boxing and focus on other sports. She told her coach, Jeanne DePriest, that she would hang up the gloves after Saturday night’s state amateur championship bout.

Those present at the Zerlentes-Schmitz bout said that referees stopped the fight for a moment in the second round to check on bleeding from Zerlentes’s nose. The fight continued, and early in the third round Schmitz unleashed a hard right that reportedly caught Zerlentes on the left side of her head at about eye level. Zerlentes collapsed.

A doctor quickly entered the ring and called for oxygen. A few minutes later, Goldsticker said, paramedics arrived and took the unconscious boxer to the hospital, where she died the next day. Denver police spokeswoman Teresa Garcia said a preliminary investigation reported the cause of death as subdural hematoma, essentially internal bleeding caused by a hard blow.

“I feel horrible,” Schmitz, the other boxer, said in an interview with Denver’s CBS 4 News. “I didn’t want to hurt her.”

The sanctioning body, USA Boxing, put out information arguing that amateur boxing is safer, in terms of injury totals, than other contact sports such as football and wrestling. In a listing of fatality rates per participant, the organization said that horse racing, scuba diving, mountaineering and college football all produced more deaths per participant than amateur boxing.

PR

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Hello Phil,

Tragically sad news, i heard it the other day. Anyone who gets in the ring is aware of the danger its an age old argument. My sympathies extended to her family at this sad time.

Kev

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It is indeed tragic news.

Hi Kevin. I’d like to think this is true, though I’m not convinced that it universally is. Certainly some people appreciate the risks and dangers, and accept such exposure willfully, decisively, and sometimes even appropriately. Risk and opportunity indeed go hand in hand.

On the other hand, case in point, if you search through the archives there has been quite a lot of pooh-pooing the exposure to such risks and dangers on this very forum. There has also been a fair and consistent effort to discredit, disrespect, and sometimes even mock the notion that a martial artist would manage their own risks by practicing in a manner consistent with their own needs, context, judgment, conscience, and self-determination rather than submit to a quasi-universal opinion on the matter.

Given how “safe” boxing and other forms of fighting are represented to be (even the statistics cited above are offered in that light), I doubt that many go into the ring with a sincere and deep personal appreciation of the potential impact and loss, however unlikely it may seem for something go so wrong. I can’t help thinking that Becky’s family, friends and students may not be consoled by those statistics, nor by the prior assurances of those who perhaps advocated throwing caution to the wind.

There are many ways for theory and reality to diverge. Sometimes seriously so. As they say, it’s all fun and games until someone loses an eye.

Just some contemplative musings on a sad and serious matter.

My sympathies extended to her family at this sad time.

Mine also go with yours.

Regards,

  • kj
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For all the hand-wringers,

Fighting (what we are allegedly preparing for) is an intense, contact activity and like any intense, contact activity has inherent risks associated with it. Yet, how many who get in the ring actually die? The odds must be along the lines of – at a minimum – one in a million. But if you climb mountains, sky-dive, scuba dive, race cars, play football or rugby, ski (just had a friend who lost her father in a skiing accident, apparently a not too uncommon occurrance that is kept very quiet by the lodges), etc. you are taking some risk – that’s why insurance companies ask about these activities when you apply for life insurance. There are some who think that risk in unacceptable – that’s fine, so don’t sky-dive, go para-sailing, climb mountains, fight, whatever. Others will take that risk to enjoy the benefits – the risk sometimes even enters into the enjoyment. But you can’t have it both ways: you can’t be a mountain climber without taking that risk, you can’t become a good fighter without taking that risk, you can’t learn to drive a car that well (to race) without taking that risk, etc. The risk is part of the price and part of the fun. Sometimes it turns out tragically, death or injury, but if these activities were easy and without risk, they wouldn’t be the same.

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Not to sure what you mean by hand-wringers Terence but if your taking the p#ss out of me for showing humanity and compassion then your out of order simple as that.

But, a good point illustrated here one punch can end it all be it Boxing, fighting etc. Going back to KJ’s i accepted it as a possibility but also had trust in the safety measures taken. Difference is in the “street” i know im not a liberty taker, bully or a trouble maker and if someone messes with me or my family and the end result was that i dont think i would loose any sleep over it.

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The “hand-wringers” I refer to are those who think boxing/fighting is soooo very dangerous – it’s not. Certainly it’s more dangerous or risky than ballroom dancing (or what some people call WCK), but the risk is rather small (it’s statistically more risky to drive late Saturday night). And good training, conditioning pretective gear, etc. reduces even that risk.

I find comments like “if someone messes with me or my family and the end result was that i dont think i would loose any sleep over it” amusing – for that kind of “tough talk” suggests that the speaker has the ability to inflict that kind of damage (unlikely unless they train properly) and that they would use it (forgetting the moral, psychological, and legal implications). Folks that won’t get in the ring because it’s too dangerous believing they can be killers if they need to. Funny.

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Eyewitness to History - Society View’s on Accidental Death of Boxers.

http://www.common-place.org/vol-03/no-02/haley/index.shtml

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I dont think Boxing is so very dangerous. I love the sport. Tragedies like this are rare but do happen from time to time and i think it foolish to call for the sport to be banned because of it. You explained your point so i revoke my statement.

Terence i find all your posts ammusing :stuck_out_tongue: :stuck_out_tongue: Folks that wont get into the ring? I boxed for 8 years mate and fought about 16 - 17 times as an amateur junior if memory serves me correct.

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I feel sorry for the girl and her family, and respect her courage.

Most contact or extreme sports have risks involved, rugby, BASE jumping - and crossing the road, driving a car. That people die more or less often in such circumstances does not change the gravity of the situation for those close to it.

It is in very poor taste to preemptively berate people for their alleged “hand-wringing” or cowardice on a thread regarding the tragic and untimely death of a brave athlete.

Shame. :mad:

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My sympathies go out to the family of the victim and to the other boxer who was obivously devasted during an interview after the incident.

Terence:

I personally love the risk of realistic training. That’s how I learned. But does that make those who don’t care to take the risk incapable of personal defense in the real world?
Phil

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Phil asked: does that make those who don’t care to take the risk incapable of personal defense in the real world?

**No. But let’s be honest, anyone that practices WCK for “self-defense” is wasting their time. They can carry a weapon (gun, pepper spray) if personal defense is their concern. Or they can take a good self-defense course (most of which will not be concerned with fighting). Learning “self-defense” is very different than becoming a good fighter (developing significant fighting skills); in fact, if one needs to fight to defend oneself, I’d say they already had a huge failure in their self-defense. Most people can, just by being smart, avoid the need to fight; most people I know haven’t been in a fight since their school days and probably will never be in a fight. So to spend years of hard training just to be able to deal with a very remote possiblity, and one that can be solved without all that training (gun, pepper spray) is not a very smart way to ration one’s time. And most importantly, WCK won’t prepare us to deal with all kinds of fighting situations anyway (like being on the ground, dealing with a headlock, etc.). To have any chance of becoming a good fighter (“being good at WCK”) requires that one actually enjoys fighting, and that they do a lot of it, that they are willing to put in a lot of training time to further develop their skill, so that they can better enjoy fighting. Fighters fight, dancers dance, role players role play, etc.

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I can’t argue with this post :smiley:
PR

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Just saw the video a couple of days ago. You would expect that she got pounded to suffer such a trauma - but no. A very light shot (w/ headgear on) and that was it. Makes you think about the built-up of injuries throughout time.

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“Learning ‘self-defense’ is very different than becoming a good fighter (developing significant fighting skills)…” (Terence).

NOT TRUE.

Oriental martial arts are meant (historically) to be about self defense; and by this is meant an ETHICAL philosophy of getting involved in and using martial arts for non self-aggrandizing reasons.

It’s about defending yourself, your loved ones, and anyone who can’t defend themselves - against aggression.

The fact that many western fighting arts (ie.- boxing) have zero ethical content attached to them (for the most part, for there are some exceptions)…says more about the state of the western “mind” than about anything else…for we westerners are OVERLY concerned with our own individual status than about our responsibilites to the rest of life (ie.- other people, nature, the animal kingdom, etc.)

So learning self defense should be THE SAME THING as becoming a good fighter…there’s no difference.

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Victor,

Someone walks up to you and pulls a gun and orders you into a car. What do you do? This is self-defense. It has nothing to do with being able to fight. The answer: don’t get into the car. Your best chance to get away is before you get into the car. How do you do that? Do you pretend to feint? Try to distract then run (zig-zagging)? In any event, it’s better to get shot where you are rather than in some out-of-the-way spot.

Someone comes up and pulls a knife and demands your wallet. What do you do? This is self-defense. You toss you wallet one way and run the other.

Self-defense, especially in our day and age,is so much more than unarmed fighting skills – it’s knowing what to do in various situations, how to prevent attacks in the first place, how to talk to people and act to diffuse situation, what to look out for, etc. If you need to fight to protect yourself, you’ve already failed on several levels. Unarmed fighting is the very last resort.

You don’t learn self-defense in the WCK kwoon or the boxing gym or the BJJ academy. That’s all fighting. If you want to learn self-defense, you have two ways to do: learn from someone that knows what they are talking about or from the school of hard knocks (experience). WCK, boxing, or BJJ can help you learn how to handle yourself once the fight is on, but S/D involves much more before that ever happens.

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If the first option which should be considered in any potentially violent situation is to run away from danger and towards safety, then it stands to reason that improving your sprinting and your obstacle negotiation would be, at a minimum, at the same level of importance as a good punch.

A person with a decent base of fitness could spend three or four weeks or so under the tutelege of a track coach and shave valuable seconds off their 440 time by improving their running form. (This is distinctly different from trying to further improve anaerobic and/or aerobic capacity.)

What martial art, now or historically, includes improving running form?

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It’s ALL of those things Terence…from A to Z.

Knowing how and when to feint, toss the wallet and run, don’t get in the car, take the knife away if he decides to try and stab you, kick him in the balls, punch him in the face, choke him out, stay calm and try to talk very non-threatening sense to him if your wife and child are there, walk away if a drunk taunts you…

Self defense is all of those things.

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The first option IMO is not to run but to be aware of it before it escalates to something physical. Also, when running what happens when a barrier is in the way, like a wall and the one possibly assaulting you? Martial Arts teach many things besides “fighting” but in essence this is the first thing ones learns. Self defense is just another word for it, and personally the one that I like to use. I’m not a “fighter” but one that can defend themselves and others well. Also, when learning and attaining a high level of skill in Martial Arts, something inside changes also. This change is seen on the outside and perceives to others that one is strong and confident, not weak and vulnerable.

James

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Just heard on CNN that an american football player – a 300 lb. linebacker – died today during a game from a spinal injury.