A HURTING, HAUNTING LEGACY
From the Daily News Jan 22, 1996
[size=-1]by Marcus Hayes[/size]
<!-- begin body-content -->
Jan 22, 1996
You have heard Jimmy Young is punch-drunk, but you don't want to believe it.
And Jimmy Young looks good from a distance. He emerges from his home on Seybert Street with a wide smile. He walks erect, head high, with the rhythmic bounce of an athlete. He's maybe a tiny bit pot-bellied, but appears in remarkably good shape for a 47-year-old former heavyweight contender.
He looks worse as he gets closer.
He wears no socks in his filthy sneakers. A tattered shirt covers a ratty undershirt. Blue work pants sag under the belly. They are stained with grease and dirt. The pants are unzipped.
And just when you think the picture can get no worse, he speaks.
"I'm, you know, damn, thinking I could come back,'' Young says with a slur. "I think I can do it. I was lying there thinking, this morning, I swear I could do it. Hey, uh, what time is it?''
It's 8:30.
"I gotta work at 9:30.
"You know,'' he continues, smiling slyly, "we all think we can do it. Come back.
"My birthday was Tuesday,'' he interjects, proud, like a child. "I turned a 4. And a 7. Hey, man, what time is it?''
It's 8:32.
"You know, I gotta work at, ah, 9:30.''
Work for Jimmy Young now is helping out a buddy at a local garage for maybe 20 bucks a day, maybe twice a week. Work used to be fighting the likes of Muhammad Ali, George Foreman and Ken Norton. Fighting them well, for hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Young sent Foreman into early retirement with a win in 1977. Young fought well enough to win against Ali in 1976, but Ali was the reigning champion and took the decision.
Young's purse for the Ali fight was $75,000. Against Norton in '77, Young collected a cool million.
The money's gone now. In its place resides memory loss. Slurred speech. A fighter who took blows for money for 22 years.
Although Young has not been formally diagnosed, his symptoms seem consistent with what doctors call "dementia pugilistica.'' And, contrary to what some in the fight community would have the public believe, it is almost inevitable.
It's why former heavyweight contender Jerry Quarry needs constant supervision. It's what makes Ali slur and shuffle as if he has Parkinson's disease.
And for every Jimmy Young or Jerry Quarry or Ali, there are 50 others you never hear about. It is boxing's shameful secret.
"They're countless,'' said Philadelphian Ivan "Mighty'' Robinson, an undefeated junior welterweight. He shakes his head. "Countless.''
"This is a thing that has been a symptom of boxing forever,'' New Jersey boxing commissioner Larry Hazzard said. "I don't think there's anything you can do to prevent it.''
• What happens to dementia pugilistica (DP) victims? In layman's terms, their brains are beaten black and blue. Over the years, the brain is scarred by the repeated trauma of punches to the head. The nerve fibers and neurons shear. The limbic system, which controls emotion and memory, is destroyed. After two or three decades, after dozens of fights and thousands of hours sparring, brain cells die. And never come back.
Doctors can detect the damage. It occurs with alarming regularity.
Some researchers estimate about half of boxers with more than 20 fights suffer from DP. Other studies reflect a 90 percent rate. In the 1995 book, "Boxing and Medicine,'' neurosurgeon Dr. Robert C. Cantu, the book's editor, supports the contention that sluggers, who stand toe-to-toe and take a beating, are more likely to suffer DP than more elusive, defensive boxers.
Some boxing experts say it doesn't matter what type of fighter you are. They say Jimmy Young , who was hard to hit, was as likely as any boxer to get punchy.
"Fifty percent? Come on,'' scoffs Jimmy Binns, the former Pennsylvania boxing commissioner and currently a lawyer for the World Boxing Association. "More like 100 percent. Without question. Anyone with more than 10 pro fights has got to suffer in some degree. I fought, and I suffer from it. There are instances of uncontrollable stuttering. Sure.''
Amid the admissions of boxing's ugly result, there hangs its ever-haunting question: What, short of abolishing the sport, can be done to prevent casualties like Young and Quarry?
Maybe federal legislation. Maybe stiffer rules adopted by all licensing organizations. Maybe softer gloves.
Maybe nothing.
No regulation or law exists to protect boxers from progressive DP - or from themselves. Outside the ring, as in it, self-preservation rests almost solely with the boxer himself.
"Boxing people don't really care,'' said former welterweight champion Mark Breland. "If you're a good fighter, who gives a bleep if you're punchy? You're going to make them money.''
DP studies on active boxers are rare because boxers don't want to be told to quit, or forced to quit, said Dr. Raj Narayan, who heads the Department of Neurosurgery at Temple University Hospital.
"They are very reluctant to participate in these studies,'' Narayan said. "It could affect their livelihood, and they don't want to quit boxing.''
Binns's assertion that all boxers suffer some degree of DP might not be far from the truth. So says Richard Mendel, who spent his youth in the Philadelphia area, boxing as an amateur and a pro. He quit to become, of all things, a neurosurgeon. Mendel agrees with Binns.
"I wouldn't be surprised,'' Mendel said. "It's clear that the cumulative effects of taking blows to the head results in this syndrome.''
Mendel remembers seeing Young in the mid-'80s.
"Jimmy was not in good shape then,'' Mendel said. "He clearly showed signs of slipping.''
And now?
"It certainly sounds like he's gotten worse.''
When told of Young's current state, Cantu concurred with Mendel. Cantu's book cites several studies done over the past 60 years. It refers to dozens of cases, including Ali's, in which DP appears in some degree. (Ali is diagnosed as having Parkinson's syndrome, which mimicks Parkinson's disease but does not have the same cause.)
The symptoms mirror those of Young who, his wife and friends attest, never abused drugs or alcohol. They say he never took punishment to the head outside of the ring.
"The slurring, the memory loss - those are some of the things that occur in dementia pugilistica,'' Cantu said.
There are exceptions. Some boxers can withstand tremendous pounding and escape with their wits intact.
Foreman, a paunchy punching bag, has, at 47, marketed his girth, guts and glibness into a multimillion dollar enterprise since coming out of retirement in 1987. Foreman seems ample but fine on the outside. He's solid upstairs, too.
The International Boxing Federation asked Dr. Barry Jordan to examine Foreman before he fought Michael Moorer in November 1994 for the IBF heavyweight title. Foreman was subjected to a stringent battery of tests, said Dr. Jordan, including a CAT scan and an MRI.
"Because of his age, Foreman was put through a strenuous neurological exam,'' said Jordan, who stepped down as medical director for New York State Athletic Commission after 7 ½ years this past summer. "He passed.''
He passed for now, says Ferdie Pacheco, boxing's renowned "Fight Doctor.''
"He's not doing this with impunity,'' Pacheco says. "When he gets to his 50s, he'll pay.''
Probably - but maybe not.
Randall "Tex'' Cobb is a former journeyman sluggee whose demolition at the hands of Larry Holmes in 1982 so disgusted announcer Howard Cosell that Cosell began a campaign to abolish boxing. Cobb seemed lucid and quick at a boxing dinner at the Hotel Atop the Bellevue in October.
"I haven't noticed any signs of dementia pugilistica,'' Cobb said. "I monitor my speech, my reactions. To my mind, there hasn't been any significant decrease in any of those areas.''
Cobb, along with Quarry, was part of a 1983 study done for a Sports Illustrated article on DP. Cobb's results then were normal. Quarry's were not. He showed signs of DP but continued to fight.
Cobb says that a recent brain scan done by his doctor, Bruce Romanczuk, was so clean that the doctor, who knew of Cobb's pugilistic past, was astonished. Romanczuk, citing professional privilege, declined to comment for this story.
And then there's Jimmy Young . A boxer, not a slugger. A fastidious and sharp man in his prime, now trapped in a world of delusion.
• Walker Moss, Young's buddy for more than 20 years, lounges outside Young's house. Along with the rest of the neighborhood, Moss looks out for Young.
"Did you wash up, Jimmy?'' Moss asks.
"I washed up last week,'' Young replies, entering the house to prepare for that 9:30 job. "Heh, heh, heh.''
Moss says he used to run with Young when Young was preparing for fights. He says Young's decline picked up speed around 1986.
"He gradually started losing it, you know?'' Moss says.
Losing it?
"He ain't... he ain't right. You know how you and me will be having a conversation? He can't. Sometimes he'll just start talking about something else.''
Often, that something else is his glory days. In classic DP style, the man who can't remember the time for more than a few seconds recalls with eerie precision the date, site and purse of each of his pro fights.
Young finished his career with a 35-18-3 record. The losses include: a three-round TKO by Earnie Shavers in 1973; the 15-round loss to Ali; a 15-round loss to Norton in 1977 (Young's second fight in less than two months); a 10-round loss to Michael Dokes in 1979; and a four-round TKO by Gerry Cooney in 1980.
When Moss noticed the decline, Young was in the midst of a nine-year period in which he lost eight of 15 fights. He fought for the last time in 1990, at the age of 41.
He fought as many as five times a year in the mid-'70s against top fighters. He sparred almost continuously his entire career, including a stint in 1984 with a young stud named Mike Tyson.
The pounding brought Young a measure of wealth and fame, but it is gone.
Now, Jimmy Young lives on $150 a month in North Philly in one of two run-down houses he believes he owns. According to Young's wife, Barbara Young, from whom Jimmy has been separated for five years, the homes actually belong to his father, Dave Young.
Young rests easy at night because he thinks his family - Barbara and their five children - is financially secure. He believes they are protected by a $150,000 nest egg Young put away after the Norton fight.
The money is long gone, Barbara says. It stayed in the bank two years. His wife works two jobs to get by.
Young has no idea that the money is gone.
Jimmy Young smiles broadly when asked if he thinks he is punch drunk.
"Naw,'' Young says, giggling. "Why? Who said I was?''
Well, J Russell Peltz, the promoter who gave you your first pro fight in 1969, says he's concerned that you might be. And Walker Moss. And your wife.
"Oh. Well.''
Asked if he knows what being punch drunk is, Young replies in the affirmative.
"It's when something ain't right with your head,'' Young said. He has to say it twice, slowly, to be understood.
Young's head bears the signature of combat - a flat, crooked nose with a scar running sideways across it; a thick scar under his left eye; a ragged scar over his right.
Young says he underwent brain scans twice in his career, but cannot, or will not, specify when. He says neither scan showed any sign of deterioration.
Like most boxers, Young says he would do it all again.
"In a quick flash. And a hurry,'' Young says. "People ask me why I love this sport. So brutal. So hard.
"I tell them what I'll tell you. I love it.''
He pauses. His smile vanishes. He is quiet for a while, considers his crooked hands, sighs and speaks.
"Um. Um. You, you think I'm, um, messed up?''
Yes.
"It's just, nobody never ever told me this in my whole life,'' Young says, almost in a whisper. "This is the first time anybody ever told me any of this. And you know what? I'm not - I'm taking you serious, but I'm not really thinking to what you said.''
Such denial is all too common.
"Muhammad Ali was told years before his career ended that his speed was affected,'' Cantu said. "He just refused to believe it.''
Nobody told Young then, so why should he believe it now?
More ramblings. More conversation. Then, admission.
"I know. You know. A fighter... he'll be... the last one to admit that he can't fight anymore. And he's the last one to admit there is anything wrong with him. Mentally or physically.''
A long pause. A sad sigh.
"You done burst my bubble.''
• Another terrible facet about dementia pugilistica is its encroachment upon young boxers. In the primes of their lives, small signs can point to a large danger. Peers in the Philadelphia boxing community fear this could be the case with hometown hero Meldrick Taylor.
As Taylor sits in a soul-food diner off Spring Garden Street, he declares himself DP free. The former welterweight champion's dark eyes glitter; his body, perhaps a bit padded from more than a year's layoff, would make any 29-year-old proud.
"All my faculties are intact,'' Taylor says. "I have my memory. No speech impairment. So, I mean, I'm in great, great health.''
Taylor slurs badly as he says this. He says that annual medical examinations have never shown any sign of brain deterioration. He won't release his medical records.
Is this the bravado of youth? Perhaps. But doctors say DP doesn't practice age discrimination.
An autopsy done on a 23-year-old boxer recently killed in Britain showed marked signs of advanced DP, according to Jennian Geddes of the Royal London Hospital. Besides a mild forgetfulness, that boxer seemed normal.
Geddes reexamined the brain of another young boxer killed eight years ago and found similar damage.
Despite the pounding he has taken in his fine career, Taylor says he's as good a boxer as ever.
"I still have a lot of aspirations and ambitions in boxing,'' Taylor says. "I'm not even . My health is fine. My skills are still good. It's just a matter of me being in the right frame of mind to continue to fight. It was never a physical thing.''
Boxing experts disagree.
They say Taylor's downfall began when Julio Ceasar Chavez rendered him senseless late in the 12th and final round of their first fight on March 17, 1990. Referee Richard Steele stopped the fight with two seconds left.
Two and a half years later, Taylor was crushed by unheralded welterweight Crisanto Espana, five montha after a similar result against Terry Norris. One of Taylor's managers, Lou Duva, implored Taylor to quit.
"As far as I'm concerned,'' Duva then told the Daily News, "he shouldn't fight again.''
Taylor left Duva and managed himself. He has fought 11 times since, and lost three - all by TKO, most recently by Chavez, in September 1994. He has a 32-4-1 record.
In one breath, Taylor says that all boxers must pass physicals, including tests that might indicate brain deterioration.
"If a person really has a problem with walking straight, or speaking right or bad eyes or whatever, they should retire,'' Taylor says.
In the next breath, he says, "How are you going to invade in someone's personal occupation and say, 'Because you have this, this and this wrong with you, you can't fight?' ''
Not that Taylor is in financial need of fighting. He claims to be worth $2 million. He's clever, sharp, spiritual, young.
But he also displays a sketchy short-term memory and violent mood swings. Frighteningly violent.
At the completion of the interview for this story, Taylor, soft-spoken and calm throughout, flew into a rage. He shouted. He poked the interviewer in the chest. He stole the interviewer's notebook - which was mostly empty. The interview had been tape-recorded - with Taylor's consent.
Taylor's state makes sense to Pacheco. He was ringside for the 1990 Chavez fight.
"Thereafter, never sounded right, never moved right,'' Pacheco said. "He got such a beating in that fight.''
Taylor swears to be unaffected by boxing. Then, in heavily slurred, low tones, he says, "I might , from 20 years of fighting. Does that disqualify me from being a fighter?''
Perhaps it should. Unlike in the ring, there is no one to step in and protect these boxers.
Not the boxing establishment, which encourages this madness with its dearth of real rules. Not the promoters and managers, who feed off it. Not the boxers themselves, who choose to ignore it.
And sometimes, boxers can't even count on loved ones to keep them from tragedy.
Jimmy Young 's mother, Ruth Harris, denies to this day that anything is wrong with her son.
But his wife, Barbara, says she noticed Jimmy slipping 25 years ago. She heard the slurred speech. For a while, she endured the mood swings he still exhibits - from gaiety to sadness to indignation.
But Barbara, who works at Temple University Hospital as a medical technician, didn't encourage Jimmy to quit. She doesn't regret her silence.
"Boxing was something he loved,'' Barbara says. "It was part of him. That would have been robbing him of his dreams.''
And so today, Jimmy Young walks the streets of North Philly, wondering what time it is, dreaming his dreams.
<!-- end body-content -->
From the Daily News Jan 22, 1996
[size=-1]by Marcus Hayes[/size]
<!-- begin body-content -->
Jan 22, 1996
You have heard Jimmy Young is punch-drunk, but you don't want to believe it.
And Jimmy Young looks good from a distance. He emerges from his home on Seybert Street with a wide smile. He walks erect, head high, with the rhythmic bounce of an athlete. He's maybe a tiny bit pot-bellied, but appears in remarkably good shape for a 47-year-old former heavyweight contender.
He looks worse as he gets closer.
He wears no socks in his filthy sneakers. A tattered shirt covers a ratty undershirt. Blue work pants sag under the belly. They are stained with grease and dirt. The pants are unzipped.
And just when you think the picture can get no worse, he speaks.
"I'm, you know, damn, thinking I could come back,'' Young says with a slur. "I think I can do it. I was lying there thinking, this morning, I swear I could do it. Hey, uh, what time is it?''
It's 8:30.
"I gotta work at 9:30.
"You know,'' he continues, smiling slyly, "we all think we can do it. Come back.
"My birthday was Tuesday,'' he interjects, proud, like a child. "I turned a 4. And a 7. Hey, man, what time is it?''
It's 8:32.
"You know, I gotta work at, ah, 9:30.''
Work for Jimmy Young now is helping out a buddy at a local garage for maybe 20 bucks a day, maybe twice a week. Work used to be fighting the likes of Muhammad Ali, George Foreman and Ken Norton. Fighting them well, for hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Young sent Foreman into early retirement with a win in 1977. Young fought well enough to win against Ali in 1976, but Ali was the reigning champion and took the decision.
Young's purse for the Ali fight was $75,000. Against Norton in '77, Young collected a cool million.
The money's gone now. In its place resides memory loss. Slurred speech. A fighter who took blows for money for 22 years.
Although Young has not been formally diagnosed, his symptoms seem consistent with what doctors call "dementia pugilistica.'' And, contrary to what some in the fight community would have the public believe, it is almost inevitable.
It's why former heavyweight contender Jerry Quarry needs constant supervision. It's what makes Ali slur and shuffle as if he has Parkinson's disease.
And for every Jimmy Young or Jerry Quarry or Ali, there are 50 others you never hear about. It is boxing's shameful secret.
"They're countless,'' said Philadelphian Ivan "Mighty'' Robinson, an undefeated junior welterweight. He shakes his head. "Countless.''
"This is a thing that has been a symptom of boxing forever,'' New Jersey boxing commissioner Larry Hazzard said. "I don't think there's anything you can do to prevent it.''
• What happens to dementia pugilistica (DP) victims? In layman's terms, their brains are beaten black and blue. Over the years, the brain is scarred by the repeated trauma of punches to the head. The nerve fibers and neurons shear. The limbic system, which controls emotion and memory, is destroyed. After two or three decades, after dozens of fights and thousands of hours sparring, brain cells die. And never come back.
Doctors can detect the damage. It occurs with alarming regularity.
Some researchers estimate about half of boxers with more than 20 fights suffer from DP. Other studies reflect a 90 percent rate. In the 1995 book, "Boxing and Medicine,'' neurosurgeon Dr. Robert C. Cantu, the book's editor, supports the contention that sluggers, who stand toe-to-toe and take a beating, are more likely to suffer DP than more elusive, defensive boxers.
Some boxing experts say it doesn't matter what type of fighter you are. They say Jimmy Young , who was hard to hit, was as likely as any boxer to get punchy.
"Fifty percent? Come on,'' scoffs Jimmy Binns, the former Pennsylvania boxing commissioner and currently a lawyer for the World Boxing Association. "More like 100 percent. Without question. Anyone with more than 10 pro fights has got to suffer in some degree. I fought, and I suffer from it. There are instances of uncontrollable stuttering. Sure.''
Amid the admissions of boxing's ugly result, there hangs its ever-haunting question: What, short of abolishing the sport, can be done to prevent casualties like Young and Quarry?
Maybe federal legislation. Maybe stiffer rules adopted by all licensing organizations. Maybe softer gloves.
Maybe nothing.
No regulation or law exists to protect boxers from progressive DP - or from themselves. Outside the ring, as in it, self-preservation rests almost solely with the boxer himself.
"Boxing people don't really care,'' said former welterweight champion Mark Breland. "If you're a good fighter, who gives a bleep if you're punchy? You're going to make them money.''
DP studies on active boxers are rare because boxers don't want to be told to quit, or forced to quit, said Dr. Raj Narayan, who heads the Department of Neurosurgery at Temple University Hospital.
"They are very reluctant to participate in these studies,'' Narayan said. "It could affect their livelihood, and they don't want to quit boxing.''
Binns's assertion that all boxers suffer some degree of DP might not be far from the truth. So says Richard Mendel, who spent his youth in the Philadelphia area, boxing as an amateur and a pro. He quit to become, of all things, a neurosurgeon. Mendel agrees with Binns.
"I wouldn't be surprised,'' Mendel said. "It's clear that the cumulative effects of taking blows to the head results in this syndrome.''
Mendel remembers seeing Young in the mid-'80s.
"Jimmy was not in good shape then,'' Mendel said. "He clearly showed signs of slipping.''
And now?
"It certainly sounds like he's gotten worse.''
When told of Young's current state, Cantu concurred with Mendel. Cantu's book cites several studies done over the past 60 years. It refers to dozens of cases, including Ali's, in which DP appears in some degree. (Ali is diagnosed as having Parkinson's syndrome, which mimicks Parkinson's disease but does not have the same cause.)
The symptoms mirror those of Young who, his wife and friends attest, never abused drugs or alcohol. They say he never took punishment to the head outside of the ring.
"The slurring, the memory loss - those are some of the things that occur in dementia pugilistica,'' Cantu said.
There are exceptions. Some boxers can withstand tremendous pounding and escape with their wits intact.
Foreman, a paunchy punching bag, has, at 47, marketed his girth, guts and glibness into a multimillion dollar enterprise since coming out of retirement in 1987. Foreman seems ample but fine on the outside. He's solid upstairs, too.
The International Boxing Federation asked Dr. Barry Jordan to examine Foreman before he fought Michael Moorer in November 1994 for the IBF heavyweight title. Foreman was subjected to a stringent battery of tests, said Dr. Jordan, including a CAT scan and an MRI.
"Because of his age, Foreman was put through a strenuous neurological exam,'' said Jordan, who stepped down as medical director for New York State Athletic Commission after 7 ½ years this past summer. "He passed.''
He passed for now, says Ferdie Pacheco, boxing's renowned "Fight Doctor.''
"He's not doing this with impunity,'' Pacheco says. "When he gets to his 50s, he'll pay.''
Probably - but maybe not.
Randall "Tex'' Cobb is a former journeyman sluggee whose demolition at the hands of Larry Holmes in 1982 so disgusted announcer Howard Cosell that Cosell began a campaign to abolish boxing. Cobb seemed lucid and quick at a boxing dinner at the Hotel Atop the Bellevue in October.
"I haven't noticed any signs of dementia pugilistica,'' Cobb said. "I monitor my speech, my reactions. To my mind, there hasn't been any significant decrease in any of those areas.''
Cobb, along with Quarry, was part of a 1983 study done for a Sports Illustrated article on DP. Cobb's results then were normal. Quarry's were not. He showed signs of DP but continued to fight.
Cobb says that a recent brain scan done by his doctor, Bruce Romanczuk, was so clean that the doctor, who knew of Cobb's pugilistic past, was astonished. Romanczuk, citing professional privilege, declined to comment for this story.
And then there's Jimmy Young . A boxer, not a slugger. A fastidious and sharp man in his prime, now trapped in a world of delusion.
• Walker Moss, Young's buddy for more than 20 years, lounges outside Young's house. Along with the rest of the neighborhood, Moss looks out for Young.
"Did you wash up, Jimmy?'' Moss asks.
"I washed up last week,'' Young replies, entering the house to prepare for that 9:30 job. "Heh, heh, heh.''
Moss says he used to run with Young when Young was preparing for fights. He says Young's decline picked up speed around 1986.
"He gradually started losing it, you know?'' Moss says.
Losing it?
"He ain't... he ain't right. You know how you and me will be having a conversation? He can't. Sometimes he'll just start talking about something else.''
Often, that something else is his glory days. In classic DP style, the man who can't remember the time for more than a few seconds recalls with eerie precision the date, site and purse of each of his pro fights.
Young finished his career with a 35-18-3 record. The losses include: a three-round TKO by Earnie Shavers in 1973; the 15-round loss to Ali; a 15-round loss to Norton in 1977 (Young's second fight in less than two months); a 10-round loss to Michael Dokes in 1979; and a four-round TKO by Gerry Cooney in 1980.
When Moss noticed the decline, Young was in the midst of a nine-year period in which he lost eight of 15 fights. He fought for the last time in 1990, at the age of 41.
He fought as many as five times a year in the mid-'70s against top fighters. He sparred almost continuously his entire career, including a stint in 1984 with a young stud named Mike Tyson.
The pounding brought Young a measure of wealth and fame, but it is gone.
Now, Jimmy Young lives on $150 a month in North Philly in one of two run-down houses he believes he owns. According to Young's wife, Barbara Young, from whom Jimmy has been separated for five years, the homes actually belong to his father, Dave Young.
Young rests easy at night because he thinks his family - Barbara and their five children - is financially secure. He believes they are protected by a $150,000 nest egg Young put away after the Norton fight.
The money is long gone, Barbara says. It stayed in the bank two years. His wife works two jobs to get by.
Young has no idea that the money is gone.
Jimmy Young smiles broadly when asked if he thinks he is punch drunk.
"Naw,'' Young says, giggling. "Why? Who said I was?''
Well, J Russell Peltz, the promoter who gave you your first pro fight in 1969, says he's concerned that you might be. And Walker Moss. And your wife.
"Oh. Well.''
Asked if he knows what being punch drunk is, Young replies in the affirmative.
"It's when something ain't right with your head,'' Young said. He has to say it twice, slowly, to be understood.
Young's head bears the signature of combat - a flat, crooked nose with a scar running sideways across it; a thick scar under his left eye; a ragged scar over his right.
Young says he underwent brain scans twice in his career, but cannot, or will not, specify when. He says neither scan showed any sign of deterioration.
Like most boxers, Young says he would do it all again.
"In a quick flash. And a hurry,'' Young says. "People ask me why I love this sport. So brutal. So hard.
"I tell them what I'll tell you. I love it.''
He pauses. His smile vanishes. He is quiet for a while, considers his crooked hands, sighs and speaks.
"Um. Um. You, you think I'm, um, messed up?''
Yes.
"It's just, nobody never ever told me this in my whole life,'' Young says, almost in a whisper. "This is the first time anybody ever told me any of this. And you know what? I'm not - I'm taking you serious, but I'm not really thinking to what you said.''
Such denial is all too common.
"Muhammad Ali was told years before his career ended that his speed was affected,'' Cantu said. "He just refused to believe it.''
Nobody told Young then, so why should he believe it now?
More ramblings. More conversation. Then, admission.
"I know. You know. A fighter... he'll be... the last one to admit that he can't fight anymore. And he's the last one to admit there is anything wrong with him. Mentally or physically.''
A long pause. A sad sigh.
"You done burst my bubble.''
• Another terrible facet about dementia pugilistica is its encroachment upon young boxers. In the primes of their lives, small signs can point to a large danger. Peers in the Philadelphia boxing community fear this could be the case with hometown hero Meldrick Taylor.
As Taylor sits in a soul-food diner off Spring Garden Street, he declares himself DP free. The former welterweight champion's dark eyes glitter; his body, perhaps a bit padded from more than a year's layoff, would make any 29-year-old proud.
"All my faculties are intact,'' Taylor says. "I have my memory. No speech impairment. So, I mean, I'm in great, great health.''
Taylor slurs badly as he says this. He says that annual medical examinations have never shown any sign of brain deterioration. He won't release his medical records.
Is this the bravado of youth? Perhaps. But doctors say DP doesn't practice age discrimination.
An autopsy done on a 23-year-old boxer recently killed in Britain showed marked signs of advanced DP, according to Jennian Geddes of the Royal London Hospital. Besides a mild forgetfulness, that boxer seemed normal.
Geddes reexamined the brain of another young boxer killed eight years ago and found similar damage.
Despite the pounding he has taken in his fine career, Taylor says he's as good a boxer as ever.
"I still have a lot of aspirations and ambitions in boxing,'' Taylor says. "I'm not even . My health is fine. My skills are still good. It's just a matter of me being in the right frame of mind to continue to fight. It was never a physical thing.''
Boxing experts disagree.
They say Taylor's downfall began when Julio Ceasar Chavez rendered him senseless late in the 12th and final round of their first fight on March 17, 1990. Referee Richard Steele stopped the fight with two seconds left.
Two and a half years later, Taylor was crushed by unheralded welterweight Crisanto Espana, five montha after a similar result against Terry Norris. One of Taylor's managers, Lou Duva, implored Taylor to quit.
"As far as I'm concerned,'' Duva then told the Daily News, "he shouldn't fight again.''
Taylor left Duva and managed himself. He has fought 11 times since, and lost three - all by TKO, most recently by Chavez, in September 1994. He has a 32-4-1 record.
In one breath, Taylor says that all boxers must pass physicals, including tests that might indicate brain deterioration.
"If a person really has a problem with walking straight, or speaking right or bad eyes or whatever, they should retire,'' Taylor says.
In the next breath, he says, "How are you going to invade in someone's personal occupation and say, 'Because you have this, this and this wrong with you, you can't fight?' ''
Not that Taylor is in financial need of fighting. He claims to be worth $2 million. He's clever, sharp, spiritual, young.
But he also displays a sketchy short-term memory and violent mood swings. Frighteningly violent.
At the completion of the interview for this story, Taylor, soft-spoken and calm throughout, flew into a rage. He shouted. He poked the interviewer in the chest. He stole the interviewer's notebook - which was mostly empty. The interview had been tape-recorded - with Taylor's consent.
Taylor's state makes sense to Pacheco. He was ringside for the 1990 Chavez fight.
"Thereafter, never sounded right, never moved right,'' Pacheco said. "He got such a beating in that fight.''
Taylor swears to be unaffected by boxing. Then, in heavily slurred, low tones, he says, "I might , from 20 years of fighting. Does that disqualify me from being a fighter?''
Perhaps it should. Unlike in the ring, there is no one to step in and protect these boxers.
Not the boxing establishment, which encourages this madness with its dearth of real rules. Not the promoters and managers, who feed off it. Not the boxers themselves, who choose to ignore it.
And sometimes, boxers can't even count on loved ones to keep them from tragedy.
Jimmy Young 's mother, Ruth Harris, denies to this day that anything is wrong with her son.
But his wife, Barbara, says she noticed Jimmy slipping 25 years ago. She heard the slurred speech. For a while, she endured the mood swings he still exhibits - from gaiety to sadness to indignation.
But Barbara, who works at Temple University Hospital as a medical technician, didn't encourage Jimmy to quit. She doesn't regret her silence.
"Boxing was something he loved,'' Barbara says. "It was part of him. That would have been robbing him of his dreams.''
And so today, Jimmy Young walks the streets of North Philly, wondering what time it is, dreaming his dreams.
<!-- end body-content -->
