Prichard Colon, Gerald McClellan, and boxing’s duty of care

For a moment, Lisa McClellan loses her train of thought.

“I’m sorry,” she says. “I’m tired because we’ve had a long weekend. Sandra was airlifted to the trauma center, so I just got home last night. I’ve been up for, like, four days.”

It has been almost 30 years since Lisa’s brother Gerald was badly injured in a super middleweight title fight with Nigel Benn; every day since then, she has been with him around the clock, acting as his primary caregiver. For much of that time, she shared that task with her older sister, Sandra; but a couple of years ago Sandra, too, was taken ill. “I am Gerald’s full-time caregiver, and Sandra’s full-time caregiver,” she explains. 

Asked if anybody is taking care of her, she pauses and says simply, “the man upstairs.”

She has also, she says, been supported over the years by numerous individuals and organizations in the boxing world. She namechecks Andre Ward and Virgil Hunter. Ring 10, a charity set up in 2011 to help retired boxers with financial and health issues, was a major supporter for many years until its president, a former boxer, also began to feel the effects of a career of taking punches to the head. Mauricio Sulaiman, the president of the World Boxing Council (WBC), has been a significant source of support and comfort.

“I started a foundation about four years ago, and he’s been my biggest supporter,” she explains. “I give Gerald daily hormone injections and peptide injections, and they’re very expensive. So, Mr. Sulaiman helps me pay the bill every month for the peptides.”

Some eyebrows might arch in surprise at that revelation, just as some undoubtedly did recently when Nieves Colón, mother of stricken Puerto Rican junior middleweight Prichard, posted an open letter that revealed her son’s care since he suffered career-ending injuries against Terrel Williams in 2015 has been underwritten by Al Haymon of Premier Boxing Champions (PBC).

“Without [Haymon’s] visit to the hospital, making arrangements and personal arrangements so that my son was not only discharged [but also] placed in rehab, Prichard would never have made progress in therapies and treatments,” she wrote. Haymon ensured that her son was placed in the Shepherd Center in Atlanta; and, she added, because she has had to give up full-time employment to take care of Prichard, Haymon has also been paying her mortgage.

There are, for those who choose to look for them, a number of examples of boxing looking out for its own in times of need. After bantamweight titlist Richie Sandoval took a beating from Gaby Canizales in 1986, Bob Arum promised him a job if he agreed not to fight anymore and was good to his word, employing him at Top Rank until his death in July. Floyd Mayweather Jr. paid for the funeral of former opponent Genaro Hernandez. When a newspaper journalist discovered Sam Langford blind and destitute in Harlem in 1944, a series of fundraisers among the boxing community ensured he was able to live in relative comfort and under care for the last decade or so of his life. 

There are other examples that haven’t been widely publicized. But one doesn’t have to be a boxing historian to know there are literally countless more cases of boxers who pursued the sport as a way to escape poverty but who wound up with as little money as they began with and with bodies and brains that have been beaten and broken, leaving them helpless and reliant on the kindness of friends and strangers.

While responses to the revelation about Haymon and Colón were overwhelmingly positive, social media provided some dissension, with a few voices even arguing that Haymon was responsible for Colón’s injury in the first place, on the specious grounds that he was the promoter of a bout in which the referee failed to take action to prevent Williams landing a succession of rabbit punches and even because he featured Williams on subsequent cards – instead of, presumably, petitioning for him to be sent to the gulag.

Of course, social media is a toxic swamp, but there is a legitimate question buried in its fevered hot takes: in a world in which the most successful participants can earn $20 million or more for a night’s work, sanctioning bodies help themselves to a cut of the purses in every title fight, and one of the richest regimes on Earth is raining riyals on select promoters, fighters and writers, is it enough to rely on the ad hoc actions of individuals? Should those individuals be doing more? Is boxing as a whole doing anything like enough to care for its fallen warriors?

Count Lisa McClellan among those who say that the sport could and should be doing so much more.

“There could be a lot of help coming from the boxing community,” she says. “That’s not just for Gerald, but for all of these guys that are suffering. There is no help out here for these guys. So absolutely, the boxing world could be more involved. You know, if we could get the promoters and the sanctioning bodies to help, and not just Gerald, help other fighters that are in need.”

Rudy Mondragón, an assistant professor at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles and co-author of a recent study that found most four- six- and eight-round boxers in California aren’t even making minimum wage, argues that, while individual actions such as Haymon’s are highly laudable, they obscure the fundamental institutional failings at the heart of the boxing business.

“Members of the boxing industry have made some strides in addressing the needs of former fighters who have fallen down on their luck with financial hardships and medical hardships,” he says, citing a WBC fund that provides $10,000 on a case-by-case basis and a retired fighters charitable fund run by the Association of Boxing Commissions (ABC). But, he argues, “we can’t rely on this current model of depending on the Al Haymons, or the individual boxers who have made life-changing money. Haymon supporting Prichard Colon and not doing it for a publicity stunt is very admirable, but it  obscures the collective obligation that should be on boxing stakeholders, primarily the promoters, who are the closest entity to an employer for the boxers. And boxers are the stakeholders who need to rise up in their own defense, because we also have to remember that without boxers, there’s no boxing business, plain and simple.” 

Mondragón sees parallels between the boxing business and agricultural workers, in that individuals are generally reluctant to speak up because they are seen as disposable and they are afraid that rocking the boat will cause them to be thrown overboard.

“We’re in a bifurcated gig economy with boxing,” he explains. “So you have 99 percent that will never make life-changing money. Some will make livable wages as boxers, but the Canelos, the Mayweathers, the Mike Tysons and the Manny Pacquiaos, the big, big winners of this political economy of boxing, are the boxers that should stand up and take the lead, because they’re not as vulnerable.”

The problem, he recognizes, is: “What’s their incentive? They’re already made it where they wanted to make it. I think once you make it to the top, you want to stay there, and that means not biting the hand that feeds you.”

To its credit, the WBC agreed at its annual conference this month that, from 2026, anyone who fights for one of its titles will have to have proof of a pension plan in place that a portion of their purse will go into. And Mondragón notes that California has not only established a minimum pay per round, it has now doubled it, to $200. It also has a pension fund for boxers, which is funded from ticket sales. If the biggest boxing states – California, Nevada, and New York – collectively decided that, say, one dollar from every ticket would go toward a health care fund for retired boxers, it would be a significant step forward in meeting a duty of care toward the sport’s only indispensable practitioners.

Promoter and former HBO executive Lou DiBella is extremely skeptical that there is the goodwill or the easy-accessible funding for such a scheme to ever gain any traction.

“Nothing can be done,” he exclaims. “The fighters will never be unionized, because the rich fighters are never going to support the poor ones. There is nothing to do other than be kind and, you know, do what you can. But frankly, we’re the most damaging sport on Earth. We ruin people’s brains and ability to function. How are you going to fucking take care of fighters that are retired when you don’t protect the ones who are active? We don’t even head test people. You can be knocked out 31 times and get licensed in 45 states.”

Besides, he adds, “don’t you realize that just about everyone in this business is losing money? Ninety-five percent of the prize fights in the world that are promoted lose money. The only source of money in most cases is TV, but there are just a few companies that have exclusive TV deals. I can’t do a deal directly with any network. If there’s no TV money, where do you think a promoter is going to find money to put into a pool for health and safety?”

Boxing is far from the only sport to wrestle with its obligations to its former athletes. The National Football League had to be dragged, kicking and screaming, into acknowledging the risk of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) among its players, and even professional soccer is waking up to the fact that repeated heading of a ball may be a contributory factor in former players developing dementia. 

But any damage incurred while playing those sports is incidental to the sport itself; it is possible to adjust the rules to minimize the risks. Boxing actively requires its participants to inflict brain damage on each other; the more frequently and emphatically a boxer concusses his or her opponents, the more they will be celebrated and paid. We love action fights with multiple knockdowns and clean knockouts, even as we acknowledge that such fights exact a physical toll on their participants. We all, collectively, understand that to cheer on a boxer or pay for a fight is to support the infliction of some degree of brain damage. 

Do we not therefore have a moral obligation to place fighter safety, including the safety of fighters long retired, as the number one priority? Instead, we watch boxers decline, we shake our heads sadly, and we move on.

One person who has tried to shift that paradigm is Dave Harris. Founder of the Ringside Charitable Trust in England, Harris has been involved in boxing – as a fighter, manager, promoter, and founder of the British Boxing Hall of Fame – for more than 60 years. And over those decades, he says, “I have seen some of the fighters that in their prime have been so special. I saw the damage that has been done to them, mental illness and dementia.” 

A former manager of multiple care homes, Harris had the idea of creating one for retired boxers in need of help, similar to some that exist in Britain for jockeys who have suffered skull, spine, or other debilitating injuries. For six years, he has hosted fundraisers, supported by the likes of former boxers such as John Conteh and Barry McGuigan and by journalists such as former Boxing News editors (and now BoxingScene writers) Matt Christie and Tris Dixon. Over the course of six years he has raised, he estimates, approximately £300,000 – a solid sum that is a testament to his hard work, but still far short of what is needed to procure a home and run it for even one year. It is also, he notes, a drop in the bucket compared to what is out there.

“Some of these promoters have a very good lifestyle, and they deserve it, because I know how tough it is without television,” Harris continues. “But if you do stadium fights, you may have 50,000 there, even 90,000 like [Dubois-Joshua] the other month. If you put a pound on a ticket, the money would soon add up.”

Harris readily admits to his love of boxing – and, specifically, boxers.

“You know, I’ve been one myself and I admire the courage they show, but there are fighters now that I could tell you, within the next 10 years, will be diagnosed with pugilistic dementia, and they’re still boxing now,” he says. “The damage they’re taking, some of them, they’ve got so much heart. The Board of Control is, I think, in Britain, pretty good overall. It does a good job, but I still think they should bring these people in more often, because some of them are in a very poor state of health already, and yet still have a license. I’ve even had a former British champion no less than six years ago, sobbing down the phone to me. He’s just been diagnosed with pugilistic dementia. His wife was crying. He was crying, and there was I, trying to give them support.”

Perhaps the lack of enthusiasm for funneling resources toward boxers’ health and welfare shouldn’t be so surprising. This is, after all, a business that actively requires brain damage to function, a sport that was once in thrall to the Mafia, whose most recognizable promoter stomped a man to death and was sued by multiple fighters for allegedly bilking them out of millions, whose most famous athletes include convicted rapists and domestic abusers, whose newly-dominant force is a regime famous for its disregard for the well-being of individuals, in which journalists and broadcasters  – people whose very industry is dependent on freedom of speech – push each other out of the way for an opportunity to take the money of a man who will have people thrown in prison for the mildest of criticisms and who is at best entirely comfortable with reporters being murdered and dismembered. 

It is a business that grinds through its most important components like pieces of meat, showering a select few with fame and vast fortunes but sucking the rest dry and then casually discarding the empty husks they inevitably become. And whereas other athletes in other sports have unions and collective bargaining, boxing has been set up over a century to be a zero-sum game, in which those involved at all levels are rewarded for thinking only of themselves and the here and now.

“The only way any of this could work is if someone came in and just ignored the whole paradigm of the sport and created a new structure,” observes DiBella. “Nothing will ever be fixed when there are 20 champions, four fucking ratings organizations, everybody putting their hands out,  corruption everywhere, unfair judging, no health and safety measures. The whole thing is a fucking nightmare now, and it’s not even fun anymore. I used to say it was a guilty pleasure, and now it’s just guilty.

“I am more empathetic to this cause than you know,  particularly because I firmly believe that any fighter, and you can quote me on this, any fighter in boxing that’s had a prolonged professional and amateur career is going to wind up with some form of CTE. Basically, we cause damage to our greatest fighters, the whole sport itself, which makes me wonder: if we’re not going to take care of one another, if we can’t properly ensure health and safety standards, if we can’t work as one industry in one sport to make it livable, should it even exist?”

For Gerald McClellan, remarkably, after almost three decades, there is some good news. For the past six months, he has been undergoing a new treatment protocol under the supervision of traumatic brain injury specialist Dr. Mark Gordon.

Gerald’s short-term memory is showing signs of improvement, Lisa reports, and his previously-slurred speech has cleared up enough that he is now able to speak by himself on the phone, without always needing her assistance. There is, crucially, evidence of increased self-awareness: whereas he would previously blurt out personal information no matter who was in the vicinity, he now whispers in his sister’s ear when he has something private to say.

He has even begun to recall the night responsible for his current state.

“Out of the blue one day, he said, ‘Lisa, do you know why I took the knee in the Nigel Benn fight?’” she recalls. “I’m fighting the emotions because I don’t know what’s going to come out. And I said, ‘No, Gerald, why did you take the knee?’ He said, ‘I took the knee because everything went black and I couldn’t hear anything and I couldn’t see anything, and that’s why I took the knee.’”

Which is not to say Lisa’s days are easy.

“I don’t know if you’ve ever been around a person with a brain injury, but it is a lot of work,” she explains. “It’s mentally taxing. Every day, Gerald asked me 1000 times a day, ‘Where’s our dad?’ So after 1000 times a day, every day, answering the same question, it is draining.”

Far from running away from the stress and strain, however, Lisa has embraced it, establishing the Ring of Brotherhood Foundation to help boxers who are in need of all manner of help. 

“I have a clinical research committee where I have, like, eight doctors. I have a couple fighters, a nutritionist, we have attorneys and we’re writing treatment plans for what’s best for the fighters, just ways to help with nutrition,” she explains. “We have attorneys that are there to help fighters with contracts and legal issues.”

And she offers practical assistance whenever possible to those who, like her, are caring for their loved ones.

She is, she explains, good friends with Yvonne Benitez, the sister of Hall-of-Famer Wilfred, who has been suffering severely from brain damage since at least 1990.

“They lived in Chicago on the second floor of this apartment building, and every time she had to take Wilfred to a doctor’s appointment, she had to call the paramedics to lift Wilfred down the stairs, and then she would take an Uber to his doctor’s appointment,” she says. “So I raised the money to purchase a handicap vehicle for Wilfred, and the boxing community stepped up to help me do that. And then where they lived in Chicago was very expensive, so I found her a house in Freeport, the town where we live, and I moved them there. And so they’re, like, five minutes away, and the cost of living is a lot more affordable for her here.” At her urging, the WBC’s Sulaiman covered the cost of installing a wheelchair ramp. 

There is a surprising number of decent and warm-hearted people in even this most barbaric of sports; individual acts of largesse, such as those of Haymon and Sulaiman, are there to be found, and there are times when members of the community come together to help those in need. But they are largely isolated incidents. And for most of the industry, it seems, that is the way it should be: a la carte donations and episodic fund raisers while the sport’s rich get even richer and the great majority fall by the wayside, discarded and forgotten by those who once professed to love them.

“If we can sit in front of the TV and enjoy our favorite fighters when they’re on top,” says Lisa McClellan, “we should continue to care about them when they fall.”

Kieran Mulvaney has written, broadcast and podcasted about boxing for HBO, Showtime, ESPN and Reuters, among other outlets. He presently co-hosts the Fighter Health Podcast with Dr. Margaret Goodman. He also writes regularly for National Geographic, has written several books on the Arctic and Antarctic, and is at his happiest hanging out with wild polar bears. His website is www.kieranmulvaney.com.