What if David Morrell Jr Tested Positive?

This past weekend, boxing suffered yet another tragedy that can be directly linked to the incompetence of everyone surrounding the fighters. On a Showtime main event in Minneapolis David Morrell Jr fought Aidos Yerbossynuly for his secondary WBA title.

The fight was over as a contest after the 8th round and it became a tattooing session for Morrell thereafter. Morrel mercifully knocked Yerbossynuly out in the 12th round after the second knockdown of the round. As Yerbossynuly staggered from another brutal shot by Morrell referee Tony Weeks finally saw fit to wave the fight off. Morrell sprinted to his combatants’ aid and helped him to his seat.

Tony Weeks also tried to help, but he again stepped in when it was far too late.

Yerbossynuly was rushed to hospital after the beating and has now been placed into a medically induced coma. According to Sulemein Promotions, a company I would not trust with a jar of 5 cent pieces, Yerbossynuly is expected to be in an induced coma for 2 weeks and his injuries are not life threatening.

That’s a relief. What about everything else?

For the sake of completeness, per Dan Rafael Yerbossynuly made $100,000 for the right to get his brain beaten in, before expenses.

This is not a news article though. It is a hypothetical.

From the outset, I want to say that I am not blaming Morrell. He did what he is meant to do. He is a fighter. It’s his job to inflict damage on his opponent, and vice versa.

I am also not casting aspersions on whether Morrell is a steroid user. He has never tested positive. There is no reason to assume he is a cheater, I just needed a way in.

But, what if, in some parallel universe, we had a Connor Benn situation that wasn’t made public? What if Morrell tested positive before the fight but it was suppressed so the fight could happen? Who is at fault then?

In this situation, obviously the fighter would be at fault. But he is not who I want to focus on. I want to focus on the promoters and the broadcaster, then the referee and the ringside physician.

I won’t talk about the trainer here because, while the trainer failed Yerbossynuly, he would have as much knowledge as the fighter so is not relevant to this hypothetical.

I want to start with the promoters and the broadcaster because they are the ones that would have known about the positive test first.

While I have a legal background, I am not familiar with negligence in Minnesota. I am not sure whether promoters/broadcasters do owe a duty of care legally to the fighters in their stable. I am also not sure whether that duty would have been breached given the fighter would likely have agreed to the fight even with a full knowledge of the situation.

But morally, I am positive that they do.

First of all, if there is a positive test and the clean fighter knows about it, I am quite sure that the clean fighter would want the fight. I make this declaration because of two reasons: firstly, fighters are warriors who have an extremely high level of self-confidence; secondly, if fighters don’t fight, they don’t get paid, which is potentially catastrophic for a fighter like Aidos Yerbossynuly who would have made a significant outlay for training costs. They would all be sunk if he couldn’t fight.

As such, a mechanism should be introduced that protects the fighter from himself. One thought I had was, in the event of a positive test, fighters who were clean and have suffered some sort of financial hardship as a result of the test have some recourse to recoup money out of the purse of the dirty fighter. Some sort of insurance policy

Who would make that rule in boxing is a separate question entirely, but again, we are dealing in hypotheticals.

If we are trying to live in the real world of boxing, what I have posited above will never happen. It requires powerful people in boxing to care about boxers and it requires all the various authorities in boxing to come together. Two impossibilities.

So, what about the referee and the ringside physician?

Would they know of a pre-fight positive test? Shouldn’t they know?

If it is the job of these two people, at least in part, to protect fighters from themselves, shouldn’t they have a complete picture?

I would argue that they should. If they did know, they might also be more likely to get sued and have their career destroyed, even if would not have to write a cheque themselves. They might be more likely, in such a situation, to step in and protect the fighter in order to protect their own interests.

Beyond that, they should know that someone who is chemically superhuman is trying to hurt a regular human and they should adjust the scales for when to stop a fight accordingly. This, of course, assumes competence which is a dangerous thing in boxing.

I am talking so much about who can get sued and ways for Yerbossynuly’s family to get to various sources of money for the sole reason that medical care is expensive and usually fighters and their families are left to their own devices. Yerbossynuly’s family has just begun their struggle. They have to think about this, and so should boxing.

It's yet another dark day in boxing. I guess what I am asking with this article is, what if it gets even darker?