Death of Female Boxer Stuns Friends

yahoo.com ^ | April 05, 2005 | JOHN MARSHALL

[willyboyishere]

Mary Croissant was obviously Chairperson of both the French and the Home Ec Departments at Front Range.

[willyboyishere]

Mary Croissant was obviously Chairperson of both the French and the Home Ec Departments at Front Range.

[Loud Mime]

Looks like the female ski team had a coach named Sonny Bono.

[fortheDeclaration]

Well said!

[Mr. Mojo]

Did Laila KO Kristy? Missed that one. A bit surprising, but then again Martin is about 10 years older than Ali.

I just find the whole idea of women's boxing repulsive, and the only reason I've watched the few fights I have is because they've been shown on the undercards of real fights. The fact that Ali's daughter KO'd a bunch of stiffs is not an indication that her skill level is high. In fact, it's laughably inept.

The "sport" will never catch on with a significant audience.

[MarkL]

To watch two woman hit each other is simply disgusting.

To pretend they are boxers is nonsense.

I agree! I can't stand to see women boxing. Now women wrasslin, that's another story altogether! Especially if there's jello or chocolate pudding involved!

Mark

[derllak]

I'm with you! How can anyone find boxing (or wrestling) entertaining? How can it be enjoyable to get the crap beat out of you? I would hardly call this a sport and anyone who does it is just asking for trouble, and that goes for men as well as the women! Nyah nyah na nyah nyah! :)
PS- Mojo, I can take you down any day!

[Monterrosa-24]

I love boxing but hate that so-called women's boxing is being ever more promoted. Women in tennis, basketball, soccer, and even karate at a very competitive level may not appear "lady-like" but at least they don't always appear to be dike-like.

Boxing becomes more dangerous with age. Hang up the gloves at 30 or at least 32. The ole brain and brain cage gets less resilient. Most punch drunk fighters stayed in way too long. It is interesting that Max Schmelling who died recently, did stay in broken nose ally way to long, due to post-war German economic necessity, and yet never suffered any visible ill=effects. But he was very fortunate in this and many other things.

[flying Elvis]

You left out crotch kicks.

[Randy Papadoo]

If you've seen the film clips of the fight, you'll have noticed that the punch that dropped/killed her was not a particularly tremendous punch. Both boxers were flurrying at each other, wide open defensively, and the bigger girl landed one of her flurry punches on the headgear over the left eye of Zerlentes.

Her head didn't react to the punch, her neck was not turned from the punch, her face never distorted. She was leaning forward when the punch "bounced" off her headgear and she just fell forward into the lower ropes.

Sometimes it's hard to gauge the force behind a punch, but this one was not a wind-up Sunday punch by any means, and I was very surprised that Zerlentes went down. She fell into the ropes and was bounced back into the ring, on her back, and she never moved a muscle. Obviously, given the outcome, she had suffered serious brain damage the moment she was hit.

And she was hit on the headgear, so the force of the punch would have been softened by the glove and the headgear. (I do not mean to say that that kind of a blow cannot do damage, it's just highly unlikely that it will.)

I think Zerlentes' death was a fluke of some kind, possibly from a previous head injury or perhaps due to an unknown susceptibility in her brain.

So, I think this tragedy wasn't because she was a female boxer, she was a boxer with a fragile brain. Deaths such as this happen in boxing now and then. I don't believe her being female had anything to do with it.