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03/13/2007 Archived Entry: "Heal Or No Heal"
Heal Or No Heal
By Shawn Decker
YOU never forget your first Great White Hope. And in the aftermath of Gerry Cooney, Tommy “The Duke” Morrison provided the perfect foil for networks and crowds excited to see how a corn-fed white boy would fare in the most brutal of sports. It wasn’t Tommy’s fault that he was white and liked to fight, or that he was handsome in a slightly redneck kind of way. Throw in a pair of eyebrows that were reportedly related to John Wayne and a co-starring role in a Rocky movie and you can’t blame folks for getting giddy over the kid.
You never forget the first time you witness the brutal KO of a Great White Hope. For me, this didn’t happen the first time that Morrison was stopped in vicious fashion by Ray Mercer, it was when he got waxed in his primer bout against Michael Bentt. I’d been following the sport for a short time, and had never seen a boxer implode in such spectacular fashion. That roadside pile-up cemented my love for boxing– because it proved that anything can happen in matter of seconds.
Morrison worked his way back, and HBO made me believe that the bad boy had reformed his partying ways by filming him in prescription eyeglasses, walking down a path in the woods while holding hands with his wife. Tommy was serious about his career, he deadpanned, and I believed him because I was twenty. About a half hour later, after eating Lennox Lewis’s jabs for six rounds, Morrison was once again stopped, only this time it was in highly forgettable fashion: a mortal sin in the world of boxing.
That was bad news, but I remember the night that Tommy’s luck really took a turn for the worse in 1996. Ringside announcers, once salivating upon his arrival, were now sullenly claiming that he’d failed a pre-fight test and was immediately suspended from the sport. They didn’t say it was HIV outright, but the mood suggested something far more serious than a failed breathilizer. I was worried for Tommy.
As of late, much fanfare has been made of Morrison’s return to the ring, in particular his claims that he is no longer living with HIV. Is it possible? He did beat George Foreman, after all, and not many people thought that could happen. This, however, is far bigger than outjabbing a forty-year old hamburger salesman. And now, according to Bob Arum, Tommy is beating HIV tests. “"The guy is HIV negative. He took a bunch of tests. One test cost $3,000. We made him take sophisticated tests. If he passes the blood test again, they will allow him to fight."
With Arum involved, one has to wonder about these “sophisticated tests.” I can picture Tommy Morrison hunched over his computer, winning a few hands of Texas Hold ‘Em with Arum standing over his shoulder, slapping him on the back and declaring, “See, Tommy, no AIDS!”
Bob Arum notwithstanding, Tommy Morrison has had access to experts on the topic of HIV/AIDS before. Time Magazine’s 1996 Man of the Year, David Ho, met with Morrison shortly after he tested positive for HIV, and was quickly fired for his efforts. Espousing his own treatment of “natural hygiene”, which consisted of vitamin intake and working out, Morrison stated publicly that HIV didn’t cause AIDS, that the medications to treat it were poison and he would continue to have unprotected sex with his wife because the “harmless virus” couldn’t be transmitted that way… where were Michael Bentt and Ray Mercer when we needed them?
Tommy abandoned natural hygiene therapy the same way he abandoned the jab, going to jail for cocaine and firearms possession. He was hospitalized for dehydration and other undisclosed illnesses and, at the time, his lawyer admitted that he had begun taking HIV medications, but ceased treatment shortly thereafter.
Fast-forward several years later, and the same guy is now being considered for the undercard of Manny Pacquiao’s upcoming fight in Texas. His camp is not claiming that he has cleared himself of HIV, they are insisting that he received a false positive test result in 1996. A No Contest of sorts. This can and does happen, albeit rarely, and is not to be confused with Magic Johnson’s situation, where he has an undetectable viral load– a test used to measure the progression and activity of the virus–yet still tests positive HIV. That is also a fairly common experience for those who are responding well to combination therapy for HIV.
Now– if everything is on the level– it seems that Tommy Morrison is getting a second chance at life in the ring, to reclaim some of the glory– and greenbacks– of his heyday. And who can blame him?
The decision to return has to be influenced by the what-ifs that haunt professional athletes, and the loss of time has got to be frustrating… but is missing out on the last eleven years of the heavyweight division a bad thing? Did he really need to suffer an inevitably brutal KO at the hands of Mike Tyson? Or Vitali Klitschko, for that matter? And though I’m sure a three-fight give-and-take series with Vaughn Bean would have been entertaining, I’m not convinced that, had he never been banned to begin with, Tommy Morrison wouldn’t be exactly where he is right now– coming off a rebound win over an unheralded and hopeless pug in West Virginia.
The year that he was diagnosed Tommy Morrison said that "AIDS has been here since creation, but it doesn't do anything." Today he declares: “James Toney is someone I want to fight down the line. I will put him in the hospital. I don't like him. I don't like his attitude. He doesn't represent being a contender the way it should be done."
Looks like Tommy’s dusting off those prescription eyeglasses, ready to play the role of role model one more time. But instead of worrying about how to represent the virtues of a contender and jawing with James Toney, he should worry whether or not he’s still plagued by a glass jaw. And, fortunately, it doesn’t take too many sophisticated tests to get to the bottom of that mystery.
Shawn Decker, 31, has been living with HIV for over twenty years. He is a regular poster at the Cyberboxing Zone forums, and is a contributor to POZ Magazine. He educates about HIV/AIDS with his wife, and has just written his first book, a comedic memoir entitled My Pet Virus: The True Story of a Rebel Without a Cure. (Penguin Group)
