Friday, July 09, 2010

Medical Term

There was a short piece in yesterday's paper on the passing of Denny Moyer (1939-2010), who was, the article allowed, probably the best boxer to ever come out of Portland, Oregon. He was an AAU champ, won three titles as a pro -- beat Sugar Ray Robinson once -- and had a 98-38-4 record.

He died, the article said, of complications from dementia pugilistica.

Now there's a term. Not exactly the same as what Ali has -- that's Post-traumatic Parkinson's -- but grim enough.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

A short while back a pro wrestler named Chris Benoit Murdered his family and then committed suicide. I believe he was posthumously diagnosed with CTE. basically the same as pugilista Dementia. The doctor said the man's brain resembled that of an 85 year old alzheimer's patient. Scary Stuff
Langdon

Daniel Keys Moran said...

So it turns out getting hit in the head is bad for you....

Scott said...

Sure.

Not as bad - lethal - as a lot of male-dominated professions, of course; logger, pilot, fisherman, ironworker, trash collector, farmer, rancher, roofer, lineman, driver....