On the Ropes

Commissioner Helfand's concern for the health of professional prizefighting did not go far enough for a pretty 23-year-old brunette named Elaine Flores. Mrs. Flores offered to contribute $10,000 toward the formation of an organization to protect the rights of the boxers themselves.

Her husband George Flores, a run-of-the-mill club fighter, died in September 1951, four days after he was knocked out by Middleweight Roger Donoghue. New York State Athletic Commission doctors, argued Mrs. Flores, were negligent in permitting her husband to put on the gloves with Donoghue. In two previous fights, both within five weeks of the fatal bout, George Flores had been cruelly beaten, defeated by technical knockouts; the second time Donoghue himself had handed out the beating.

Last week New York's Court of Claims Judge Fred A. Young awarded Elaine Flores $80,000 damages from the State of New York. Five separate doctors employed by the State Athletic Commission, said Judge Young, had had the chance to bar Flores from the ring before he was killed. "The fact this was not done is an indictment of each of the doctors and a more serious indictment of the entire system of medical examinations." Even after the fatal fight was over, the judge pointed out, Attending Physician Dr. Vincent Nardiello "talked to [Flores] cursorily, and he appeared to the doctor to be all right." On the witness stand, Dr. Nardiello testified that he did not suspend Flores "because the matter of suspension was up to [the doctor] at the previous fight." This Alphonse-Gaston act, said Judge Young, "amounted to a ludicrous system of professional courtesy."

Even before Judge Young's decision, the athletic commission decided to straighten things out. Rather than fire the doctors, though, the commission decreed an automatic 30-day suspension of fighters after every knockout.

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