Magomed Abdusalamov was the WBC US heavyweight boxing champion, with a record of 18-0, all by stoppage. He’s from Dagestan, the same North Caucasus Russian republic that produced Khabib Nurmagomedov. On November 2, 2013, he lost a unanimous decision to Mike Perez at Madison Square Garden, sustaining a large number of heavy blows.
Ringside doctors examined the boxer, sutured a cut, and told him to get an x-ray for a suspected fracture when he returned to Florida, where he was living at the time. Then everyone left.
The boxer didn’t feel right and took it upon himself to get to the hospital, in a taxi. Doctors there determined Abdusalamov had a large blood clot in his brain, and put him into a coma to allow time for the swelling to subside. Over a month later he was out of a coma, but remained in the hospital for ten more months, and five years later is paralyzed on the right side, and unable to walk or talk. Abdusalamov was paid $40,000 for the fight, and received the maximum payout from New York’s mandatory minimum insurance policy – $10,000.
Following a 32-month investigation, the inspector general reported in pointed detail that the New York State Athletic Commission failed to carry out its responsibilities. State regulations were changed, requiring a $1 million traumatic brain injury insurance policy requirement for promoters. And in the largest personal injury settlement New York state ever made, the boxer received $22 million.
I would trade all of the money to just bring back Mago as he was, but that’s not how it works,” said his wife Bakanay Abdusalamova. “It cannot buy the happiness we had.
Now Paul Edelstein, the Abdusalamov family’s attorney, wants a change in combat sports regulations that he calls “Mago’s Law.”
The regulations that got changed, in my opinion, were cosmetic, said Edelstein to Marc Raimondi for MMA Fighting. In other words, ‘Let’s have more insurance so when a lawyer sues’ — like me — ‘there will be some coverage for him to get, so he’ll go away.’ I’m all for that, but how does that prevent the injury itself or the real tragic injury from happening. It doesn’t do a thing. Nothing.
Mago’s Law is about prevention. Edelstein wants a lower bar for fighters getting transported to the hospital post fight over head damage.
Any fighter with a suspected facial or head fracture [should] be sent immediately to the emergency room, said Edelstein in September to ESPN. Fighters [should] be treated like emergency room patients which means that before they are cleared or discharged they are given a complete neurological and neuropsychological examination with observation and/or re-assessment a minimum of one hour after the completion of a match [The Golden Hour] and/or diagnostic testing [CT or MRI].
In Mago’s case, it would have 100 percent made the difference between him walking, talking and having a normal existence compared to the way it is now — 100 percent, said Edelstein to Raimondi. We don’t want to see that happen to anybody else. That is an attainable situation in combat sports.
Hospital visits with a CT scan are expensive. But so was Mago’s settlement.
It’s a little bit more expensive to pay my bill after a guy has what happened to Mago happen,” argued Edelstein. “And forget about the financial consequences of what I do. How about just the personal consequences to this guy and his family?
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If combat sports are gonna exist and you’re gonna allow it and you’re gonna make money off of it and allow everybody to make lots of money off of it, then you should make it as least likely as possible that one of these guys has an injury that could have been prevented. You’re not gonna prevent a guy from having broken hands and arms or broken bones in his face from getting a punch. I understand that. There’s no way to stop anyone from getting that in this situation. But you can stop a brain injury from becoming life-long devastating or death-producing if you put in place certain regulations to get these guys care faster and more efficiently than happen to Mago. Also, financially. You take away the financial road block for that.
I don’t see why it shouldn’t be nationwide. One of the major problems with boxing is that it is not federally regulated and it’s left to the states, so there’s no uniformity. There’s no uniformity in the rules and regulations and that again is a major problem throughout boxing’s history and it’s the same for MMA. It would seem to make perfect sense to have either a federal legislation or just a unified one rather than what we have now.
“No matter how much money I get this guy — and I got him a ton of money and I’m gonna get him more — that isn’t gonna do a damn thing for his kids and his wife for him in terms of changing what happened to him.
Edelstein told Raimondi that his office had been in contact U.S. Sen. John McCain’s office, as well as with New York State Sen. Kevin Parker of Brooklyn. Given the fractured state of combat sports regulation, Edelstein has an uphill battle. Still, New York is a mecca for combat sports, and regulation there could lead to far wider adoption of the it proves successful.
Image courtesy of Bakanay Abdusalamova.
