Assembly to Get Legislation on Boxing Reform

Legislation focused on reforming the way professional boxing is governed in California will be introduced today in Sacramento.

Assemblyman Richard Floyd (D-Carson) and Assemblywoman Gwen Moore (D-Los Angeles) will submit a three-bill package designed to overhaul the neurological examinations given to all boxers and to investigate the California Athletic Commission’s boxer pension plan.

The state’s neurological examinations have been criticized by managers, promoters and neurologists as being biased against Hispanic and educationally deprived boxers.

Last summer, the Nevada Athletic Commission declared the exams “not valid” for measuring neurological impairment in boxers.

The Athletic Commission’s boxer pension fund, created in 1981, has foundered since inception. Commission staffers claim hundreds of envelopes containing pension information are routinely returned from both U.S. and Mexican addresses marked “addressee unknown.”

The legislative package also seeks to develop more comprehensive investigations of boxing injuries and to eliminate the commission’s licensing functions for ring announcers, arena ushers and doormen.

Also to be addressed in the commission’s budget hearings, Floyd said, was commission leadership.

“I am struck by the lack of leadership by the commission itself, which is being led around by the nose by its own staff,” Floyd said.

Floyd is chairman and Moore is a member of the Governmental Organization Committee, which oversees the boxing commission.