A sports journalist and former editor of Boxing News looks behind the curtain of boxing culture to uncover the broad and lasting damage traumatic brain injury has inflicted on boxers—and their loved ones.
Mr. Dixon’s book lands with power and precision. For boxing fans, it’s a wake-up call ... Even for readers who are not aficionados of the sweet science, Damage hits hard ... Mr. Dixon tackles his subject with great compassion ... It is boxing’s unwillingness or inability to address the long-term damage caused by the sport that represents this book’s most damning critique. The sport has had decades to devise systems to mitigate the crisis—Mr. Dixon outlines many in the book—but has remained willfully ignorant.
Tris Dixon has written the book that boxing has always needed ... Dixon...confronts the damage done to fighters with unflinching honesty. It is shattering yet tender as Dixon charts the history and science of CTE (chronic traumatic encephalopathy), a brain condition caused by repeated blows to the head ... Dixon’s book is compassionate in the company of Frankie and Brenda Spinks—whose husband, Leon, shocked a faded Ali in the first of their two fights in 1978 ... I’d say the wives, women like Frankie and Brenda, are the real heroes. Their strength of character is what boxing needs to address the damage.
... perhaps the most important book the fight game has ever seen ... not a book that should see the sport outlawed but a survival guide for all within it ... deeply insightful ... wonderfully written...sumptuous storytelling ... this is a difficult read for anyone involved in boxing but it is nonetheless essential ... the industry can learn so much from this book.
