Commissioner urges ban

Press, 16 December 1985, Page 29

Commissioner urges ban

NZPA-AP New Jersey The New Jersey State Commission of Investigation (S.CJ.) has recommended that boxing be outlawed in New Jersey, calling the sport “legal savagery” over which organised crime has undue influence. “Perhaps the single most

pivotal factor in the commission’s determination that boxing should be abolished is its investigative conclusion that not even the sturdiest of statutory controls will reduce the brutality- of the sport to any significant degree,” said the panel in a 137-page report entitled "Organised Crime in Boxing. “In addition, the commission believes that no truly viable social or economic benefits can be derived from such legal savagery,” it said. The S.CJ. said it would ask the state legislature to draft laws abolishing the sport

The report also said the

presence of organised crime in boxing “warrants aggressive official reaction in the public interest.” Earlier this year, the S.CJ. told a federal commission investigating the boxing industry: “If the same mob presence we have found In boxing existed in professional baseball, or football, it would constitute a massive public scandal.” The latest report said: “The conclusions of this report, as well as the initial S.CJ. report, reflect the commission’s firm belief that no human endeavour so brutal, so susceptible to fraud and so generally degrading should be accorded standing.”