GeneChing
12-17-2007, 11:23 AM
crazy kids... :rolleyes:
Dorm boxing raising alarms (http://www.timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=647909&category=REGION&newsdate=12/17/2007)
Online video of underground bout possibly filmed at UAlbany, but officials doubt fights are widespread
By MARC PARRY, Staff writer
Click byline for more stories by writer.
First published: Monday, December 17, 2007
ALBANY -- The ring is a dormitory basement with hard floors and desks.
The boxers are two kids who wear no headgear and slug each other with wild blows.
The audience -- audible in a video on YouTube -- is made up of other kids who laugh and yell, "Hang in there, baby!"
The fight in this clip apparently happened at least a year ago at the University at Albany. But the Dec. 2 dorm-bout death of a Binghamton University freshman is only now turning a spotlight on underground campus boxing.
Anders "Andy" Uwadinobi was barely one semester into his college career when a punch to the chest ended his life. An autopsy found that the blow caused a heart arrhythmia that killed him.
"It's about as dangerous as you can get," said Jerrick Jones, assistant director of the city of Albany's boxing training program. Kids playing Mike Tyson can wind up with knocked-out teeth, a broken hand or a detached retina.
Even in supervised boxing, Jones generally doesn't let beginners fight each other because "usually when you get two new guys, they're just going for blood and guts," the veteran trainer said. "They're just trying to land that hard shot."
SUNY officials insist dorm boxing isn't widespread. Still, like other schools in the 64-campus system, UAlbany sent an e-mail to its 17,000 students reminding them that unsanctioned boxing is "strictly prohibited."
Kickboxing? That's banned too. Same goes for martial arts, mixed martial arts or anything else that "pits two or more individuals against each other in any form of combat," Assistant Vice President for Student Success Clarence McNeill wrote in the e-mail.
UAlbany officials also are investigating the YouTube video, which has been viewed more than 1,500 times. They believe it was filmed in a residence hall on campus, said spokesman Karl Luntta.
The clip was one of several highlighted by the Web site insidehighered.com in a story headlined "Campus Fight Club."
A trend?
No, said Luntta. Prior to the YouTube video, he said, UAlbany had no reports of these unsanctioned boxing matches.
It doesn't appear to be a trend at colleges around the country either, said Kevin Kruger of the National Association of Student Personnel Administrators. Because of the death in Binghamton, though, Kruger's group plans to add a new question about boxing to a campus trend survey going out next month.
Some UAlbany students, like sop****re Ted Bean, are skeptical of dorm boxing being a big issue.
"There's an RA right across the hall," Bean said. The 19-year-old from Garrison, sports editor of the student newspaper, gestured to the resident assistant's room near his suite on Dutch Quad, where Madden NFL was loaded on a video game console and a roommate slumbered in the next room.
"That was honestly the first I've heard of it -- the newsletter they sent out," said Bean's girlfriend, Amanda Ellrodt, a 19-year-old sop****re from Putnam Valley. "But now I'm looking for it."
Bean added, "I'm sure it exists, but I don't even know if it was necessary for the university to send out an e-mail about it. Everybody I talked to just laughed it off when I even mentioned the idea of boxing in the dorms."
Another student didn't laugh.
The UAlbany senior, who did not want his name used for fear of the consequences, described in detail a boxing match he watched freshman year. The venue was a study space in the basement of an Indian Quad residence hall, he said.
They were discreet. Two people guarded the doors. Another filmed the fight. More than a dozen students -- men and women -- watched. When a punch drew blood from one boxer's nose, the crowd went wild. They plugged his nose with toilet paper.
The students created a buzz by using a file-sharing program to let others watch their video. They did it for the thrill, the student said. And to "gain face" with peers.
Fights like the one this student described are widely available on YouTube, a virtual online jukebox of dorm combat. Kids sometimes give themselves boxing nicknames.
Jones, the Albany trainer, believes these videos fuel the problem. One of his students agrees.
"When you go online and you search for all these fights, you encounter some fights where they're actually fighting with no gloves on," Elvis Badia said over the rat-a-tat of boxers attacking bags around him. "So these kids think that by putting gloves on, it's going to be safe for them. When it's not."
The 22-year-old UAlbany senior, training recently in the city's Quail Street gym, was everything his classmates on the YouTube video were not.
Professional gear protected his tattooed, 144-pound body: a head guard, mouthpiece and properly padded gloves over wrapped hands. The gloves kids buy in stores are meant for landing blows on punching bags, Jones said, not chins.
Badia's partner was another college student, Andrew Lang of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Lang, too, had seen a ring of kids holding an unsanctioned boxing session. The fight took place next to the parking lot opposite the RPI Field House, he said.
Jones calls boxing "an art form." His artists train for months before he lets them in the ring.
They learn how to keep their hands up. How to roll with a punch. How to move on their feet.
"It's a very good sport and a safe sport. It's the same thing as car racing or karate," Jones said. "If you don't know what you're doing, it could be deadly."
Dorm boxing raising alarms (http://www.timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=647909&category=REGION&newsdate=12/17/2007)
Online video of underground bout possibly filmed at UAlbany, but officials doubt fights are widespread
By MARC PARRY, Staff writer
Click byline for more stories by writer.
First published: Monday, December 17, 2007
ALBANY -- The ring is a dormitory basement with hard floors and desks.
The boxers are two kids who wear no headgear and slug each other with wild blows.
The audience -- audible in a video on YouTube -- is made up of other kids who laugh and yell, "Hang in there, baby!"
The fight in this clip apparently happened at least a year ago at the University at Albany. But the Dec. 2 dorm-bout death of a Binghamton University freshman is only now turning a spotlight on underground campus boxing.
Anders "Andy" Uwadinobi was barely one semester into his college career when a punch to the chest ended his life. An autopsy found that the blow caused a heart arrhythmia that killed him.
"It's about as dangerous as you can get," said Jerrick Jones, assistant director of the city of Albany's boxing training program. Kids playing Mike Tyson can wind up with knocked-out teeth, a broken hand or a detached retina.
Even in supervised boxing, Jones generally doesn't let beginners fight each other because "usually when you get two new guys, they're just going for blood and guts," the veteran trainer said. "They're just trying to land that hard shot."
SUNY officials insist dorm boxing isn't widespread. Still, like other schools in the 64-campus system, UAlbany sent an e-mail to its 17,000 students reminding them that unsanctioned boxing is "strictly prohibited."
Kickboxing? That's banned too. Same goes for martial arts, mixed martial arts or anything else that "pits two or more individuals against each other in any form of combat," Assistant Vice President for Student Success Clarence McNeill wrote in the e-mail.
UAlbany officials also are investigating the YouTube video, which has been viewed more than 1,500 times. They believe it was filmed in a residence hall on campus, said spokesman Karl Luntta.
The clip was one of several highlighted by the Web site insidehighered.com in a story headlined "Campus Fight Club."
A trend?
No, said Luntta. Prior to the YouTube video, he said, UAlbany had no reports of these unsanctioned boxing matches.
It doesn't appear to be a trend at colleges around the country either, said Kevin Kruger of the National Association of Student Personnel Administrators. Because of the death in Binghamton, though, Kruger's group plans to add a new question about boxing to a campus trend survey going out next month.
Some UAlbany students, like sop****re Ted Bean, are skeptical of dorm boxing being a big issue.
"There's an RA right across the hall," Bean said. The 19-year-old from Garrison, sports editor of the student newspaper, gestured to the resident assistant's room near his suite on Dutch Quad, where Madden NFL was loaded on a video game console and a roommate slumbered in the next room.
"That was honestly the first I've heard of it -- the newsletter they sent out," said Bean's girlfriend, Amanda Ellrodt, a 19-year-old sop****re from Putnam Valley. "But now I'm looking for it."
Bean added, "I'm sure it exists, but I don't even know if it was necessary for the university to send out an e-mail about it. Everybody I talked to just laughed it off when I even mentioned the idea of boxing in the dorms."
Another student didn't laugh.
The UAlbany senior, who did not want his name used for fear of the consequences, described in detail a boxing match he watched freshman year. The venue was a study space in the basement of an Indian Quad residence hall, he said.
They were discreet. Two people guarded the doors. Another filmed the fight. More than a dozen students -- men and women -- watched. When a punch drew blood from one boxer's nose, the crowd went wild. They plugged his nose with toilet paper.
The students created a buzz by using a file-sharing program to let others watch their video. They did it for the thrill, the student said. And to "gain face" with peers.
Fights like the one this student described are widely available on YouTube, a virtual online jukebox of dorm combat. Kids sometimes give themselves boxing nicknames.
Jones, the Albany trainer, believes these videos fuel the problem. One of his students agrees.
"When you go online and you search for all these fights, you encounter some fights where they're actually fighting with no gloves on," Elvis Badia said over the rat-a-tat of boxers attacking bags around him. "So these kids think that by putting gloves on, it's going to be safe for them. When it's not."
The 22-year-old UAlbany senior, training recently in the city's Quail Street gym, was everything his classmates on the YouTube video were not.
Professional gear protected his tattooed, 144-pound body: a head guard, mouthpiece and properly padded gloves over wrapped hands. The gloves kids buy in stores are meant for landing blows on punching bags, Jones said, not chins.
Badia's partner was another college student, Andrew Lang of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Lang, too, had seen a ring of kids holding an unsanctioned boxing session. The fight took place next to the parking lot opposite the RPI Field House, he said.
Jones calls boxing "an art form." His artists train for months before he lets them in the ring.
They learn how to keep their hands up. How to roll with a punch. How to move on their feet.
"It's a very good sport and a safe sport. It's the same thing as car racing or karate," Jones said. "If you don't know what you're doing, it could be deadly."