The Grey Matter

Elliot Worsell examines the mixed implications of brain scans in boxing

WITH a pair of sparring gloves attached to the strap of his gym bag, he strolls inside Lister House on Wimpole Street a professional boxer – a handsome, healthy, successful one – and hopes to leave the same way he entered. If he’s lucky, he will. If he isn’t, he won’t.

This decision, ironically for a boxer, is out of Andy Lee’s hands. Today, his fate will be decided by an MRI and MRA scan – a requirement ahead of his first ever pro fight in Britain – and not by the power in his right hook. He will fill out forms, he will get horizontal, he will close his eyes, he will hold his breath, and his brain, that precious thing he seeks to simultaneously use and protect on fight night, will be examined. After that, he will leave. He will then wait for an answer.

The scans are supposed to take 30 minutes. He is out in 10. So swift is the process, Lee checks he had both.

“Are you a boxer?” asks the receptionist, confused by his suave attire – brown checked shirt, black coat with fur collar, Stacy Adams fedora with a feather in its side – but presumably noticing the gloves.

“Yes,” Lee replies. “Then you had both. Good luck.” She means it in the sporting sense. Good luck in your match. Hope you win. Go you. But still it somehow feels inappropriate.

Bad luck, the alternative, is what they say to a boxer who fails one of these, the boxer no longer deemed fit to fight, the boxer who suddenly becomes weak, vulnerable, a danger only to themselves, and needs protecting. Good luck, on the other hand, in that moment, sounds equally foreboding. Good luck, she might have said, avoiding punches and bleeds and tears and fractures, and good luck doing this every year, this brain scan, and coming away unscathed.