Forgotten Greg Page: What Happens When a Fighter Signs With Two Promoters
By Robert Brizel, Head RCM Boxing Correspondent
I first met rising heavyweight prospect Greg Page on November 4, 1981, when I covered his fifth round stoppage of Marty Monroe on CBS television in Kiamesha Lake, New York. It was not long after that bout Greg’s Dad took ill and then passed away. Greg had signed previously with Butch Lewis, but then signed with Don King anyway.
Litigation caused Greg to get hit with legal fees from Lewis and King, plus having to settle by paying a portion of his future purses to Lewis on top of King. He would eventually wind up in bankruptcy, working full-time as a painter. When Greg was pushed to the canvas late in the tenth round against Dale Crowe in Kentucky and did not get up, his life had been a financial mess for more than a decade. Greg briefly won and lost the WBA World Heavyweight champion when he knocked out Gerrie Coetzee in South Africa in December 1984, at least 40 seconds after the round bell should have rung ending round 8. Page had lost four of five bouts including this win at that time, another strange statistic.
For the $1500 Greg got paid to fight Crowe, he had to undergo brain surgery after the bout, went into a coma for a week, suffered a stroke and became paralyzed on his left side for the rest of his life. The lack of medical personnel or an ambulance at the Kentucky fight eventually led Greg to receive a $1.2 million dollar settlement from Kentucky, and change safety standards at boxing rings across America in the years which followed.
Many fighters look up to me at ringside today as an educator and sports writer. Back went Greg went off on the wrong contractual trail, I just did not understand then what I understand today. Greg, without his father, was a misguided lonely confused soul, much like Mike Tyson later became. Tyson survived his boxing years, Greg did not.
It turns out Greg had postponed the Crowe fight for several weeks after a blood clot was discovered on his brain. Poor prefight medical procedures in Kentucky at that time enabled some other doctor to sign off and allow Greg to fight a fight several weeks later in which should never have taken place. The end occurred against Crowe when Page got pushed to the canvas and hit his head, and much later when Greg died. Lack of proper guidance for a fighter like Greg Page still happens today. Many fighters today, like Greg Page was back in the day, are still confused souls.
Although the press does not get the full story, from past to the very present, fighters who have exhibited damage in sparring are going into fights and getting permanently injured, because money has taken precedent over safety considerations. Boxing commissions are not wholly to blame when full ambulatory and safety considerations are in place. In many cases, the fighters and their handlers share equal or most responsibility of what happens to their fighters afterwards.
More shocking, I have not found unusual when fighters today sign with someone else while under contract. I even know a fighter who apparently signed with three different promoters. My impression is many fighters like Greg Page were misled down the path of glory. Page was just so talented, he was the Muhammad Ali out of Louisville who somehow never reached his potential, mostly due to contractual disputes, and inside my soul I’m still searching for the reasons why Greg Page’s career still raises more questions inside me than it does answers due to its unfathomable abrupt ending in Kentucky.
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