Phoenix
“Not really,” was Dr. Abe Lieberman’s answer when he was asked Monday if submitting the brain for research was considered.
Lieberman said he didn’t think boxing contributed to Ali contracting Parkinson’s disease but he couldn’t be “a hundred percent” certain.
The doctor spoke at a news conference at the Muhammad Ali Parkinson Center at the Barrow Neurological Institute in Phoenix.
Lieberman was among those who diagnosed Ali in 1984 and became a good friend as well as his physician.
Ali, who died on Friday in Arizona, had said he believed he suffered serious damage in his fight with Larry Holmes in 1980.
Ali once said in an interview that if he had known “Holmes was going to whip me and damage my brain, I would not have fought him. But losing to Holmes and being sick are not important in God’s world.”
But Lieberman said Ali probably already had Parkinson’s when he climbed into the ring for the Holmes fight.
The doctor said he did not hear Ali blame boxing for his illness.
Batavia, n.y.
Goodell told reporters Monday that the league will move forward based on whether the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decides to grant Brady’s request for the full court to re-hear the case. A three-judge panel from the appeals court in April reinstated Brady’s punishment for his role in using underinflated footballs during the 2015 AFC championship game.
Goodell spoke before Bills great Jim Kelly’s 30th annual charity golf tournament outside of Buffalo.
New York
Woods is writing his first book since 2001, which is due out next spring. The book does not have a title yet, but it will be about his historic victory in the 1997 Masters.
Budapest, Hungary
In a statement sent to The Associated Press, the IWF said it was informed by the International Olympic Committee of 10 cases from the 2008 Beijing Games and 10 from the 2012 London Games.
It said the Beijing tests were “presumed” positives that still require B sample analyses. The 10 from London were described as confirmed positives, or “adverse analytical findings.”
The IWF said the cases include medal winners but did not give any names or nationalities.
The federation said it would “proceed to the provisional suspension of the athletes as soon as the IOC procedures (are) concluded.”
The 20 cases account for a large part of the 55 total positives which the IOC has reported so far, including 32 from Beijing and 23 from London. The IOC is retesting samples to catch cheats who might be competing at the Rio de Janeiro Olympics in August.
Meanwhile, Kazakhstan’s Olympic committee said its athletes recorded five positives in similarly retested A samples from Beijing and London and had sent representatives to Switzerland to attend analysis of the B samples.
The athletes were not named and it was not immediately clear in which events they competed.
The Central Asian nation has faced repeated doping scandals in recent years, particularly in weightlifting and cycling.
Separately, the Russian Olympic Committee says two of its athletes’ B samples came back negative. They belonged to race walker Denis Nizhegorodov and rower Alexander Kornilov.