Boxing: Dirrell Brothers Put Face on Flint Water Crisis

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ATLANTIC CITY, New Jersey -- There are some things more dangerous than stepping inside a boxing ring and facing an opponent intent on knocking you out. Like, for instance, a thirsty child getting a drink of tap water from the faucet in the family’s kitchen sink.

Andre and Anthony Dirrell -- the former an Olympic bronze medalist, the latter a onetime world champion -- were fighting for something far more important than the advancement of their own boxing careers when they appeared in co-featured bouts on Friday night at the Trump Taj Mahal, both of which were televised via Premier Boxing Champions on Spike TV. The Dirrells were fighting for the children and even unborn infants of their hometown of Flint, Michigan, who have been exposed to “extremely high” levels of lead in the city’s water supply as a result of cost-cutting measures by local officials that created a health crisis which has mushroomed into a potential national tragedy.

Anthony (29-1-1, 23 KOs), the ex-WBC super middleweight titlist, is likely to find the remedy for Flint’s drinking-water problem will take much longer to effect than his conquest of Caleb Truax (26-3-2, 6 KOs), whom he floored twice in the first round of a scheduled 10-rounder. Referee Harvey Dock waved off the bout after an elapsed time of just 109 seconds, prompting the 31-year-old Dirrell to do a backflip to celebrate a victory he hopes will take him closer to another shot at a world championship.

However, Dirrell’s jubilation was soon tempered by the sobering message he relayed to Spike TV viewers and to spectators in the Mark G. Etess Arena. The situation in Flint thankfully has been identified and steps finally are taken to rectify the problem, but much work and even more money is needed to complete a job that never should have been needed to undertake.

“My work tonight inside the ring made a big statement for what my brother and I are doing outside of the ring,” Anthony said. “A lot of people were watching tonight, and now they know a little bit more about what’s going on with the Flint water crisis.”

Andre (25-2, 16 KOs), who won his bronze medal at the 2004 Summer Olympics, basically expressed the same sentiments after his bout, although he was extended the 10-round distance in scoring a wide unanimous decision over Australia’s Blake Caparello (22-2-1, 6 KOs). Despite Dirrell’s being knocked down in the second round, all three judges had him winning by identical scores of 98-91.

“Tonight, my brother and I were both able to display our talents in front of a national audience on Spike,” said Andre, the waistband of his trunks bearing the message “Support Flint.” He also noted that something more tangible than good wishes was going to be needed if Flint, a city with a shrinking population, soaring crime rate and unconscionably high poverty exacerbating its water crisis, is to survive this latest blow in a series of civic beatings dating back 30 or so years.

Were it not for the Flint water crisis, the Dirrells’ main concern would be repositioning themselves as major players in the super middleweight division. Anthony, who had captured the WBC 168-pound title on a unanimous decision over Sakio Bika on Aug. 16, 2014, relinquished it in his first defense, dropping a majority decision to Badou Jack on April 24, 2015. He has since won two straight bouts, risen to a No. 3 ranking in the WBC and called out any and all of the super middleweight titleholders. They include Jack, who retained the WBC strap with a majority draw against former IBF super middleweight champion Lucian Bute on Saturday in Washington, D.C.

The situation is much the same for Andre, a southpaw who is 0-2 in world title bouts, having dropped a unanimous decision to England’s James DeGale for the vacant IBF championship on May 23, 2015 and a split decision to another Brit, Carl Froch, for the WBC belt on Oct. 17, 2009.

“I wanted to send the boxing world and this whole division a message,” he said after he outworked Caparello, best known for his second-round knockout loss to WBO light heavyweight champion Sergey Kovalev on Aug. 2, 2014. “I’ll take on anyone who’s a champion. I know I’ll be a world champion. I have to be a champion. I don’t slow down for anyone. I’m going to keep pushing to get where I’m going. Tonight, my brother and I were both able to display our talents in front of a national audience on Spike. Anthony is strong as an ox and got the win quickly. I got the win on determination and heart.”

While their shared boxing ambitions -- it would be interesting to see if they would ever fight one another with a world title on the line, something the heavyweight champion Klitschko brothers, Vitali and Wladimir, insisted they would never do and never did -- are important, circumstances have dictated that both assume the role of political activist to benefit their hometown, where they continue to be residents.

Flint, a city 66 miles northwest of Detroit whose lifeblood for decades flowed through the automobile industry, has been in serious decline since the early 1980s. In 1978, some 80,000 workers in Flint were employed by General Motors; by 2010, that number was fewer than 8,000, the result being a rapidly shrinking tax base, decreased or eliminated municipal services and an all-encompassing downward spiral Flint seems powerless to reverse. In the mid-2000s, Flint was ranked among the “Most Dangerous Cities in the United States,” with a per-capita violent crime rate seven times the national average. According to the 2014 U.S. Census, 40.1 percent of the city’s 99,002 residents -- 56.6 percent of whom are black -- were living below the poverty line, second only to another Rust Belt town, Youngstown, Ohio.

With that said, hard times tend to produce hardened individuals, which in some cases means the creation of championship-level fighters, boxing always having represented a way up and out for those who otherwise have no means of escape from the endless cycle of poverty and desperation. Just as Youngstown is known as the place that birthed such notable fighters as Earnie Shavers, Ray “Boom Boom” Mancini and Kelly Pavlik, Flint produced not only the Dirrells but two-time former heavyweight champion Chris Byrd and Claressa Shields, the 2012 women’s Olympic gold medalist in boxing who will again represent the U.S. at the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics.

The Dirrells did not leave Flint even after they had the financial means to do so because they believed to move away would be a sign of surrender, something as repugnant to them as quitting in the ring would be. So they decided to stay and fight, to help their beleaguered city rally on the scorecards, as it were, despite mounting evidence that a significant comeback might be too much to expect.

Then came the ill-considered decision by certain officials in April 2014 to save $5 million from Flint’s dwindling municipal coffers by changing the city’s water source from treated Detroit Sewerage Department water (sourced from Lake Huron, as well as the Detroit River) to the Flint River. Those same officials failed to apply corrosion inhibitors in water service lines, many of which are constructed of lead and were installed between 1901 and 1920. The result: Between 6,000 and 12,000 children in Flint have been exposed to contaminated drinking water, those most at risk being kids under 5 years of age and unborn infants.

On Jan. 5, Flint was declared to be in a state of emergency by Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder, with President Barack Obama declaring a federal state of emergency shortly thereafter. While the water source has since been switched back to treated Detroit Sewerage Department water and millions of dollars were allocated for replacement of corroded lead pipes, current Flint Mayor Karen Weaver on Jan. 7 pegged the estimated cost of entirely fixing the water infrastructure at a staggering $1.5 billion.

The Spike TV telecast, while national, was not going to be seen by an audience nearly as large as that for the “M*A*S*H” series finale or a Super Bowl, which means that the Dirrells’ impassioned pleas for contributions to the cause at best will make only a tiny step toward any appreciable recovery. Even so, real fighters keep fighting until the fight is done, even when the odds are stacked against them. A Crowdrise page set up for the fundraiser states that “the Dirrell brothers are proud sons of Flint and are deeply concerned about the well-being of their community” and “are using their national platform to galvanize support from boxing fans to help the residents of Flint.” All funds donated through the Crowdrise page go directly to the Flint Child Health and Development Fund established at the Community Foundation of Great Flint.

It remains to be seen if either or both Dirrells become world champions. However, in the eyes of many in Flint, they will forever be heroes.

Bernard Fernandez, a five-term president of the Boxing Writers Association of America, received the Nat Fleischer Award from the BWAA in April 1999 for lifetime achievement and was inducted into the Pennsylvania Boxing Hall of Fame in 2005, as well as the New Jersey Boxing Hall of Fame in 2013. The New Orleans-born sports writer has worked in the industry since 1969 and pens a weekly column on the Sweet Science for Sherdog.com.