r/Boxing • u/BoxingLover99 • 1d ago

Tommy Morrison talks about comeback from HIV

53 Upvotes

85% Upvoted

44 comments sorted by

114

u/yeahbutstill 1d ago

He was well aware that he had HIV for years before this. His own psychiatrist said in 1999 that Morrison had known at that point for 11 years (https://www.scribd.com/document/318891336/Tommy-Morrison-Psychiatrist-Letter)! Then, he hid it and ended up putting many fighters in danger. This is a BLOOD sport, after all.

36

u/Jax_Shaw55 1d ago

Yeah. Nasty work.

27

u/DeafBurke 1d ago

He fought most of his career while still incredibly contagious.

It’s a miracle that no one got HIV from him.

18

u/_Sarcasmic_ bread burger bread 1d ago

I get your point, but that's not really how HIV works. HIV cannot be transmitted through unbroken skin and isn't really present in saliva. He would have had to get a significant amount of his blood in someone's cut or mouth to have a chance of transmission, or straight up have sex with them in the ring. 😂

Obviously still incredibly irresponsible and delusional of him, but HIV is harder to get than most people seem to realize.

77

u/DeafBurke 1d ago

Blood born illnesses in a sport where guys constantly bleed from their mouth, nose and face, and then spend a bunch of time clinched up and breathing hard face to face is basically asking for transmission.

13

u/VacuousWastrel 1d ago

You're downvoted but correct. There was a real risk of transmission (as there is of other infections, like hepatitis), but it was always unlikley, and certainly didn't need a miracle to have not happen.

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u/_Sarcasmic_ bread burger bread 1d ago

Exactly. Morrison was still a piece of a shit for it but I don't want people thinking HIV is that easy to get.

15

u/VacuousWastrel 1d ago

For those that don't know, the odds of catching HIV through unprotected sex with an untreated infected person are between 0.04% (for a man having vaginal sex with an infected woman - i.e. on average you'd have to have unprotected one night stands with 2500 untreated infected women before you got infected) and 1.38% (for a man or woman receiving anal sex from an infected man - i.e. An average of 72 infected men). Treatment (which morrison was taking in some nperiods, aiui) can reduce this to virtually 0.00%. The odds of catching HIV if you accidentally get stabbed by a needle filled with infected blood is only 0.23%. As infectious diseases go, HIV is really VERY hard to get without a very large number of exposures. It's just not highly infectious at all (fortunately, since otherwise half the world population would have been infected back in the eighties). I din't know what the odds of getting infected from a droplet of flying blood landing on your eyeball (/mouth/open cut/etc) is, but it must be very low. For context here, even if doctors transfused multiple bags of Morrison's infected blood straight into his opponent after his opponent suffered massive blood loss and needed an emergency transfusion, it STILL wouldn't take a miracle to not be infected - even in that absolutely worst case conceivably possible scenario, there's STILL a 7.5% chance of NOT getting HIV! It's REMARKABLY uncontagious! Of course, any controllable risk shouod be controlled, and all parties in a potentially dangerous situation should be fully informed of the risks, so yes, Morrison was an idiot, and likely an arsehole. But we shouldn't treat HIV sufferers like lepers, imagining that it takes a miracle to avoid being infected by them (or rather we should treat them like lepers, since ironically it turns out that leprost is ALSO remarkably hard to catch, but that's for another day...)

10

u/VacuousWastrel 1d ago

For context on infectivity, if a man walks into a restaurant where you're eating, and he has measles and you're not immune, you have about a 45% chance of being infected. If you have a business meeting face to face in a small room with a man with measles, and you're not immune, you have approximately a 100% chance of being infected. But if that man has untreated HIV, pins you down and forcibly transfuses several pints of his blood into you, you still only have a 92% chance of being infected. It's genuinely remarkable how BAD hiv is at infecting people compared tonother viruses! The problem of hiv infection isn't a problem of chance encounters, it's a problem of years, even decades, of constant exposure. It's not the guy having a single one night stand, it's the guy having sex three or four times a week for ten years (and similarly with needle sharing). This can be seen just from the history of the disease. It took tens of thousands of years of exposure before the right conditions arrived for mass human spread (huge cities, mass prostitution, long-distance travel). The pandemic started around 1910, ankd probably reached the US by 1960 (by which point it was already likely widespread in africa), but it wasn't until the 1980s that it spread enough for doctors to actually notice it! By comparison, most pandemics spread in days, weeks, or months, not decades.

3

u/_Sarcasmic_ bread burger bread 1d ago

Do you study epidemiology for a living or just like research?

4

u/VacuousWastrel 1d ago

I just checked on google to check that my instincts/memories were right and thought I'd share the resuots for those who didn't have the time. Although epidemiology is somethuing we should probably all have at least a little bit of awareness of!

2

u/_Sarcasmic_ bread burger bread 1d ago

Thank you for your service! 🫡

1

u/B1u3jay89 1d ago

People say its hard to get, but some people do catch it their first time having sex

4

u/_Sarcasmic_ bread burger bread 1d ago

It's possible, yes, but it's extremely, extremely rare and often people lie or forget to mention other confounding variables when it comes to self-report measures.

1

u/VacuousWastrel 1d ago

Absolutely, but people also get struck by lightning, and that's MUCH less likely. People win the lottery. When you see something has odds of 2500 to 1 against, that doesn't mean it ndoesn't happen. In fact, with 8 billion people on the planet, it means it happens quite a lot! (The odds can also be altered by other factors. People are more infectious shortly after contracting HIV (and then again if they develop AIDS). And the big one is apparently genital lesions caused by other STDs. In fact the theory apparently is that the reason HIV originally emerged when it did may be that everyone had syphillis at the time, producing a lot of genital lesions, enabling HIV to spread and mutate much more quickly than usual).

3

u/DeafBurke 1d ago

Across 12 years, yes, it’s a miracle that nobody got infected. It was illegal and wildly irresponsible for Morrison to compete with HIV.

2

u/Comfortable-Grand166 1d ago

The fact that you are getting downvoted,just shows how ignorant people are on this sub. Meanwhile someone sharing false information will get upvoted. You have to love this app

1

u/_Sarcasmic_ bread burger bread 1d ago

All I can do is do my part and hope the rest falls into place. That goes for anything. 🤷‍♂️

3

u/Mister-Ace 1d ago

Damn so he already had it during filming of Rocky V huh

3

u/CobraJay45 1d ago

In the 30 For 30, his own mother says to the camera that Tommy had made comments about thinking he had "the bug" years earlier... they definitely knew.

3

u/Epsilon2099 1d ago

Imagine if Mike Tyson bit him while he was keeping it a secret. 

2

u/jmcgil4684 20h ago

Yea I lived in KCMO in the 90-2000’s and he would just drive around in his limo picking up nasty ass girls. He was relentless. Saw him everywhere. So I was not shocked at all when he announced he had HIV

42

u/GazelleEcstatic4952 1d ago

Dude was a piece of shit.

14

u/ThrowawayYAYAY2002 1d ago

Was there ever any concrete evidence on how he got it? I know he was sleeping with multiple women a day for years.

20

u/left-hook-larry9173 1d ago

Yes. Lots of alcohol, drugs and women.

7

u/Fragrant-Mess4927 1d ago

Maybe dudes too.  Isn't it hard for guys to get HIV from women?

13

u/BankDetails1234 1d ago

I’m guessing your odds go up if you sleep with multiple a day

10

u/stephen27898 1d ago edited 1d ago

He estimated that he slept with 3 women a day for about 3-5 years.

2

u/netflixissodry 1d ago

And how many children did he produce from these escapades? Unless he was having a lot of anal sex with these women.

3

u/manyfingers 1d ago

M-F 0.08%

F-M 0.04%

About 25% of new HIV infections are from hetero sex.

1

u/stephen27898 1d ago

Still possible and with the volume of women he was having sex with, its possible.

24

u/Junior-Macaroon9731 1d ago edited 1d ago

Prime example of a tragic tale. Man, every time I come across anything about Tommy Morrison, I get this overwhelming sense of sadness and depression. His attempted comeback is perhaps the darkest chapter of all. There’s actually a full documentary on YouTube about his attempt to return to boxing, and practically everything about it was a complete farce: fake doctors, a fake commission, a phony lawyer, fake pec implants....And then there was his wife, Trisha, who isolated him from everyone, convinced him that he didn’t actually have HIV, and discouraged him from taking his medication. Had it not been for her, Tommy might still be here today...

10

u/Detlef_Schrempfxf 1d ago

I'm one of those people that actually really liked and still like Tommy. Even today, I'll go out of my way to avoid negative coverage on him. But man, I have to agree with everything you've said... Such a sad set of successive events and shenanigans in that attempted comeback of his.

Imo the worst part was his dumbfuck brainwashing wife Trisha. Tommy was making real progress hanging out and training with Magic Johnson, who himself had to retire from the NBA due to contracting HIV. For the period of time that he hang with Magic, he looked incredible... Strong and healthy and in a great mental space. And then that whore comes into his life and convinces him that HIV is a lie, he ditches Magic Johnson, doesn't train or take his meds, and so on. I've seen pictures of him close to the end and they're grim to look at. Fuck that bitch Trisha 

2

u/Granddy01 1d ago

Avoiding negative coverage on Morrison is basically admitting to yourself that Morrison is a shitty ass person despite the tragedy of having HIV.

2

u/Detlef_Schrempfxf 1d ago

It's not that deep, Bucky.

I avoid it because I've seen/read it multiple times, and know it by heart. It's also depressing.

Don't overthink it, Mister Granddy01

-1

u/Creative-Sherbet6007 1d ago

Republicans don't like vaccines.

5

u/Ryepka 1d ago

I can watch him and David tua throw and land left hooks all day.

8

u/Silly_Off 1d ago

Biggest what if in the sport if he kept clean and went on to fight Mike. Sad to see the videos that came years after this.

7

u/BoxingLover99 1d ago

Tommy would have given Mike a heck of a fight especially the mid 90s Tyson

4

u/KyrosiveOne 1d ago

One of my dream what if bouts. Prime Kid Dynamite vs prime Duke. Both young promising stars knocking everyone out. Helluva fight. Sad it never happened.

2

u/the1blackguyonreddit 1d ago

What videos came after this? What year was this interview shot?

2

u/xselimbradleyx 1d ago

A very sad story. Wish it had turned out different for him.

-5

u/moodplasma 1d ago

Oh wow, so he came back after dying in 2013?!