The death of Pedro "Rockero" Alcázar a day and one-half after he lost his WBO junior bantamweight belt to Mexico's Fernando Montiel will no doubt serve as another proof for those who believe that boxing is barbarous and dangerous and ought to be banned. And indeed, the incident, the seventh time in about a century's recorded history in which a Panamanian boxer has died from injuries in the ring, does show how dangerous the pugilistic profession can be.

I do not advocate boxing's abolition. However, I do support reforms to several aspects of the sport, both on the Panamanian and international levels, and the Pedro Alcázar story helps to make the case for several of these.

The tragedy that rivets the public mind is the most awful and final one, the death of a gifted young athlete. After the fight the doctors looked at Rockero, who gave Montiel a ferocious beating and took a worse one, and said he looked OK. Actually, Alcázar was slowly bleeding from a broken blood vessel in his brain, and had his head been examined with a CAT scan, the injury would have shown and could have been treated with medication and other therapies.

Death is the most noteworthy and drastic result of the head injuries that boxers can suffer, but brain damage such that which has left Muhammad Ali with Parkinsonism is more common. A post-fight CAT scan for every boxer who takes a beating in the ring --- including those who get the best of it and win their bouts --- would drastically reduce the unacceptably high incidence of former fighters living with sports-related disabilities.

Muhammad Ali may not have full control of his muscles, but his mind is fit and he and a number of other boxers have advocated mandatory post-bout CAT scans for some time. However, using arguments that range from ordinary greed to slavemaster-like property claims, Don King and other promoters have resisted this suggestion. Surely Rockero's fate is a sign that the time for the mandatory CAT scan has come.

Another reform that has been suggested for professional boxing is the use of headgear specifically and the adoption of amateur rules in general. I'll concede that there is no such thing (at this time) as a boxing helmet that gives perfect protection against head injuries, but for a bunch of reasons I like the Olympic rules better than the prevailing professional ones.

The amateur game's headgear and softer gloves do reduce injuries. So do the shorter bouts, because in a five-rounder there is less incentive for a fighter to cover up and take his opponent's best shots, then come back in later rounds after the initial aggressor has punched away his energy. The "rope-a-dope" strategy has proven effective on many occasions, but it's also the reason why Muhammad Ali can hardly talk. Moreover, I have found that shorter bouts are more exciting. There is less dancing and grabbing when the opponents have only five rounds to prove who's the champion.

Moreover, with shorter and safer bouts, professional boxers could safely fight more often, which in turn could pave the way for an overdue revolution in the sport.

Though in Lennox Lewis the sport has a heavyweight champion and principal public representative to whom aspiring young athletes can look up without perverting their fundamental human values, boxing in general has an odious reputation at the moment.

Four rival federations, one of which has been held by the US federal courts to be a racketeering organization, vie for leadership in the professional boxing world. While the athletes in most professional sports are unionized, boxers are not. This disorganized state of affairs has put the sordid Don King at the top of the sport, above other promoters who are generally more honorable, above the weak federations, above the trainers and gyms from whence new talent comes, and saddest of all, above the athletes who are the reason for the sport's existence.

Professional boxing needs one international federation and one big union to defend all of the boxers' common interests.

Because boxers have no union, because people like Don King dominate the business, and because fighters tend to see very little of the wealth they create when their bouts are televised, Pedro Alcázar was champion of the world, yet made relatively little money. The widow and two small children Rockero leave behind may not be homeless tomorrow, but they are in the economic position of a lower middle class family whose wage earner has just died.

Let's look at how well the business of boxing has served Panama's other champions.

Eusebio Pedroza is the rare exception who wasn't broke or nearly so when he retired from boxing. These days he has a government job, directing security at the Legislative Assembly building.

Roberto Duran fought much longer than he should have. He blew too much money on the people around him, but he also received too small a share of the many millions of dollars that were made off of his fights. After his last bout he had trouble paying for his hotel room.

Ismael Laguna is an honored guest at most boxing events in Panama, and has a gym in Colon named after him, but after his fighting days were over he had to take a job with the national casinos, and when politics changed and he lost that position, he was plunged into poverty.

Some of this nation's boxing heroes of yesteryear have ended up homeless. A number have submerged into the drug underworld. A few support families by selling things on the streets.

The injustices inherent in professional boxing are an international problem that calls for a global solution. However, the Panamanian politicians who so love to get their photos taken with boxing champions have also let this country's pugilists down.

Depending on how one counts, Pedro Alcázar was Panama's nineteenth or thirty-somethingth world champion. Yet Panama has never won an Olympic boxing medal. We don't even send a boxing team to the Olympics or to the regional games through which young men qualify for the Olympics.

Pedro Alcázar won the national Golden Gloves tournament, then turned pro. The resources for him to continue his amateur career just weren't there. Yet had Rockero won an Olympic medal before joining the professional ranks, he would have had a higher public profile and would have been able to command bigger paychecks. A few more years as an amateur would have made his professional career far more rewarding.

Meanwhile, the government has many empty buildings on the former military bases that it received under the Panama Canal Treaties. The hustlers who have run the Interoceanic Regional Authority have been busy practicing their fraudulent real estate sales techniques, without much success lately. The politicians have been very concerned about grabbing choice reverted properties for themselves and their families, almost devoting as much effort to that pursuit as they have to putting their relatives on the public payroll. The people with the power to do something worthwhile have by and large not thought about using public assets to develop the national sports scene.

There are honorable exceptions: before President Moscoso centralized discretionary spending for her own benefit, some legislators used their circuit funds to keep the Golden Gloves tournaments going, and some spent their funds to maintain public sports facilities or otherwise lend assistance to needy athletes.

On the whole, however, the political class has shown very little concern for Panama's athletes. Yet even in these horrible economic times there are resources readily available for politicians to deliver more than mere promises.

Why not turn some of the former US military buildings into housing for athletes? Panama has all this vacant housing, and the least we can do is give our retired boxers a share of it, so that they don't face life on the streets after their fighting days are over. We may not have all the resources that we should to properly train our Olympic hopefuls, but we do have vacant former military barracks that can be converted into apartments where our amateur athletes can live while they train. With his housing needs met in this way, a Golden Gloves champ might be able to go for Olympic gold instead of immediately turning pro.

Pedro Alcázar's untimely death is a tragedy. All Panama sincerely mourns his passing. But let's skip the platitudes and take a hard look at the full tragedy of both Panamanian boxing and its fallen champion.

Let's wipe away the tears and think positively. There are things that Panama can do for its own within the context of the present boxing system. This small isthmus with an honorable place among the world's great pugilistic powers can add its weight to a movement for professional boxing reform.

Let's do these things for Rockero.

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