The tragic tale of Tommy Morrison: Drugs, denial and finally death
The talented heavyweight had the world at his feet before his recklessness ended it all
Tommy Morrison was just a few hours away from a comeback bout that was supposed to lead him to Mike Tyson when he got the news inside the crowded casino at the MGM Grand hotel.
Chances are he already knew what was coming. A few days earlier he had refused to take a blood test mandated by Nevada boxing authorities, citing religious objections. He took it only after being told that without it he would not fight.
Morrison had tested positive for the HIV virus. Instead of fighting for the heavyweight title, he would now be in for the fight of his life.
As a white fighter, you get twice as much criticism. You have more to prove than black or Hispanic fighters
It seemed impossible. The blond Adonis who had beaten the fearsome George Foreman for the heavyweight title and starred with Sylvester Stallone in Rocky V was too fit, too strong, to carry the dreaded virus. Magic Johnson testing positive a few years earlier was shocking enough, but now a heavyweight contender with HIV, too?
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Morrison quickly got on a plane back to his native Oklahoma. The fights that night went on without him, and the crowd booed when told he wasn't fighting for undisclosed medical reasons.
Morrison would end up living another 17 years before he died last Sunday in a Nebraska hospital at the age of 44. But life as he knew it was over. There would be no Tyson fight. No more multimillion-dollar paydays. No more movies with Stallone.
"This is not a death sentence, by any means," he insisted a few months later.
But for the troubled Morrison, it was. He spent much of the remainder of his life in a fog of drugs and denial. Occasionally he would resurface, like he did in 2007 when he tried to resurrect his boxing career at the age of 38 in a fight for a few hundred dollars at a racetrack in West Virginia.