Stars Flock to Vegas for Fight Night

December 9, 2007

A-Listers flocked to Sin City on Saturday night to get ringside seats at the Hatton/Mayweather fight. We're talking some serious heavy hitters, and that's not even counting the men of the night — Angelina, Brad, Gwen, Gavin, Becks, Kid Rock, Denzel, the list goes on. Unfortunately, British all-star Hatton couldn't hold up to Mayweather, who won the fight knocking out Hatton in the 10th round. It seems like a break from the norm for some of these celebrities — David Beckham had a night off from the Spice Girls, Brad and Angelina took some time off from their projects and Gwen and Gavin weren't on tour. Hey, nothing like a little bloody action for a relaxing night on the town, right?

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To see more of all the celebrities at the fight and on their way out just read more

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53 Comments

spitfire 5 years 23 weeks

vampy I'm a nurse and I work with Parkinson's patients on a daily basis, I don't understand why you take such offence to the term "brain damaged". It's what it is, it's REALITY...it's unfortunate for your father's condition but I don't get what you want me to do...NOT state the obvious because it might hurt your feelings??? It's medical terminology describing the condition of the brain when something has been damaged there. What else did you want me to say..brain afflicted or brain impaired? Either way, I was just giving my opinion as to why I don't like boxing...even the experts can't agree on what causes Parkinson's which by the way is closely related to Alzheimer's and Alzheimer's has been said to run in families AND caused by outside influences, just like Parkinson's, I didn't say that ALL cases of Parkinson's is caused by head injuries, just as ALL cancers aren't caused by smoking.

lilflowa 5 years 23 weeks

I think for some ppl they still find the idea of brad pitt hot...like how he was back in the day :drool: ...so they insist on looking pass his current fugness :rotfl: ...like seriously...he had his day...ugh now he just looks like an old man that use to be hot....he needs to hand over the title to lil maddox soon!

hills 5 years 23 weeks

for me david and brad are the same sort of hotness,but in different ways, brads more angelical whereas david is cheeky chappie and sexy smile

DeeDaw 5 years 23 weeks

P.s. I agree with you Nina... Beckham is not hot hot hot..like Brad. But i think its his teeth..and close mouthed smile. Iunnnnnnno.

DeeDaw 5 years 23 weeks

I never understood why people liked watching other people fight... But, I started watching this show "The Contender". And now, I like boxing.

hills 5 years 23 weeks

im like girlie girl but was completely behind ricky, hes so lovely and proud of him. daivd is so sexy!

blob 5 years 23 weeks

I'm not a fan of Beckham but damn if Brad Pitt doesn't look like a haggard busted middle-aged man next to him. He shouldn't stand next to Gavin Rossdale either. Mangie done turned him into an old man.

lilflowa 5 years 23 weeks

:rotfl: at angie looks like she's balding...too funny. Becks looks aiight, Brad looks haggard and Denzel bless him! look at the concentration :rotfl:

benna 5 years 23 weeks

Angie does look like she is balding.........and I wish Brad would lose that hat. Becks on the other hand looks FAB!!

dollymama 5 years 23 weeks

angie looks like she's going bald. probably from malnourishment.

Vampy 5 years 23 weeks

Like I said Spitfire, I agree with you in principle with regards to boxing, but I can tell you that my father has no history of head injury whatsoever and he has Parkinson's. And I take deep personal offense at the usage of the term brain damage, no matter how appropriate, simply because when one thinks of brain damage, one automatically conjours up images of terminally stupid, drooling people. The majority of Parkinson's sufferers are not that. Remember that you are talking to the daughter of a Parkinson's sufferer, certain terms are deep painful. Is there a link between boxing and Parkinson's? I don't know, beyond Mohammed Ali having boxed and now suffering from Parkinson's. From Parkinsons.org. Currently a lot of the research is concentrated on trying to identify and locate the genes (or combination of genes) that lead to Parkinson's Disease. To date mutations have been found in four genes that are associated with Parkinson's Disease. The four genes are: alpha-synuclein, parkin, ubiquintin carboxyl terminal hydrolase, SCA2 and DJ-1. These mutations have been found to have a role in abnormal protein processing in cells. Researchers have found that these mutations lead to cell death. This cell death extends to neurons that release dopamine.

mswindang 5 years 23 weeks

yey! brangie night out again... denzek is really into the game.. so fun!

cakes7873 5 years 23 weeks

I LOVE KID ROCK!

Imabeliever 5 years 23 weeks

I wonder what the conversation was like on the Jolie Pitt flight to LV with Gavin and Gwen? That seems like a fun crowd. And I wonder who flew? Do Brad and Angie bicker when they pilot..co-pilot? LOL!

LuciLu 5 years 23 weeks

i love that brad and angie are buddies with gwen and gavin! so cute! :)

Zahara Pitt 5 years 23 weeks

:COCKTAIL:

spitfire 5 years 23 weeks

Opps..I deleted much of the article..I didn't know it was still going to be this long. :(

spitfire 5 years 23 weeks

This article was Printed in the New York Times TODAY here is some of it...Mahammed Ali does have brain damage by the way. Parkinson's is form of brain damage...It's a disease of the brain which 'damages' it. Head injuries of any kind are related to Parkinson's and Michael J Fox stated that he fell and hit his head on the corner of his bedpost playing around when he was a kid...it could be related, ofcourse nothing is proven, just as with Alzheimer's but they are looking in to it...Sorry it's so long...and welcome to POP Dr. Barry Jordan enjoys boxing matches but he is also watching the action from another perspective. A neurologist at the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York, Dr. Jordan has led a small group of doctors in a campaign to make boxing safer by bringing medical supervision and research to the ring. In doing so, they are challenging the American Medical Association and the American Academy of Neurology, which regard boxing as so inherently injurious to the brain that it should be banned. Although the young men in bright trunks who slip between the ropes at Gleason's seem to feel invulnerable, doctors warn that the thousands of head blows a professional boxer suffers can lead to permanent brain damage and blindness, even if he is never knocked out. Sometimes the damage does not become apparent until years after the fighter's career is over. For example, the once graceful and glib Muhammad Ali now shuffles when he walks and slurs his words when he speaks, the victim of Parkinson's Syndrome, a type of brain damage that can be caused by boxing. Dr. Jordan and his colleagues advocate numerous measures: gloves designed to prevent eye damage, ringside physicians who can stop a fight and, most important, frequent brain scans and eye examinations to detect early signs of injury and take fighters out of the ring before they are permanently impaired. In New York, where Dr. Jordan is the medical director of the State Athletic Commission, professional boxers must be cleared yearly with neurologic examinations, CT scans of the head, electroencephalograms to assess the brain's electrical activity, and thorough eye examinations by an ophthalmologist. Dr. Jordan is studying the use of magnetic resonance imaging of brains to pick up even more subtle warnings of damage. California is the only other state with a similarly strict medical code and about 8 percent of applicants for a boxing license are turned away on medical grounds, said Dr. Frederick Flynn, a neurological consultant to the California State Athletic Association. ''But most states have little or no evaluation,'' he said, adding that sometimes when boxers ''fail our exam, they go over the border.'' Last week Aaron Pryor, fought and won a match in Wisconsin after being barred from boxing in four other states because he had suffered a serious eye injury. Nevada requires no in-depth neurological evaluation, and New Jersey relies heavily on electroencephalograms, a fact that Dr. Flynn calls ''an absolute joke'' because the procedure is a poor tool for picking up early brain impairment. Criticized as Inherently Unsafe But for boxing's critics, no amount of regulation will make boxing safe. ''Our position is that there's no way to protect the brain or prevent injury,'' said Dr. Nelson Richards, past president of the American Academy of Neurology. ''It was wrong of the gladiators to go after each other in ancient Rome. And it's wrong to box.'' When he was Surgeon General, Dr. C. Everett Koop wanted to have boxing eliminated from the Olympics, but that failed. Last year several military physicians at the Fitzsimons Army Medical Center in Aurora, Colo., published a survey of the injuries caused by army boxing in The Journal of the American Medical Association, and they have since urged that the sport be banned from bases and the service academies, where it is required for men. From 1980 to 1985, 410 Army boxers were hospitalized after boxing matches, said Dr. Robert Enzenauer, an author of the study. Doctors involved in amateur boxing, where matches are short and fighters wear headgear, have steadfastly maintained that their sport was safe and was unlikely to lead to permanent brain damage. Dr. Robert Voy, chairman of the medical commission of the U.S.A. Amateur Boxing Federation, which organizes amateur boxing in the nation, said his group was financing research at the Johns Hopkins University Medical School to study brain injuries in amateur competitors. Boxers suffer a wide variety of injuries in the ring: concussions from knockouts, cuts around the eyes and broken bones. Each year a few die, generally from an expanding blood clot under the skull, which literally suffocates the brain. But recently, doctors have come to worry far more about permanent damage caused gradually by long-term participation. ''Chronic brain injury from prolonged low-level trauma is the big problem,'' said Dr. Jordan. Decades Later, a Problem Sometimes decades after they leave the ring, professional boxers are shockingly prone to early dementia that resembles Alzheimer's disease, to a movement disorder that resembles Parkinson's disease and to a host of problems with memory, coordination, speech and thought. ''Muhammad Ali had a reputation for not getting knocked out much, but he took a lot of punches and he's a mess,'' said Dr. Raymond Enzenauer, who conducted the Army study with his brother. Although boxing enthusiasts dispute the figures, some experts say that as many as 70 to 80 percent of retired boxers show signs of neurological damage and that every boxer who has fought more than 50 fights will be impaired. A landmark British study in the 1960's found that 17 percent of retired professionals exhibited dementia pugilistica, or ''punch drunk'' syndrome, the most extreme form of boxing dementia. Slowly progressive eye injuries, usually unnoticed in their early stages, also occur with alarming frequency. Dr. Lawrence A. Yannuzzi and colleagues at the Manhattan Eye, Ear and Throat Hospital found in 1987 that 58 percent of a group of professional boxers with good eyesight nonetheless had ''vision-threatening injuries'' that were revealed on thorough examination. These included cataracts, or clouding of the eye's lens, and retinal tears, or rips of the membrane at the back of the eye that predispose a person to retinal detachment causing sudden blindness. Bleeding With Each Blow Dr. Yannuzzi and his colleagues estimated that after 100 bouts, virtually all boxers would have a retinal injury. Most doctors agree that the bulk of nonfatal head injuries in boxing are caused by the stretching and tearing of small nerves and vessels in the gelatinous brain when a punch accelerates the skull through the air. When the skull starts moving, the brain lags behind and when the skull stops short, the brain crashes into it and ''reverberates,'' said Dr. George D. Lundberg, the editor of The Journal of the American Medical Association and a vigorous opponent of boxing. With each head blow ''there is a small amount of bleeding and a few cells are damaged and die,'' he said. The youthful brain has an abundance of nerve cells, so the damage is often unnoticed during a fighter's prime, but a normal attrition of neurons occurs with aging and as a result many fighters first show signs of dementia or lose coordination in middle age. Neurologists are working to make the sport safer by trying to pinpoint subtle changes in examinations and scans that portend serious future damage in order to whisk fighters out of the ring in time. Although skeptics abound, these doctors feel there is a volume of boxing that causes no permanent neurological damage. 'A Period of Relative Safety' ''No neurologist is going to say that being struck in the head is good,'' said Dr. Flynn. ''I think if studies show there is a period of relative safety, then I would be in favor of maintaining strong controls, but allowing the sport to continue.'' Dr. Flynn and his colleagues in California have been studying 1,400 boxers who applied for licenses in the last several years. They have given them neurological and psychiatric tests to see when they first show the subtlest signs of decline. These early changes would not be obvious to the boxer himself and would not even be detected by CAT scans, he said. In some boxers, generally those who are frequent fighters, the California group has detected changes in a single year. Boxers are denied a license if they fail the two-hour neurological screening or show a significant decline in performance from previous examinations. Last year a $250,000 bout that was scheduled to appear on cable television on the ESPN network was moved to another state, reportedly after both boxers failed. Would Mike Tyson pass the test? ''It's hard to say,'' said Dr. Flynn, ''He hasn't taken it.'' Using New Techniques In New York, Dr. Jordan is using examinations combined with CT scans and electroencephalograms to screen potential fighters and says he turns down 2 to 5 percent of the applicants. He is also studying the use of magnetic resonance imaging, a new technology which is very sensitive to minor brain abnormalities. In a recent issue of The Journal of the American Medical Association he reported being able to find abnormalities in professional boxers that were missed even by CT scans. The connection between these subtle findings and the eventual development of significant brain damage is still uncertain, Dr. Jordan said, but he added, ''The idea is to do enough research to know what to look for on M.R.I., so that we can tell fighters when to quit.'' Both doctors said that until more studies were completed, they allowed fighters to box when test results were borderline or ambiguous. New York and California have also led the way in demanding that boxers have thorough eye examinations each year, including dilation, in which the pupil is expanded and the back of the eye is surveyed. Boxers who have a history of a retinal detachment, a condition sometimes caused by trauma in which the thin membrane at the back of the eyeball lifts off its base, are generally prohibited from fighting. Even when the retina is successfully tacked down the eye is forever vulnerable to blindness. In 1984, Sugar Ray Leonard risked his eyesight to defend his title for $2 million in Las Vegas, Nev., a year after such an injury. Boxing ophthalmologists point out that Sugar Ray Seales, who was an Olympic boxing champion a few years before Leonard, is blind from retinal detachments. Other medical efforts have focused on training referees and ringside doctors how to better recognize signs of serious neurological problems. By law, two doctors are at every fight in New York. Dr. Jordan trains the doctors and fight referees with a tape of a title bout in 1979 that led to the death of Willie Classen. ''I think that fight went too long,'' he said, citing changes in the fighter's coordination and level of alertness. Critics worry that even the sharpest neurologist's eyes and the most sensitive tests cannot detect the accumulating damage that leads to chronic neurological problems, since the injury is initially microscopic. The brains of boxers that appeared normal on CT scans have shown torn neural pathways and even small hemorrhages when examined at autopsy. ''My view is that it is still not acceptable to get yearly checks,'' said Dr. Richards. ''By the time you can see it, the damage is done.'' In several European countries medical opposition has given rise to ''chest boxing'' in which punches above the clavicle are prohibited. Although American fighters are rewarded no premium for successful head blows, they frequently aim for the target since a knockout is the surest route to victory.

Vampy 5 years 23 weeks

Spitfire, Mohammed Ali does not have brain damage. He has Parkinson's Disease which is not 'brain damage'. I also doubt that's caused by boxing, since Michael J. Fox has never boxed, the late Pope John Paul II didn't box to my knowledge, and my father has never boxed. All three are among the many who suffer from Parkinson's. While his doctors did debate whether or not his Parkinson's was the result of his career in boxing, as far as I am concerned, based on my experience as a family member of a sufferer, I personally believe that he would have developed Parkinson's no matter what he did for a living. I'm no lover of boxing either, and agree with you in the sentiment, but I just wanted to correct your assumption that a neurological syndrome suffered by hundreds of thousands of people around the world was directly caused by boxing and considered 'brain damage' when it is not. http://www.wpda.org/ - World Parkinson's Disease Association (Oh, and I is new to Popsugar...hola!)

whatever100 5 years 23 weeks

Never mind, I now understand the way the sentence was supposed to read. It's early.

whatever100 5 years 23 weeks

"and that's not even counting the men of the night — Angelina, Brad, Gwen, Gavin, Becks, Kid Rock, Denzel, the list goes on." So now popsugar considers Angelina a man? Wow.

allourregrets 5 years 23 weeks

Nina-I think you are definatly in the minority there! David is one of the few guys that I can sit there and drool over and my boyfriend will just laugh it off because even he knows that hes hot! lol.

NinaG 5 years 23 weeks

I know I'm going to attract a lot of negativity here: but am I the only one who finds Beckham really NOT hot? (Maybe I have heard him speak one too many times)

lilegwene 5 years 23 weeks

Wow, you don't have to be so catty! Gwen and Angelina look great! Boxing is a gruesome sport that I don't support, but there are safeguards. Unlike dog-fighting where the losers are killed, and innocent dogs are used as "bait."

Karma-Co 5 years 23 weeks

Yum, Beckham is F-I-N-E!

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