Morrison Awaiting HIV Test Results

JAY, Okla. —  Wednesday was the longest day of Tommy Morrison’s life.

Although already resigned to the fact that he has HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, and grateful that the discovery was made early, the heavyweight boxer was still clinging to the faint hope that the test, taken in Nevada, was in error.

And Morrison was desperately hoping that his fiancee, Dawn Freeman, had not contracted the virus from him.

So all day Wednesday, Morrison and Freeman hung around Morrison’s ranch outside this small town and awaited the results of tests done here.

As day dragged into night, Tony Holden, Morrison’s manager, said the results probably wouldn’t be back until Thursday morning.

“To a certain extent, it still has not hit me,” Morrison told a reporter. “First, I’ve got to get back the results.”

One thing that did hit Morrison hard was the insinuation that he had known he was HIV positive, and had still agreed to fight Arthur Weathers last Saturday at the MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas.

Morrison admitted that he had refused to take a routine blood test last Wednesday, then agreed to it on Thursday. But he now says it was only because he wanted his attorney present.

“I’m actually glad it happened,” said Morrison of the positive result, “because it allows me to get my story out there. That is, if, in fact, the second test comes back positive.”

The results of Morrison’s first test were relayed to him hours before the Weathers fight. It was, he says, the first time he had been tested for the HIV virus in several years.

Nevada is one of only four states to require prefight HIV tests for boxers, the others being Arizona, Washington and Oregon. Wednesday, New York became the fifth, and legislation is being introduced that would add California to the list. In addition, promoter Don King said he will require all fighters on his boxing promotions to be tested for AIDS.

Morrison, 27, says he is thankful for the Nevada requirement.

“I don’t know how many years I would have gone on fighting,” he said. “and people could have been infected.”

Although still awaiting the newest test results, Morrison has already gotten on with life as an HIV victim.

He spoke by phone Tuesday night with the world’s most famous HIV-positive person, the Lakers’ Magic Johnson. Johnson stressed the importance of diet, advised Morrison to carefully check the various drugs available for treatment, offered to have his own doctor check Morrison’s blood and promised to meet the fighter when their respective schedules allow.

Comments of those around Morrison reflect a common opinion that he contracted the virus through heterosexual promiscuity.

“I think there was a time period there,” Tommy Virgets, Morrison’s trainer, told the Associated Press, “when Tommy shopped for women like going into a candy store. Tommy, like so many people, got caught up in it and thought he was bulletproof.”

In the most trying time of his life, Morrison has come back to his roots. Born across the state line in Gravette, Ark., Morrison moved into this small Oklahoma city of 2,600 at age 3.

And he has left his mark here, both good and bad.

He was a star football player at Jay High, an all-state linebacker who earned a football scholarship to Kansas’ Emporia State.

But Morrison also had problems here. A local paper, the Delaware County Journal, ran a list of lowlights of Morrison’s career on Wednesday, which include the fathering of children with two Jay women, an arrest for drunken driving in the nearby town of Grove and an upcoming trial on charges of assaulting one woman and biting the finger of another.

“There’s a bad feeling about his checkered past,” said John Reid, managing editor of the Delaware County Journal. “There’s a feeling that this guy came in here, got these girls pregnant and then just left them high and dry.”

A reporter visiting the Mease Medical Clinic, located in the center of town, was greeted with a terse “No comment” after asking if there was any panic over the Morrison revelation.

But a stack of sheets at the front desk said it all. The heading on each sheet read, “Understanding AIDS.”

Still, many locals are proud of Morrison. A sign at the entrance to town proclaims, “Welcome to Jay, home of the 1993 WBO heavyweight champ, Tommy “The Duke” Morrison.”

But the love-hate relationship he has with his hometown might best be summarized by another sign that formerly read “Home of the Duke.” The “D” has been replaced with a “P.”

Gordon Ruland, who runs a gym in Jay where Morrison works out regularly, is tired of the local hostility toward the fighter.

“Some people have always been jealous of him,” Ruland said, “and so they become negative. I would not wish what happened to him on anybody.

“He was brought up here as a good Christian boy and he never really went away. He became a big movie guy [with a part in ‘Rocky V’], but here, he was always just Tommy. He doesn’t hold his nose up in the air. I think he is just a nice guy. After the Oklahoma City bombing, he donated part of one of his purses to the victims. If people don’t like him, I wish they would just shut up.”

So much for the sleepy, little town where the cows outnumber the people and the people wouldn’t have it any other way.

No more. Suddenly, Jay has become a national dateline, the media horde is arriving and the natives are choosing up sides.

Perhaps the sign in front of a Jay church at the end of town Wednesday best sums up the whole situation. It reads: “Life makes some people better and some people bitter.”