With news that Teina Pora has had his conviction for murder set aside it's easy to forget the identity of a man who spent 22 years in prison for a crime he may not have committed, in fact in my opinion couldn't possibly have committed. It's the nature of the concept of Justice that many in society who commit crimes and who are imprisoned are expected either to reform or to fail to reform in a conscious and most deliberate way. Teina Pora obviously does not have the cognizance of other prisoners or ex prisoners to make informed and reasoned decisions. He appears not to even understand that he is more vulnerable to brain damage than most, because he suffers Fetal Alochol Spectrum Diesease, something that a sufferer doesn't just recover from to the point of becoming a functioning person with a keen sense of what is right or wrong. Boxing is not a place for a brain damaged individual such as Pora.
Why Martin Snedden of Duco Promotions would defend Duco for entertaining an apparent request by Pora to engage in a televised boxing match is a mystery of the modern understanding of brain damage. Pora is already suffering underdeveloped brain function, with no apparent hope of being the same person he would have been for his mother not having drunk alcohol in excess during her pregnancy with Teina. Having him the ring is absurd. Perhaps Duco, like many others, rate Pora as a person capable of having matured from a youth who confessed to a crime that he had not committed, in a house he had never visited. That confession was the product of a mind in short circuit, having never had the capacity to open the vast array of corridors shut closed by the alcohol that the gestating baby Teina was fed. If you watched Duco's event last night in which Joseph Parker had top billing you will have noticed a man in Parkers entourage with Downs Syndrome near the front. I guess we can suppose he is part of the Parker family, someone no doubt appreciated and loved.
That man too, was Pora.
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