Stephan Johnson might die this morning. If he doesn't die today, he could die tomorrow, and if he doesn't die at all, some say he may be worse off than if he had.

Comatose since he was knocked out by Paul Vaden in the 10th round of a November 20th light-middleweight match in Atlantic City, the New York boxer developed pneumonia and a 104-degree fever earlier this week. Doctors performed an emergency tracheotomy yesterday to help him breathe, but breathing is literally the only sign of life Johnson has evinced in the past 12 days.

Boxing is a dangerous and sometimes brutal sport. Ring fatalities aren't common, but they do happen. The most tragic thing about this one, if and when Johnson expires, is that it was eminently preventable. Stephan Johnson should not have been fighting at all. If the "Muhammad Ali Boxing Reform Act," which the US Senate allowed to die on the vine that same week, had been in effect, he would not have been permitted to enter the ring.

Back in April, Johnson travelled to Toronto, where he was knocked out by a right hand delivered by Fitzroy Vanderpool, an outcome that eerily foreshadowed the denouement of his Atlantic City fight on November 20th. Following the Vanderpool loss, Johnson was suspended for 60 days and ordered to undergo a battery of medical tests. When he failed to complete two tests ordered by the Ontario Commission, he remained under medical suspension.

This did not prevent Johnson from being approved for subsequent fights in South Carolina and Georgia, where the administration of boxing is decidedly informal and virtually unregulated.

Following the Vanderpool loss, Johnson outpointed journeyman Otilio Villareal in South Carolina, and then in Georgia won another decision over Sam Garr. In October he registered a third-round knockout over Calvin Moody, who had gone into the fight with a 9-60 record.

In researching the 31-year-old Johnson's credentials for the Vaden fight, New Jersey officials never checked with the Commission in Ontario to see if he had been reinstated.

Matched against Vaden, a former world champion, but hardly known as a fearsome puncher, for a 12-round United States Boxing Association title fight on the undercard of that evening's Michael Grant-Andrew Golota heavyweight showdown, Johnson acquitted himself well. He was actually ahead on points on the cards of two of the ringside judges going into the fateful tenth.

Vaden sent him staggering backward with a jab. Vaden then missed a right hand but caught him with a left to the head that sent Johnson toppling over backward. The back of his head hit the lower ring rope before his body hit the canvas, and although referee Earl Morton began a count, he was interrupted by the time he got to "four," as ringside physician Rick Snepar and three other doctors raced to the boxer's side.

Johnson had gone into a Grand Mal seizure. Oxygen was administered in the ring, and he was taken from the arena and transported by ambulance to the Atlantic City Medical Centre, where he remains today, in critical condition with what was diagnosed as a subdural hematoma - blood collected between the brain and skill, causing swelling and pressure.

Even as the physicians were attending to the unconscious boxer, his trainer and manager Ken Woods was heard to marvel: "This was just like the one in Canada."

HBO, which was televising the card from the Trump Taj Mahal, didn't even show the Vaden-Johnson bout. As a prelude to Grant-Golota (won by Grant), the network instead showed a replay of the previous Saturday's Lennox Lewis-Evander Holyfield championship match.

Here's the kicker: The fight never should have happened, and had Senator John McCain's boxing reform law been in effect, it would not have. Although other issues - the recent indictments of several officials, dubious scoring in several title fights this year, and charges of corruption throughout the sport - have been more visible, one of the major tenets of the proposed legislation involves enhanced vigilance to protect boxers themselves through federal regulation. But for the third year in a row Congress adjourned without passing McCain's bill.

Once, the bill was passed by the Senate but not by the House of Representatives. On another occasion both houses passed it, but in differing versions, and Congress adjourned before a conference committee could come up with a compromise. This year the House passed the measure, but the Senate failed to act before the bell sounded.

The fact that McCain is an announced presidential candidate whose campaign would doubtless have gotten some mileage out of the Ali bill is, of course, purely coincidental.

When Johnson dies, his blood will be on their hands. And if he doesn't, the politicians who helped kill the boxing bill should be dragged to the hospital to view firsthand a tragedy they might have averted.