I just watched Damiani vs Biggs (happened to be the next on a DVD I was watching of other fights) and I was thinking about Damiani's fight with Ray Mercer. I am pretty sure I have that on DVD somewhere, but I think my question may go beyond the play-by-play analysis, etc. Damiani surprised a lot of people by beating Mercer most of the fight (despite the shape he appeared to be in, etc.) before he got his nose clipped/broken and essentially quit. Fighters seem to get broken noses fairly frequently. Was there anything different in how his broke vs a "typical" broken nose? He was no stranger to cut eyes, etc. so I always wondered what was different, especially for fighting well up to that point?
This is just a guess as Ive been lucky enough to have never had a broken nose but: Most broken noses are essentially crunched by the blow coming straight on at the nose. Mercer's punch came from down below breaking the nose in an upward fashion. I could see that being much more painful because the bone, rather than collapsing into the nasal cavity, would have either had to shatter in on itself as the force was carried upwards toward the bridge, or splinter up and out. Thats seems to be a more painful and damaging scenario than the standard broken nose that most fighters are able to fight through.
He says something about it here: http://www.boxingnewsmagazine.com/view-Article.asp?ArticleID=65 Basically, it sounds like he quit. Damiani was very good. He could've done a lot more, but probably wasn't that interested in fighting or depnedent on it.
It looked to me as though it hurt like hell. Sometimes, a glancing blow to the nuts can hurt a lot more than a direct kick from somebody wearing steel toed shoes or heavy hiking boots. From what I gather, Mercer's seemingly light uppercut shattered the hell out of Damiani's nose. At the time, I was thinking of what Danny Lopez did to the nose of Mike Ayala with a seemingly light, measuring left. Of more concern to me was that Mercer didn't seem to learn anything from the Italian's schooling of him, but instead waited until again getting tutored by Holmes before admitting, "I guess I'd better learn how to box!" [Lennox almost paid very dearly for Ray's apprenticeship.]
All fighters get slight breaks to the nose but what happened to Damiani was a collapsed nose. You cannot continue. I have seen this injury in a gym, it is a rare freak punch that clips the tip of the nose pushing the cartilage into the bridge and the whole thing just collapses. It doesn't snap it collapses. When it snaps you get a slow bleed in the nasel passage and you need to swallow rather than blow your nose or you could send the blood into your eye. It's an irritation an occupational hazard but you can breath out of the nose so long as you swallow. With a collapsed nose you get a closing of the nasel passages at the top so you cant breath at all out of the nose, you can only breath from the mouth between swallowing. Because the flow is much faster you have to wait until your breathing slows down before you can continue so all the times I have seen this injury it is an instant knock out because it takes more than 10 seconds to control your breathing between blood rushing down the throat. The time I was in the gym the kid actually went green. Felt like he was drowning. Like water boarding. A very experienced fighter he was too who had had normal broken noses before. He was brought to his knees from a very light punch right on the tip of the nose. He needed to get his nose reconstructed after the swelling went down a week later.
Thanks for all of the responses. It definitely makes sense and I had no idea about the information choklab provided. It certainly looked like a freak occurrence.
He tore that nose up with that uppercut. Damiani was done right away... but he had been outboxing Mercer up until that point.
Damiani had quite a big nose. I've always considered the KO one of the truly rare examples of a "lucky punch" ... because Mercer's luck was in the fact that his punch "missed" the intended target and just glanced the tip of Damiani's nose, doing more damage that if it had actually connected as intended.
Correct. Nobody can time that kind of thing. Each time I have seen it happen (rarely at world level I might add) it is an accidental connection the way you described. The effect is instant and identical each time with the victim taken over with nausia, almost drowning on their own blood fighting for breath.
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