A sensitive topic: Ring fatalities from punchers and non-punchers

In the case of Bejines, that previous stoppage loss was a corner retirement due to a dislocated elbow. He'd been on a good run (beating former challenger Hurricane Teru and former champ Julian Solis) to work his way into consideration, and retained his ranking due to the extenuating circumstances that forced his withdrawal in his previous fight. If a fighter suffers a loss due to a freak accident, he probably shouldn't be penalized that much in terms of how he's rated.

It's of note that Bejines was up on two cards going into the fateful 12th round, and was even on the third. He didn't seem overmatched for much of the contest.

 

Foreman has said that when he was younger he wanted to kill someone in the ring because it would make him more famous.

 

But that inactivity is precisely where I'm going with this. I just don't think he was fighting fit. He had a good active schedule before all this so this inactivity could not have helped him. Davila himself heard that he was done in the previous round and had asked his corner to stop it. Exhaustion, a bad corner, and an organization that gave false hope by keeping him at #1 when he should have fought his way back. I don't believe Hector Thompson was given that consideration when his knee went out against Javier Ayala. He had to fight his way back.

 

Power can cause damage but a spark out can save a fighter from accumulated and sustained damage. I fought guys with hard hands that felt like rocks or bricks and heavy handed guys that could move you and snap your head back...but the most damage in fights are IMO from guys with good power but not enough to KO the guy but beat them into mush over long periods of fighting...even a light punching fighter can snap a head back and cause a TBI especially if it happens over and over again over the totality of the fight. I was adamant to do tons of neck exercises and insist in my fighters do the same the most important part of the neck to prevent head snap causing the brain to bounce around is the straps the front and sides and chewing gum for hours a day to toughen the jaw muscles from the chin to the temples. Time to recover in between fights....there was an idea that the smaller gloves of yesteryear killed more people but actually the larger gloves add weight to punches therefore more snap

 

Baer nwas a murderous puncher and braddock said if he got mad he could kill you

 

Yeah, a year away from the ring probably didn't help him going into the fight. There were rumors that he had a hard weight cut, too...Maybe fighting more frequently after the injury and taking a tune-up might have aided his cause and allowed him to cut weight more easily. The problem was...He did pretty well during the fight, and even though Davila was finishing strong, Bejines was firing back and landing often enough to appear competitive. So, it's a tough call for the official to make, since Kiko seemed to be in the fight and didn't show any apparent signs of distress until just seconds before the finish. Even tougher call for the corner, who may have felt that their charge was still in position to win the fight if he made it to the final bell.

There are definitely instances where bad management, bad officiating and poor match-making have played a role in a fighter's death. But every now and then, it seems like it's just a situation where things go south before anyone can do anything about it. Based on my memory of the fight, this seems to be one of those occasions.