Wow. Just saw the eighth, ninth and tenth of this. It should have been stopped earlier, IMO - either by Victor Loughlin or by Gary Lockett. It shouldn't have needed to fall upon the physician to make a determination on the state of Nick's swollen eye; that was by then a secondary consideration (though being unable to see the punches coming was certainly a factor exacerbating the urgency of the situation and elevating the urgency of Blackwell needing to be saved from himself). There were points in the eighth - with uppercuts parting the guard and finding a home with startling consistency and frequency - where an intervention or towel hurl would have been perfectly appropriate. Hindsight is of course 20/20 and there is the sad reality of the eventual outcome to reckon with in examining what ought to have been done in the moment, but even viewed in vacuum without knowledge of what lay in store I think what Blackwell absorbed in those last couple of frames was, despite his bravery and flashes of competitive fire, more than enough for any level-headed fan to say "this is as far as this needs to go". It fell into that dangerous pitfall wherein CEJ didn't have quite the single-blow torque and Blackwell had too good a chin to reach its natural conclusion with a KO after that much punishment...or at least a KD to lend his own corner or the official an excuse to stop it without feeling they were opening themselves up to criticism or doing him a disservice.
Disappointing coming from a country where the refs have stopped fights were guys are just flailing there arms all crazy. This was absolutely a fight were one of those refs were needed. I blame the fans and the networks. Always screaming for knockouts. Not every fighter that gets in the ring is going to be knocked out. Blackwell is a tough dude, but I wish he knew his limits.
8/9/10 are all fine IMO, I thought Blackwell did enough to keep going to 10. He was given as much of an opportunity that a warrior would be expected to get. They could have stopped it earlier and I wouldn't have argued though
while watching, i thought the stoppage came at around the right time. i would've accepted if it came a couple rounds earlier, but i also wouldn't exactly have been *outraged* if it carried on a little longer - perhaps mildly concerned at most. i may well have been wrong, in retrospect, but as you say hindsight is 20/20, and we don't truly know how early the serious damage was done in any case. i don't tend to call for a stoppage if the guy is still defending himself, still throwing back, not looking wobbly etc, all of which was true of blackwell for the most part. perhaps that's the wrong policy and i should rethink it. it was a particularly awkward fight for judging damage though. eubank was kind of brutalising him for 30-60 second periods but then backing off, looking tired and letting blackwell back into it - plus, eubank always strikes me as a little vulnerable to counters and i never felt like there was *zero* chance of blackwell catching him and making things interesting. this, coupled with the fact that blackwell never looked genuinely rocked and still seemed pretty game, made it a difficult one to stop. that said, he was eating an awwwwwful lot of uppercuts.
I was implying it should be stopped in my RBR around the 6th and I got **** from some of the other posters for it, I could tell it was starting to go down hill in a big way, the fight should have been stopped at the end of the 7th or 8th. It was very irresponsible of Lockett and the ref.
If it had come in the 8th, it would have been fine, but people would have complained about a British stoppage afterwards. I thought he did just enough to stay in there and the stoppage in the 10th looked ok to me. Never expected things to turn ugly that fast. He got dominated alright, but I don't think anyone would have adressed this if Blackwell had walked away from it, it's a bit after the fact for me.
His trainer is the one to blame IMO. He is the one who shoul've known his fighter's limits, It's a part of their job to keep their fighters from taking unnecessary punishment. Now Blackwell's career is over. People should remember him next time they wanna comlain about a premature stoppage or call a fighter p*ssy for quitting.
blackwell never stopped coming forward and throwing punches even after a barrage of punches from eubank , british title fights are brutal and thats a fact of british boxing because if you win many doors open so both fighters usually fight harder than they have ever fought before . blackwell gave everything that night and is a true warrior , the 10th round stoppage sits fine with me , the aftermath is very sad and i wish him a full speedy recovery .
Simply "fighting back" isn't enough. You can't have your head bounced around for 10 punches and toss back a jab or slapping right and say "I'm fighting back" The fight wasn't competitive from around round 5/6. The kid was getting beaten up, and the fight was in no way competitive
Why aren't people blaming eubank jr for throwing the punches or Blackwell himself for allowing his ego to override the fact he was loosing and taking too much punishment? The fact is all of them are under pressure, eubank is under pressure to get the win, blackwell is under pressure to not quit, the corner is under pressure knowing blackwell would never want them to throw in the towel when his title is on the line the ref is under pressure to give the fans what they want , The magnitude of the fight billy joe and co ring side shouting has EVERYBODY under some sort of pressure that can skew peoples perceptions and actions in the heat of the moment. Instead of everybody blaming everybody why can't people just accept this is a tragic accident that NOBODY intentded, we are all human, we don't always make the best decisions but we can learn from the past and move on but only when we forgive others and ourselves in the process, we can look for somebody to blame till the end of time and it won't change a dam thing. Will people be happy if the ref takes full blame and we burn him to death and throw stones at him beat him to death? Just what exactly are you all looking to achieve by blaming people? Learn from this, try and make improvements and better decisions in the future stop looking to blame people who im sure are already feeling absolutely devastated about whats happened already and move forward.
I only watched the fight once but he took a lot of unanswered blows at one point in the 8th. I also don't think there's any shame in quitting or going into survival mode when you know your pretty much done.
Absolutely. The strangest thing to me was how not once was NB asked if he was feeling ok by either his corner or the ref. Instead we had Lockett telling him, 'this was the plan all along' after being beaten savagely for 9 rounds.
