By Scott Gilfoid: Former British middleweight champion Nick Blackwell is in a medically induced coma in a UK hospital after taking a beating against the highly ranked #2 WBA Chris Eubank Jr. last Saturday night in their fight in the UK. The referee halted the fight in the 10th round at the advice of the ringside doctor due to swelling in Blackwell’s left eye.
Blackwell then collapsed later on and was taken to a nearby hospital to be treated for a reported brain bleed. Eubank Jr. says his father Chris Eubank Sr. had told him to stop targeting Blackwell’s head during the second half of the fight, as Blackwell was getting beaten up and the referee wasn’t stepping to stop the fight.
Eubank Jr. says he eased off on Blackwell later in the fight and stopped going after him with head shots.
Eubank Sr. wanted him to throw body shots. However, Eubank Jr. was still throwing head shots in the 9th and 10th, but appeared not to be fighting with the same intensity as he had in the first eight rounds.
“I am looking at his face, I am looking at his eye and that’s when I kind of decided at the end of the fight to really back off,” said Eubank Jr. to skysports.com. “I stepped back and I just completely lowered the tempo. I started not throwing shots. I thought okay, my father’s telling me go to the body, stay away from the head. Obviously, he’s hurt, he’s in bad shape and I’m that far out in front, so let me give the referee an opportunity to really look at him properly. So I backed off and at that point the referee kind of looked at him, took him over to one side to the doctor and the doctor cut it off.”
It’s unfortunate that the referee didn’t stop the fight well before the ringside doctor stepped in to halt the fight, because from the 7th round, you can argue that it should have been stopped at that point. The first six rounds were horribly one-sided, but starting in the 7th, Eubank Jr. was just teeing off with impunity against Blackwell, who kept retreating to the ropes and covering up. To Blackwell’s credit, he was able to block almost everything that Eubank Jr. threw at him.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ezLO1D0GTxs
The only punches that Blackwell couldn’t block were the uppercuts that Eubank Jr. was throwing. Those shots were able to get through repeatedly without Blackwell knowing how to block them. It got really bad when Eubank Jr. was able to throw uppercuts over and over again without Blackwell being able to block any of them. Those shots were catching Blackwell under his chin and under his nose and snapping his head back violently each time they would land.
Blackwell’s nose was bleeding badly, and his face was bloody mess. I don’t know how the referee didn’t do the wise thing and stop the fight, because Blackwell wasn’t going to give up. He was willing to take all that punishment. He needed to be saved by the referee or his corner starting from the 7th round, and it didn’t happen until the 10th unfortunately.
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