By Allan Fox: Adonis Stevenson still remains in a coma three weeks following his 11th round knockout loss to mandatory challenger Oleksander Gvozdyk on December 1 at Centre Videotron, Quebec City, Canada, according to ESPN.com. Stevenson, 41, is still on mechanical respiration to assist him with breathing following brain surgery on the night of the fight. There’s no improvement on Stevenson’s condition as of now.
(Photo credit Amanda Westcott/SHOWTIME)
Stevenson’s promoter Yvon Michel said to AP and ESPN.com that the “doctors do not venture an opinion on what lies ahead” for him, but that he “needs mechanical assistance to breathe.”
Stevenson (29-2-1, 21 KOs) was ahead on the scorecards in the 11th round when he was dropped by a five-punch combination by Gvozdyk. It was a sudden thing where one second Stevenson was looking fine, and the next Gvozdyk was unloading on him with heavy shots that were connecting cleanly to the head of the champion. Gvozdyk was able to land some shots after Stevenson was seemingly defenseless on his feet after being badly hurt. At that point, Stevenson went down on the canvas, and the referee Michael Griffin didn’t hesitate in waiving off the fight immediately. Stevenson wasn’t going to rise to his feet to beat the count if there was one given. The way that Stevenson went down, the referee understood that he was too hurt for him to administer a count
After the fight ended, Stevenson went back to his dressing room where his condition worsened, and he needed to be taken to the hospital in an ambulance. At the hospital, Stevenson was operated on for his brain injury.
At this stage it’s still unclear how long it’ll take for Stevenson to come out of the coma. It’s been 3 weeks since Stevenson’s injury. It’s going to take more time before Stevenson’s condition becomes more clear in terms of his long term outlook.
Before losing to Gvozdyk, Stevenson had held the World Boxing Council title since 2013 after stopping Chad Dawson in the 1st round. Stevenson had defended the WBC title nine times, and he was seen by many boxing fans as the best fighter in the 175 lb weight class for a number of years. Unfortunately, Stevenson never fought some of the other top light heavyweights like Sergey Kovalev, Dmitry Bivol, and Artur Beterbiev. A fight that many people in the boxing world wanted to see was Stevenson vs. Andre Ward. That would have been a great one.
Fans and Boxing News 24 are hoping Stevenson can pull through this and recover fully.