Nick Blackwell in induced coma

By Boxing News - 03/27/2016 - Comments

blackwell4By Jeff Aranow: Following his 10th round stoppage loss to #2 WBA Chris Eubank Jr. (22-1, 17 KOs) last Saturday night, former British middleweight champion Nick Blackwell (19-4-1, 8 KOs) has been put into an induced coma in a hospital in London, England, according to Fight News. The 25-year-old Blackwell is said to have a brain bleed from the Eubank Jr. fight.

Moments after the fight, Blackwell collapsed. He had looked fine after the fight had ended, but he then went down and had to be taken out of the ring on a stretcher. Blackwell was given oxygen while being taken away. Blackwell was stopped in the 10th round due to swelling over his left eye. His left eye appeared to be completely closed. Referee Victor Loughlin halted the fight at 2:21 of the 10th.

“I spoke to one of the doctors this morning and he said there is a bleeding of the brain,” said British Boxing Board of Control general secretary Robert Smith to skysports.com. “He’s in intensive care, he’s in an induced coma and he is resting and being looked after by the experts. It’s a very normal procedure. They put you in a coma to get the swelling to go down. There’s no time-scale. Now it’s just a matter of waiting and seeing.”

The fight should have arguably been stopped earlier then the 10th round, because Blackwell was not fighting effectively from the 7th. He was retreating to the ropes and taking furious punishment from the 7th round on. The referee couldn’t stop the fight because Blackwell was technically firing punches back. It was a call that could have been made by his trainer if he had been astute enough to see how hopeless Blackwell’s situation was.

Eubank Jr. was missing a lot of his punches in the fight. However, he couldn’t miss with his uppercuts. He was able to hit Blackwell repeatedly with those vicious punches. In some cases, Eubank Jr. was able to hit Blackwell with three consecutive uppercuts thrown one after another. Blackwell had no defense against that punch, and it looked like he hadn’t properly trained in how to negate it by using head movement.

Blackwell was bleeding from the nose from the 3rd round from the uppercuts that Eubank Jr. had been nailing him with. Blackwell was able to land shots when Eubank Jr. would tire from hitting him, and back up against the ropes. However, Blackwell lacked he punching power to make Eubank Jr. pay.

This was a fight that probably should have never been made. Eubank Jr. had already established himself as a world level fighter in the pass two years in fights against Billy Joe Saunders, Gary O’Sullivan and Dmitry Chudinov. There was no point in Eubank Jr. going back to the domestic level to win the British title at this point in his career. Fighting at that level was arguably unfair to his opponent, because he was just too good to be fighting someone like Blackwell.

Eubank Jr. says he now wants to fight for a world title. We’ll see if he does that or if he continues to fight domestic level fighters.



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