Tragedy strikes again: Dadashev passes away post fight

Tragedy hits the boxing community again as another promising talent, Maxim Dadashev, passes away at the young age of 28. The news followed his bout when he was taken to a US hospital after sustaining injuries during his fight. Dadashev was a Russian boxer who fought, Subriel Matias, the man from Puerto Rico on Friday night, MGM National Harbor in Oxon Hill, Maryland.

The winner of the bout was going on to be a challenger to Josh Taylor for his title belt.

Matias was ahead on the scorecard when Buddy McGrit, Dadashev’s trainer, put a stop to the fight after the 11^th round. It is reported that Dadashev was helped out of the ring. He has lost consciousness after the fight.

Initially, he was taken to UM Prince George’s Hospital Center in Cheverly, Maryland. There he went an emergency brain surgery for a subdural hematoma. Later, the doctors put him in a medically induced coma so that the swelling on his brain would go down. Unfortunately, he never woke up.

This is not the first time that boxers have died in the ring during or after a brutal fight. Some noticeable names follow:

• Guillermo Gonzalez, known as Pedro “El Rockero” Alcazar who won the WBO Super flyweight championship, sustained injuries in the ring. It led to his death in 2002.
•  Leavander Johnson, an American lightweight boxer who held the international boxing federation version of the title died of brain injuries in 2005. He passed away after winning the title against the Italian fighter Stefano Zoff.
• Benjamin Flores died in 2009 after sustaining injuries during a fight he lost from Al Seeger.
• Last year, Christian Daghio was knocked down twice in the final round of his WBC Asia title fight against Don Parueang. He died in the hospital after sustaining brain damage.
• Another dreadful event similar to this was that of Adonis Stevenson who was unconscious for a number of days before he regained his consciousness – a victory over death.

Traditional sports revolve around teamwork and minimal violence. However, in combat sports you are alone in the ring where the only goal is to not be KO’ed by your opponent-which makes it violent. As the audience boos or cheers their respective fighters, they don’t realize that people in the ring have sustained repeated blows to the head. And there is only so much a human being can take.

It is easy to criticize an athlete’s performance from outside the ring but imagine being repeatedly hit for 10 rounds and still managing to gather the strength to walk out the ring on your own. Anytime, a man or a woman decides to step in the ring, they acknowledge that there is a chance they will sustain life-threatening injuries. Or not make it out alive.

Sometimes, they need to be saved from their selves

But combat sports, with all the violence, that it entails, is a beautiful way to show human resilience, strength, and discipline. It highlights the fight against ‘adversity’ in its truest form. The sports are a depiction of a human being’s grit and endurance at a time where most would want to call it quits. As long as there’s breath in a combat sports athletes’ chest and a beating heart, they will always opt to fight.

Dadashev, entered the ring realizing that there is a potential for greatness in all of us. He knew that however far he would get-like any other combat sport athlete-it was as far as he was capable of going. His trainer stopped the fight while he still believed that he could carry on. Sometimes, toughness, heart, grit, and iron will be an athlete’s biggest downfall.

As the boxing community mourns the loss of a rising athlete, it is important to realize that these people are also human. Regardless of their performance in the ring-they deserve our utmost respect and admiration. These people put their lives on the line for our entertainment.

That being– Combat Sports is not your usual day at the office. We urge our fans, customers, readers, competitors; the industry, to exercise caution in and out of the ring at all times. Most of the time a grave injury can be the result of accumulated damage over long training sessions before the fight.

Exercise restraint wherever you can afford to. The person you’re fighting or sparring is a human being with a family – too.