Each year, 13 boxers on average die in the rings
Updated 1:09 PM EDT, Thu October 17, 2019
(CNN)It’s a sport which can be a matter of life and death. Between 1890 and 2011, it’s estimated that 1,604 boxers died as a direct result of injuries sustained in the ring, according to a survey carried out Manuel Velazquez. That is an average of 13 deaths a year.
The American boxer Patrick Day, who died four days after suffering head injuries in a fight with his compatriot, Charles Conwell, is the sport’s latest fatality.
Day is boxing’s fourth recorded death in 2019 that has come as a direct consequence of injuries sustained in the ring.
In September, Bulgarian Boris Stanchion died while fighting under his cousin’s license in Albania.
In July, two boxers died just days between each other. Russian Maxim Dad Asheville, 28, died on July 23, four days after his light welterweight fight in Maryland and Hugo Alfredo San tillandsia, a Argentine, died on July 25, five days after collapsing at the end of a lightweight fight in Buenos Aires.
As well as those four fatalities, five other boxers were rushed to hospital as a result of injuries suffered in the ring and had to undergo surgery to remove blood clots in their brains, a BoxRec spokeswoman told CNN.
The deaths and serious injuries that occur in boxing, often lead to clamors for the sport to be banned.
“Boxing is certainly an easy and obvious target, and of course the criticism is understandable, if not completely fair,” a WBF spokesman told CNN Sport in response to those calls.
“Boxing does so much good for young people, keeps them off the streets, away from drugs, techs them discipline, self-confidence, that the good by far outweighs the bad.”
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