http://www.BS.com/virgil-hunte ... ed--117251
Decisions like the one Hunter made have to be made by trainers more often, because nearly everyone in boxing is discouraged from getting in the way of serious injury.
Fighters who take a knee are “quitters.” Referees who stop fights “ripped people off.” Jurisdictions that don't license fighters are “taking food off their tables.”
In stepping up and saving his fighter, Hunter was accused online of being everything from an overrated trainer to a variety of improprieties as absurd as wanting to beat the Montreal traffic.
What Hunter is, is a man who saw Fonfara, who statistically gets hit with more power punches than any other high level fighter in the sport, getting drubbed by Stevenson, statistically the most accurate power puncher in the sport. Combined with the erosion Fonfara had experienced in wars over the year, most notably a savage battle with Nathan Cleverly, and no amount of defensive training over an eight week training camp was realistically going to yield an outcome other than him getting knocked out.
It's precisely the insistence that anything short of that is an insufficient effort that leads to tragic situations like the one another former Stevenson opponent, David Whittom, is in right now.
Whittom is currently in a medically induced coma following a May 27 bout against Gary Kopas in Fredericton, New Brunswick. The footage of the bout is grotesque, with a clearly incapacitated Whittom being stood up and allowed to take two extra haymakers following a knockdown before the fight was stopped.
Prior to Fonfara's bout against Cleverly, he said in an interview that his goals in boxing were to make enough money to be secure, and one day train fighters in Chicago. Modest aspirations, ones that indicate that the fight game is a means to hopeful financial stability just like any other job.
Perhaps the most memorable corner stoppage in recent memory was Billy Briscoe's saving of Gabe Rosado against Gennady Golovkin. Prior to throwing in the towel, Briscoe could be heard yelling to Rosado's father, “I gotta stop it, your son's gonna die.”
On live television, Briscoe sharply vocalized the grave danger that exists in boxing, a fact willingly ignored all too often at every level in the sport.
Boxing is not a bloodsport. It is an athletic competition involving human beings. It is an unthinkably dangerous vocation that requires men and women to dedicate their whole lives. They spend years mastering an otherwise useless skill, and once they have, wager their own physical currency for the chance at making money. Every little decision made in boxing—particularly whether to continue fighting or not—should be done so with the consideration of health and future prosperity, not whether the ending of a bout is horrific enough for a perverse portion of the audience.
