Boxer Nick Blackwell remains in an induced coma in hospital after being rushed to hospital with a bleed on his brain in the wake of his defeat to Chris Eubank Jr on Saturday night.
The incident has evoked eerie comparisons with the 1991 match between Eubank's father, Chris Snr, and Michael Watson, who was left in a wheelchair after the fight.
Footage from the fight has emerged showing Eubank Snr urging his son not to hit his opponent in the face at the end of the eighth round.
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
"If [the referee] doesn't stop it and we keep beating him like this... he is getting hurt," Eubank says. "You're not going to take him out to the face, you're going to take him out to the body."
The fight was eventually stopped in the tenth round and Blackwell collapsed soon afterwards, leaving the ring on a stretcher. He was taken to hospital with a small bleed on the brain and has been placed in a coma while the pressure subsides.
However, the debate over his injuries rages on, with neurosurgeon John Hamlyn, who operated on Watson after the 1991 fight, suggesting the fight "should have been stopped earlier".
He said that by the time the fight was stopped, Eubank was landing punches that "were causing violent movement of Blackwell's head and that's when you get the shearing and tearing of blood vessels and damage."
Hamlyn told The Guardian Blackwell had received "dozens and dozens" of "neuro-physically significant punches" while landing only two in return.
Eubank's efforts to get his son to target his opponent's body rather than his head were "informed by the grim memory of the night 25 years ago that he sent Michael Watson to the canvas and ultimately into a coma for 40 days," says Kevin Garside in The Independent. "Watson sustained permanent brain damage and after six operations, remains partially paralysed."
Today, he adds, "the anti-boxing lobby voices the familiar, stinging chorus of 'We told you so'. And at the centre of the crisis, Nick Blackwell lies inert in a hospital bed surrounded by doctors doing their utmost to bring back a fighter suffering the consequences of his trade."
One thing the sport can do is look at the issue of weight, says Gardside. Many fighters shed weight dramatically before fights and the "evidence points to a relationship between the dehydration that accompanies rapid weight loss and brain injury among fighters in lighter divisions".
For other commentators, this was a fight too far. Writing in The Times, Matthew Syed questions his support of boxing. "The trope that boxers wish merely to whack opponents but not damage them is pure intellectual evasion," he says. "While boxing gyms help youngsters to develop character, there are dozens of character-forming activities that don't involve hitting another person in the head."
But now is not the time for the wider debate. Nor should Victor Loughlin, the referee, be blamed for not ending the fight sooner, writes Kevin Mitchell of The Guardian. He was faced with "a determined, fit champion trying his best to hold on to his title under extreme pressure".
Using "Blackwell as an unconscious pawn" in a debate over boxing is "an unedifying spectacle", he adds.
Is it safe for refugees to return to Syria?
Quiz of The Week: 14 - 20 December
Drugmakers paid pharmacy benefit managers to avoid restricting opioid prescriptions
