By Kim Tong-hyung
Staff Reporter
Boxing in recent years has been experiencing a quick and disgraceful fall into irreverence. Now, with the country's last standing champion lapsing into a coma, just minutes after defending his title, the troubled sport finds itself mopped up on the canvas.
Choi Yo-sam, the World Boxing Organization intercontinental flyweight champion, defeated Indonesia's Heri Amol on points in Tuesday's fight but collapsed shortly after the fight.
The 33-year-old South Korean took a number of hard hits to the head during the action-packed fight and was floored after taking a hard right to his jaw in the last few seconds of the 12th and final round. Choi got back on his feat and managed to finish the bout, but fell unconscious after returning to his corner. He was taken to the Soonchunhyang University Hospital where he underwent brain surgery for a cerebral hemorrhage.
Choi remained in a coma Wednesday with doctors giving cloudy forecasts on the outlook of his recovery.
``Right now, we are relying on drugs to relieve intra-cranial pressure and stop the bleeding, but we can't say he is in any better condition that he was yesterday. It will take at least a week to tell whether he will ever regain consciousness,'' said Dr. Park Hyeong-ki, adding that Choi's boxing career was all but over even should he manage to survive.
``Choi's surgery was to treat a collapsed bridging vein, which we thought would take five hours, but we were forced to finish in two hours because the intra-cranial pressure was too high,'' he said.
Choi's brightest moment as a boxer came in October, 1999, when he beat Thailand's Saman Sorjaturong to take the World Boxing Council (WBC) light flyweight champion title. However, Choi lost the championship belt to Mexico's Jorge Arce in a knockout loss in July of 2002 and also lost his bid for the World Boxing Association (WBA) flyweight title against Venezuela's Lorenzo Parra in September of 2004.
Choi seemed to be on course to put his career back on track, wining the intercontinental title in September against Thailand's Terdkiat Jandaeng.
Choi's horrific fight against Amol inevitably brings back the memories of the 1982 title bout in Las Vegas between American lightweight champion Ray Mancini and South Korean challenger Kim Duk-koo.
Kim slipped into a coma and died from injuries sustained during the match, which led to reforms in boxing, including the end of 15-round bouts and health checks before and after fights.
The tragic ending to Choi's career deals a decisive public-relations blow to boxing, which is already breathing heavily on the ropes due to the dearth of talent and a diminishing fan-base.
Former WBC featherweight champion Chi In-jin made a shock announcement in July that he would trade his belt for a career in mixed-martial arts, following in the footsteps of former WBA featherweight champion Choi Yong-soo who was also lured by the larger paycheck from Japan's K-1 combat sports league.
The Korean Boxing Commission has been discussing ways to revive the sport's popularity, even considering plans to allow the use of six-ounce gloves, which are lighter than the standard eight-ounce gloves, despite the greater danger of injuries.
After Choi's collapse in the ring, however, proposals to permit the use of gloves with lesser padding will likely be taken off the table.