Worldwide
Patrick Day In Coma After Saturday Night Fight in Chicago
We wake up to the stark reality of the potential negatives attacked to living the life of a professional fighter. Patrick Day is in a coma, after being knocked unconscious in his Saturday evening bout versus Charles Conwell in Chicago.
ESPN’s Dan Rafael reported at 9:12 PM ET that Day is now in a coma.
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Patrick Day gave a solid account of himself in a Saturday night contest against the favored Charles Conwell, in a 154 pound faceoff at Wintrust Arena in Chicago. He wasn’t wining the fight, but he was still present, making himself accounted for, when things took a hard and dark turn.
In round ten, an aggressive Conwell (age 21; 10-0 record coming in) caught Day, in retreat, with a right hand clean and hard and then a left hook follow up. Day went down, on his back, with 1:17 remaining, and his head slammed the canvas. He was unconscious, and didn’t regain consciousness as he was stretchered from the ring.
At 9:40 PM ET viewers were told that Day hadn’t regained consciousness, according to Chris Mannix. He was on a breathing tube, the DAZN analyst said.
At 11 AM ET, I messaged Conwell. “Feeling very down, praying as we speak,” the Ohioan said.
No, he didn’t go to the hospital, he said he didn’t want to be intrusive.
Day entered with a 17-3-1 mark; the Long Island native is highly regarded as a very likeable and intelligent being. He’s trained by Joe Higgins, and promoted by Lou Dibella. In his last fight, he lost via UD to contender Carlos Adames, on June 28 at Madison Square Garden.He’d been kayoed before, in 2015, in a loss to Carlos Hernandez, in Brooklyn.
Day went down in round four, after having some success. A lead right on the tip of the chin discombobulated the New Yorker. Conwell, an Ohio resident, was taking most of the minutes of each round, but Day hung tough. In round 8, he took a power right, which knocked him down, on his butt, at the very end of the round. Higgins told him not to back straight up, and asked him to make “a dogfight of it,” and please, don’t back straight up. In the tenth and final scheduled round, viewers saw Day with energy, bending his knees, but then he got caught. A hard right caught him clean, behind the left ear, and he slid, to try and get some space. A grazing right and then a left hook, a flush one, landed, and down went Day. On his back, and the ref didn’t bother counting, he was out of it. His eyes were open, but glazed. Conwell stopped celebrating, and his face turned tense, and he stared at the downed athete. Within a few minutes, Day was lifted out, on a gurney.
Day has recalled when he first hit a heavy bag, at age 14. “When he caught me in his garage, he yelled at me for trespassing and for risking an injury,” he told the LI Herald last year.
Day and Higgins work together at the Freeport PAL, and make a great team. Day was New York Daily News Golden Glove champion in 2012, and honored as a Sugar Ray Robinson Outstanding Athlete that year. The Freeport, LI resident Day was a USA Boxing national champion, and also was an alternate for Team USA in the 2012 Olympic Games.
“I remember the day Patrick’s parents brought him home from the hospital,” Higgins said to the Herald. “He’s like a son to me.”
