Junior welterweight Maxim Dadashev died on Tuesday morning as a result of brain injuries sustained in an 11th-round knockout loss to Subriel Matias on Friday night at the MGM National Harbor in Oxon Hill, Maryland. He was 28.
Donatas Janusevicius, Dadashev’s strength and conditioning coach, who had been with him at UM Prince George’s Hospital Center in Cheverly, Maryland, since he was taken there following the fight, and trainer Buddy McGirt confirmed his death.
“It just makes you realize what type of sport we’re in, man,” McGirt told ESPN. “He did everything right in training, no problems, no nothing. My mind is like really running crazy, right now. Like what could I have done differently? But at the end of the day, everything was fine (in training).
“He seemed OK, he was ready, but it’s the sport that we’re in. It just takes one punch, man.”
Dadashev faced Matias (14-0, 14 KOs), 27, of Puerto Rico, in a 140-pound world title elimination fight for the right to become the mandatory challenger for the belt held by Josh Taylor.
McGirt lauded Dadashev’s dedication to the sport.
“Great, great guy. He was a trainers dream,” McGirt said. “If I had two more guys like him, I wouldn’t need anybody else because he was truly dedicated to the sport.”
The fight was grueling and Matias dominated. He landed numerous powerful blows the head and body. Matias was ahead 109-100, 108-101 and 107-102 on the scorecards following the 11th round when McGirt stopped the fight with Dadashev on the stool in a dramatic scene.
After the round, McGirt loudly told Dadashev, “I’m going to stop it, Max. Max, you’re getting hit too much.”
Dadashev shook his head to indicate he did not want the fight stopped, but McGirt kept at it: “Please, Max, please. Let me do this. OK? OK? Look at me. Please.”
Dadashev shook his head again and McGirt said, “If I don’t, the referee’s gonna do it. C’mon, Max. Please.”
McGirt didn’t wait for another signal from Dadashev.
“That’s it, doc,” he told the ringside physician. Then he turned to referee Kenny Chevalier: “That’s it.”
McGirt said he first thought about throwing in the towel in the ninth round but knew he had to stop it after the 11th.
“I saw him fading and when he came back to the corner (after the 11th round), my mind was already made up,” McGirt said. “I was just asking him out of respect, but my mind was made up. I wasn’t going to let him go out there.”
Dadashev (13-1, 11 KOs), the married father of a son, who was from Saint Petersburg, Russia and based in Oxnard, California, needed help leaving the ring. He collapsed before making it to the dressing room and began vomiting. He was taken from the arena on a stretcher and then was transported by ambulance to the hospital, where he underwent emergency brain surgery for two hours for a subdural hematoma — bleeding on the brain. Doctors hoped to relieve pressure on the right side of his brain, where most of the damage was, with the surgery and placed him in a medically induced coma, to allow time for brain swelling to subside.
Dadashev’s wife was on her way from Russia to the hospital in the Washington, D.C., suburbs and had been due to arrive on Monday night.
Dadashev, who began boxing at age 10, was a promising prospect. He was ranked No. 10 on the ESPN top prospect list at the end of 2017 following a standout amateur career in which he went 281-20 and was a silver medalist at the 2008 World Junior Championships. He claimed a silver medal at the 2013 Russian amateur championships and bronze medals at the same tournament in 2010 and 2012.
Managed by Egis Klimas, who also handles such standouts as Vasiliy Lomachenko, Oleksandr Usyk, Oleksandr Gvozdyk and Sergey Kovalev, Dadashev relocated to Southern California to pursue his professional career. He turned pro in April 2016 and eventually signed with Top Rank.
Dadashev began to make a name for himself in 2018 with back-to-back victories in his two most notable fights, a 10th-round knockout of former lightweight titlist Darleys Perez in June followed by a 10-round unanimous decision over former lightweight titlist Antonio DeMarco in October.
Dadashev knocked out journeyman Ricky Sismundo in the fourth round on March 23 to set himself up for the world title eliminator against Matias.
ESPN’s Steve Kim and Mark Kriegel contributed to this report