Former light heavyweight world champion Oleksandr Gvozdyk was released from Temple University Hospital in Philadelphia on Sunday morning after spending two nights there.
Gvozdyk lost the lineal 175-pound title and his sanctioning organization belt by 10th-round stoppage to Artur Beterbiev in an action-packed unification fight on Friday night at the Liacouras Center in the main event of the Top Rank Boxing on ESPN card.
“All is clear,” Teddy Atlas, Gvozdyk’s trainer, who accompanied him to the hospital, told ESPN on Sunday. “No (brain) bleed or anything. Thank God, just a minor concussion from the hits to the back of the head they said, but we needed to be sure.”
Although Gvozdyk was ahead 87-84 and 86-85 on two scorecards, with Beterbiev up 87-83 on the third scorecard, going into the 10th round, Gvozdyk had taken a lot of heavy shots, especially right hands, from the powerful Beterbiev.
In the 10th round, Beterbiev (15-0, 15 KOs) dropped an exhausted Gvozdyk (17-1, 14 KOs) three times before referee Gary Rosato waved off the fight at 2 minutes, 49 seconds.
About an hour after the fight, Gvozdyk, with Atlas at his side, walked under his own power to a waiting ambulance in the arena tunnel for the short ride to the hospital to be checked out as a precaution and wound up staying for two nights.
Gvozdyk went to the hospital because he had pain behind his head. He underwent tests to rule out a brain bleed, but that requited multiple tests over a 24-hour period, Atlas said.
Atlas planned to bring Gvozdyk to his home in New York on Sunday before Gvozdyk would fly home on Monday.
The fight marked the first time in light heavyweight division history that two undefeated fighters met to unify world titles. The Montreal-based Russian Beterbiev, who was the slight favorite, had defeated the Oxnard, California-based Ukrainian Gvozdyk by second-round stoppage in 2009 amateur tournament and both went on to become elite professionals.
Beterbiev, 34, retained his title for the third time since winning a belt in November 2017. Gvozdyk, 32, won his title in December 2018 and made one successful defense before being stopped in the unification bout.