Aidos Yerbossynuly In Coma After Knockout Loss, Trainer Says They Let Him Take ‘Too Much Punishment’

Aidos Yerbossnuly is in a coma. 

The super middleweight was placed in a medically induced coma after he was knocked out in the final round of his fight against WBA regular super middleweight champion David Morrell on Saturday, one of his trainers told ESPN. 

“Representatives of TGB Promotions and PBC are on the ground in Minneapolis with Aidos’ team and we are monitoring the situation closely,” a PBC spokesperson said in a statement.  

“Out of respect for he and his family’s privacy, we can’t share any details but we ask the boxing community to keep him in your thoughts and prayers.” 

Morrell had outdone Yerbossynuly in landing punches and in the scorecards. 

Two judges had Yerbossynuly losing every round, but the other had a 108-101 scorecard for the Kazakh boxer entering the final round.  

But, there never seemed to be a point where Yerbossynuly was going to overturn the fight. Some boxing fans, including Yerbossynuly’s assistant trainer, said that the bout should have been stopped in the ninth or 10th round. 

“I actually had the towel in my hand,” Savoy said.  

“Aidos wanted to continue. His head coach (Kanat Orakbaev) wanted him to continue. He evaluated Aidos and said nothing was wrong with him.” 

Then Yerbossynuly went down by a straight left hand from Morrell in the beginning of the 12th round.  

“He acknowledged the ref (referee Tony Weeks),” Savoy said. “He looked up and said, yes, he wanted to continue. As a corner, I think he still wanted to fight. He wanted to fight all the way to the end.” 

Morrell’s trainer, Ronnie Shields, said he couldn’t believe the bout went on for that long. 

“That fight should’ve been stopped sooner,” Shields told Boxing Scene.  

“They let this kid take way too much punishment. But even the referee, and Tony Weeks is a really good ref, but sometimes you’ve gotta go to the corner and say, ‘Hey man, y’all need to stop this.’ And that’s when [Yerbossynuly] started fighting dirty, because he didn’t wanna get knocked out.” 

“…. He took way too many punches. And you know what? This kid might never be able to fight again. That’s how bad it was.” 

Yerbossynuly returned to the bout, but kept holding onto Morrell, which the referee took off one point for.  

In the final seconds of the round, Morrell caught his opponent with a devastating right hook that sent him straight to the mat. 

The referee immediately called it off and tried getting Yerbossynuly back on his feet as Morrell celebrated in the background. But Yerbossynuly couldn’t walk on his own – even with the referee trying to guide him – so, after noticing this, Morrell rushed to help bring Yerbossynuly back to his corner. 

“The guy, he’s strong,” Morrell said in the postfight interview. “I respect him.”