Ring physician Jonathan Levyn checked in on Rodriguez several times to monitor his condition and said that he saw no evidence that the fighter was in particular distress.
"I've replayed it over and over in my mind - the fight itself, the time between rounds," Levyn said. "He was coherent. He answered all my questions - simple questions like, 'Where are you? What's your name?' And his eyes were reactive. It seemed like he was OK.
"A few minutes later, I was being called back into the ring [to attend to Rodriguez]."
Peltz said that Rodriguez, who had been inactive since an eight-round unanimous decision over Torrence Daniels last Dec. 12 in the Chicago suburb of Cicero, Ill., looked to be in peak physical condition. His prefight medicals had raised no warning flags.
Boxing deaths are becoming increasingly rare, but they do happen. The incidence of fatalities and severe injuries have been reduced since the Association of Boxing Commissions adopted more stringent safety rules that require prefight physical examinations and ambulances to be on-site for every fight card. Peltz said that there was no ambulance at the Parker-White fight in 1978 because none was required.
"Dr. Ferdie Pacheco was the guy who lobbied for the mandatory assignment of ambulances," Peltz said of the man best known as Muhammad Ali's longtime personal physician. "He fought for that and he made it happen. He helped make boxing safer."
Pacheco, contacted at his Miami home, said that he not only successfully lobbied for ambulances, but for the addition of a fourth ring rope. But he insisted that he did not want to hear another sad tale of a dead or dying fighter. He had been down that road too many times.
"I don't have anything to do with boxing anymore," Pacheco said. "I'm 82 years old. I'm painting pictures now. I gave boxing 50 years of my life. That's enough."
Even fighters who win in bouts in which their opponent dies have been known to be haunted by guilt, to the point where their own professional effectiveness is compromised. Emile Griffith and Ray "Boom Boom" Mancini are former world champions who forever bore the brunt of their fatal encounters with Benny "Kid" Paret and Duk Koo Kim, respectively.
"We stopped off for a cheesesteak after the fight and I told Teon, 'It might not be looking too good for the other guy, T,' " Kennedy's co-manager, Doc Nowicki, said. "What we all need to do now is pray for his recovery. But sometimes prayers aren't enough.
"We all feel bad, but everybody in this business understands that something like this can happen any time you enter the ring. That's just how it goes."
