Junior middleweight Patrick Day, who suffered a brutal 10th-round knockout loss on Saturday night, died from brain injuries on Wednesday at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago, promoter Lou DiBella said. Day was 27.
Day, of Freeport, New York, was knocked down by right hands in the fourth and eighth rounds by unbeaten Charles Conwell, a 21-year-old blue chip prospect from Cleveland and a 2016 U.S. Olympian, in the scheduled 10-round fight on the Oleksandr Usyk-Chazz Witherspoon undercard at Wintrust Arena.
Although Conwell was clearly winning the fight, Day was competitive in many of the rounds. However, in the 10th round, Conwell landed two rights and a left hook that knocked Day out cold. When Day went down the back of his head slammed onto the canvas very hard and referee Celestino Ruiz immediately stopped the bout without a count at 1 minute, 46 seconds.
Day was immediately surrounded by medical personnel and within minutes was taken out of the ring on a stretcher and to an ambulance to be taken to the hospital.
Day, who was a well-liked figure throughout the boxing community, never regained consciousness. At one point he had a seizure and then lapsed into a coma before undergoing emergency brain surgery.
Members of Day’s family flew to Chicago on Sunday morning to join manager and trainer Joe Higgins and Alex Dombroff, who works for DiBella, in keeping vigil over him, but the situation was dire and doctors gave him little chance for survival.
On Wednesday, surrounded by his parents and other family members, he was disconnected from the machines that had been keeping him alive.
Two days before Day’s death, Conwell, struggling with what had happened, posted an emotional letter to him on social media.
“I never meant for this to happen to you,” Conwell wrote. “All I ever wanted to do was win. If I could take it all back I would. No one deserves for this to happen to them. I replay the fight over and over in my head thinking what if this never happened and why did it happen to you. I can’t stop thinking about it myself. I prayed for you so many times and shedded so many tears because I couldn’t even imagine how my family and friends would feel. I see you everywhere I go and all I hear is wonderful things about you.”
Day (17-4-1, 6 KOs) came into the fight having lost a 10-round decision to emerging junior middleweight contender Carlos Adames on June 28, but he posed by far the stiffest test so far in Conwell’s career. Before the back-to-back losses, Day had won six fights in a row dating to 2015 and was a standout amateur.
In 2012, Day was a U.S. Olympic alternate, a New York Golden Gloves champion, USA Boxing welterweight national champion and honored with the Sugar Ray Robinson Outstanding Athlete award.