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What you're watching is a 24-year-old whose brain was hemorrhaging while his body kept boxing.
Simiso Buthelezi was winning this fight. Dominated all 10 rounds. His trainer said he barely took a clean shot. In the final round, he knocked his opponent through the ropes. When the ref separated them, Buthelezi turned around and started throwing full combinations at an empty corner. Back to his opponent. Punching air.
The neuroscience of what's happening here is the part that stays with you. Boxing drills combinations into procedural memory, stored in the basal ganglia and cerebellum. Those motor circuits can fire without conscious input. When a brain bleed compresses the prefrontal cortex, spatial awareness goes first. Decision-making goes next. But the motor strip, located in the posterior frontal cortex, is often the last region to lose blood supply. So the body keeps executing the only pattern it knows.
He wasn't confused. He was already gone. The body just hadn't received the message yet.
Buthelezi was placed in a medically induced coma and died two days later. Record was 4-0. Never lost a professional fight. He was 24.
The part that makes this the darkest moment in the sport: the brain bleed wasn't caused by a visible punch from his opponent. His trainer confirmed nothing unusual happened in the fight. No heavy blows. Perfect health going in. The brain can hemorrhage from cumulative subclinical impacts across hundreds of rounds of sparring, or a vascular malformation that ruptures under the adrenaline and exertion of competition.
The punch that killed Simiso Buthelezi might not have been one he took. It might have been one he threw.
Ulises@UlisesDavid__
El momento mas oscuro de la historia del boxeo
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