Mar. 25, 1963 - Calls for the abolition of boxing grew louder today after the death of Davey Moore (pictured in 1960) in Los Angeles early this morning. The 29-year-old dethroned featherweight champion died at 2:20 a.m. at the White Memorial hospital of a brain injury received in his title bout with Sugar Ramos some 78 hours before. The injury, a panel of doctors decided, was caused not by a punch, but by a blow to the back of his skull by a snapping ring-rope he fell against in the last 30 seconds of a bout that ended by tenth-round knockout at Dodger Stadium Thursday night. The injury was described as similar to that which might be inflicted by the heel of the hand in karate. The boxer collapsed in his dressing room an hour after the fight and had been in a coma ever since. An autopsy confirmed that the rope-blow caused the fatal injury. But blows to the face could not be ruled out as a contributory factor, reported the coroner, Dr. Theodore J. Curphey. He added that hemorrhages around the temples probably caused by blows to the jaw could have aggravated Moore’s condition.
