In what is nothing short of great news, Yahoo! Sports reports how light-heavyweight Lenin Castillo, who suffered one of the most frightening knockout you will ever see on Saturday night, when he was sent into spasm by Callum Smith’s big right hand to the head, is “in good condition” and has been released from hospital. Castillo, who remained motionless for a worrying amount of time after being knocked unconscious, is still in London but he has passed a brain scan and he has been released from hospital.
Castillo’s manager, Raul Pastrana, released a short statement.
“He is [in] good condition!!! He was released three hours after the KO,” Pastrana wrote. “They completed [a brain scan] and everything was OK.”
People feared the worst when they saw Castillo go down so heavily when fighting on the big Usyk-Joshua card; his legs twitching violently as he lay on the canvas. Even the victorious Smith was visibly shocked, the winner later apologising to his felled opponent and his team.
“I apologised to his camp for celebrating,” Smith said. “I hadn’t realised the extent and that he was unresponsive. I hate when fighters celebrate when their opponent is in a bad way so I apologised. It’s sport at the end of the day – there’s more to life than boxing.”
It is of course great news that Castillo is fine, but he should certainly never fight again. This is the way a non-boxer looks at things, anyway. Fighters, however, are a different breed. One would certainly think Castillo would call it quits yet who knows where a brave, courageous fighter is concerned? It takes a different mindset and a wholly superior level of courage to even get into that ring in the first place.
What do YOU think: will Castillo box again, and should he be allowed to do so?
As for Smith, he stopped a good, durable fighter who had been the distance with the likes of Dmitry Bivol, so the former super-middleweight champ can now move on to bigger tests loaded with confidence. And Smith can do so with a clear conscience.
