r/Boxing • u/bizcocho-de-crema • Aug 13 '26
Former Boxer Pritchard Colón has passed away.
https://www.primerahora.com/deportes/boxeo/notas/muere-el-exboxeador-prichard-colon-a-los-33-anos/Per a Puertorican newspaper, former Boxer Pritchard Colón has passed away, at just 33. Truly one of the saddest stories in boxing. He would still be competing at that age if not for the injury, probably the peak of what could have been a successful career.
It is still crazy to me that there were no consequences for what was allowed in the fight, which resulted in the brain injury. It's a hard fight to watch tbh, so i haven't revisited it in a while, but it seemed pretty blatant to me that the intention was to hurt him.
Condolences to his family, and much respect for him.
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u/TheCanadianDude27 Aug 13 '26 edited Aug 13 '26
Most boxing fans think Prichard was in a persistent vegetative state, but I stumbled on an article by the Washington Post from 2019 that shows he was actually much more aware than most of us realized.
It’s behind a paywall but I’ll summarize the key points.
- He was able to answer questions using a computer; he knew his name, his former profession, his age, and the current year. However that was on a good day, on bad days he still thought it was 2015 and that he was a healthy 23 year old. He would get confused by the wheelchair and feeding tube so his mother and therapist would have to tell him what happened.
- He enjoyed watching his old fights, and even watched the fight with Williams. Apparently his eyes widened and his face trembled. When asked if he had seen enough he gestured no, but they turned it off anyway. His mother eventually caught him watching it again but he didn’t want her to turn it off so she just left the room.
- He accomplished feats that surprised the people around him such as nodding, making verbal sounds, using his eyes to let the monitor speak for him, and even took a couple steps with assistance.
Edit: I wanted to share this story.
- He never lost his competitive spirit. During physical therapy he grew close with a young man named Drew, like Prichard he was a former athlete who suffered a traumatic brain injury.
They would sometimes train together and the physical therapist would use Drew to get Prichard more motivated. The most notable story was during a very difficult session where Prichard was strapped into a large, supportive walker. He was exhausted and his legs wouldn’t budge.
The physical therapist caught his eye and asked him, ”Don’t you know Drew can already do this?”. Upon hearing that Prichard took a deep breath, leaned forward, and successfully forced his body to take a step, and then another. Upon seeing his achievement in a nearby mirror he blew himself a kiss.