Along with the ring fatalities of Benny Paret and Davey Moore, Ernie Knox's death as a result of his 1963 match with Wayne Bethea moved professional boxing deeper into the sport's dark period of the early 1960s. Boxing was virtually blacklisted with respect to television broadcasts, and there was serious talk about banning the sport outright.
The factors leading to Knox's death represent an ugly side of professional boxing and is thoroughly examined in a
Sports Illustrated article that was recently posted in another thread by Jofre. Rather than recount the details of the article, I've reposted it below.
In working out a rating for Knox, I did something that might seem a bit unorthodox. Although BoxRec lists him as a light heavyweight, and he fought virtually all of his matches weighing in at under 180, of his twenty-two fights during his career (1957-1963), more than half of those were against fighters listed as heavyweights. Thus I've rated him as a heavyweight.
Ernie's overall record was 11-8-3, but against heavyweights, it was 4-6-3. In most of those matches, Knox was giving up fifteen pound or more to his opponents. This substantial weight differential serves as the primary basis of the rating.
From the point of style, I set him as a boxer; fighting a larger man would make him disinclined to be willing to mix it up. I also assigned a lower CF for fighting a slugger with this in mind. Only two of his opponents were ever counted out so I gave him a low HP. His endurance is a little on the low side, and I have both his aggresiveness and recovery are rather low.
Given the size disadvantage he faced, I assigned his conditioning as 4 which reflects weight problems. While this is generally reserved for fighters who have problems coming in at the weight limit,I felt it was applicable for Knox who's problems were weight-related in a different sense,
I'd suggest that if you are simming Knox against a fighter who's normal weight would be more than ten pounds greater than Ernie's that you set the conditioning to weight problems during the setup stage for a more realisitc result.
Here's the website for the article that Jofre posted.
When an unknown fighter named Knox died after a bout in - 10.28.63 - SI Vault