Triumph and Tragedy: The Ray Mancini Story

On Tuesday at 8 p.m. eastern time, ESPN will air a documentary on boxer Ray Mancini. Triumph and Tragedy: The Ray Mancini Story. The documentary will be aired on the 25th anniversary of the tragic Ray Mancini - Deuk-Koo Kim fight.

The ESPN documentary will cover the life of Ray Mancini and the historic World Boxing Association fight between Ray Mancini and Duek-Koo Kim which sadly ended in Kim's death. The documentary will also air footage of the historic tragic fight, (This will be the first time the footage will have aired since the actual fight.) and interviews from both Kim's and Mancini's family and friends and interviews from witnesses to the fight.

The World Boxing Association light weight title fight between Ray Mancini and Duek-koo Kim took place on November 13, 1982. The fight ended in tragedy when Kim was seriously injured. In the 14th round of the fight, Mancini knocked Kim out with a final blow to which Kim would never wake up. Kim was taken to the hospital and pronounced brain dead. He was removed from life support four days later and died.

The ESPN documentary will show the last two rounds of the fight. The last two rounds show Mancini hit Kim with 39 punches. Kim was up and moving during those punches but was not able hit back. After the Mancini - Kim fight, out of concern for safety, all title fights were shortened from fifteen to twelve rounds. The decision to shorten the amount of rounds came after research showed that boxers took the most damage after the 12th round.

Kim's death was devastating to both Kim's family and Ray Mancini. Kim's mother, fraught with grief over the loss of her son committed suicide 11 weeks after his death. Ray Mancini, was devastated about Kim's death. Mancini attended Kim's funeral in Korea which was hard for him. He became extremely depressed.

Ray picked himself and continued his boxing career and fought for two more title fights. He retired in 1993 with a record of 29-5 with 23 knockouts. In 2005, Ray was inducted into the World Boxing Hall of Fame.

In addition to boxing, Ray Mancini has had success as an actor and producer and has quite an extensive list of credits to his name. He currently resides in California and is continuing his career in acting. He is currently an actor in the film titled Redbelt that is set for 2008.

Source:
www.eastsideboxing.com/news.php
www.boxrec.com/media/index.php/Ray_Mancini
imdb.com/name/nm0541509/