I normally don’t escape the cave that is the Kakutogi Road thread, but I thought that I would come out of hiding to post something that I suspect that was talked a lot about back in the day, but is all but forgotten about now, the infamous time that a man named Douglas Dedge travelled to Ukraine to fight in an unknown promotion and died as result. Here is the event in question:
The fight itself is kind of meh. You can clearly see that he was in over his head, (which substantiates reports that he lied and overstated his experience to the promoters of the event), but he didn’t take any major damage, in fact the fight looked pretty average for the era, and certainly wasn’t something that would lead anyone to think that he was in any serious danger. I suspect that he had prior medical issues that caused this, though many of the old-time members of this forum might be able to shed some more light on him. The saddest thing is the tragic pre-match interview in which he talked about his family, and how they were the most important thing to him. For better, or for worse, he was one of us, as anyone that has trained their heart out, and stepped into a cage, that never leaves a person, so I would like to honor his memory. Perhaps, someone here knew him, or can share some more information about him.
I’m curious as to what Dedge’s actual experience was. He was wearing a black belt during his interview and told the reporter that his style was Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, but to me he looked like a blue belt, at best. He also seemed quite unathletic in comparison to most fighters, so it makes me wonder if he had tried to get into other promotions prior to this. His only other fight was at at an ISCF event (in which Tim Catalfo headlined). It’s been a while since I’ve seen that event so I should probably take another glance at it.
I respectfully disagree when your training partners seeing you black out and they’re the ones closer to you as you’re approaching a fight they have an opportunity and impart a responsibility to step in. I was a junior National teammate of Jeff Reese who when he graduated was 2nd in all time NYS wins, he went to Michigan and I believe it was 97 maybe 98 when he died crawling to a scale trying to make weight. The university was also held responsible. In this case, I bet these teammates that were privy to seeing him “black out”, the ones closest to him begore battle have some degree of guilt. They share some of that responsibility imo. Shortly after Jeff Reese died, an army wrestler also died cutting weight the following year the new Hydro static testing and hydration standards were put into place along with date same-day weigh-ins
What could they have done to stop him? He was clearly willing to lie to the promoters about his skill level, and perhaps to himself also. He had to have known that he was in over his head, but pushed towards it anyway
Still, I doubt that anyone realized the full extent of his medical problems.
I’m not saying they are solely responsible however some of it does rest on them if they were seeing him blacking out prior to the fight. We can agree to disagree but that’s how I feel about it. I am far from the end all authority on these things
we all know they’re a real elite professional bunch down at family karate. This was not a professional fight camp and none of those people were professional fighters or even teammates in the way you’re implying. You have no right to try and put that kind of evil on people, those real hard core 2 nights a week warriors, furthermore for all you know they did try to talk him out of it,
this was mom,dad and the 2.3 kids down at bobby wasabi tkd, you’re trying to hold accountable. shit happens and if he didn’t care about himself and family enough to get checked out, it’s not even on the ukranians, you know damn well he lied on the application