What killed Tim Hague? The combination of improper oversight and dangerous passion
The city investigation into fighter Tim Hague’s death after a June 16 heavyweight boxing match makes it clear Hague dropped through the cracks of inadequate regulations.
Lax record keeping and poor oversight enabled Hague to keep fighting in the last year of his life, even when he almost certainly should have been suspended from the ring, possibly even for his deadly heavyweight bout against former Edmonton Eskimo Adam Braidwood.
The city’s report — by consultants MNP as outside investigators of the city and the Edmonton Combative Sports Commission (ECSC) — suggests Hague could have been suspended and prevented from fighting in a Sept. 9, 2016, match in Edmonton and in an April 7, 2017, bout in Lethbridge, though it doesn’t go so far as to definitively say he shouldn’t have been allowed to fight Braidwood.
But Al MacKechnie, former ECSC chairman, says Hague’s previous beatings in the ring should have stopped the Braidwood fight.
“It should never have happened. It should never have been approved in the first place.”
Hague, six-foot-four, 270 pounds, was a farm boy from Boyle with a fighting career that took him from Las Vegas to Sochi, Russia; from mixed martial arts (MMA) cage fights in Alberta malls and bars to the famed octagon of the Ultimate Fighting Championship, the greatest stage of our most brutal sport.
In his final years, Hague started to lose repeatedly, including a July 15, 2016, MMA fight in Sochi, a technical knockout (TKO) loss where he was kicked savagely in the head. He also lost Sept. 9, 2016, in Edmonton; Dec. 2, 2016, in Edmonton; and April 7, 2017, in Lethbridge, the last two also by TKO.
He could have been suspended and prevented from fighting the Sept. 9 and April 7 bouts, MNP reports, but that never happened. One big failing was for the Dec. 2 and April 7 fights, the ringside physicians who decided on the length of any suspension for Hague did not have information about his previous TKOs. They also failed to record whether his TKO on those nights were due to blows to the head.
If the physicians had known Hague was knocked out in the earlier fights due to blows to the head, under boxing rules, he would have been suspended for up to one year. That would have kept him out of the Braidwood fight.
“The three in a row should have imposed the one-year medical suspension,” MacKechnie says. “That’s the real key to the whole thing.”
But boxing officials in Edmonton and Lethbridge failed to record the results and did not have that key information about blows to the head from previous fights.
Written accounts, video and photos of the Dec. 2 and April 7 fights show the two TKOs “may have been issued as a result of head blows,” MNP reports. “If the Dec. 2, 2016, and April 7, 2017, events had been reported to the websites as TKOs due to head blows, Hague’s medical suspensions may have been different.”
It’s clear the Lethbridge loss to Jared Kilkenny was brutal, as MMA writer Cody Rempel reported from ringside: “Kilkenny lands big right and Kilkenny points and says, ‘I just broke your f--king nose, bro.’ Kilkenny lands a huge combo that crumples Hague to the mat and Kilkenny walks away as Hague covers up.”
After the fight, Hague was blasted online for being out of shape. Hague responded, admitting the fight had been rough, but insisting he was excited for his next fight: “I’m just in love with the sport. If it kills me, whatever, I’m ready.”
The online discussion continued, with one writer accusing Hague of being selfish for risking his health and his employment by being a weekend warrior in the ring.
“To each their own, buddy,” Hague said. “Selfish? What a laughable word to describe a guy who loves to compete for the sake of competition and inner happiness ... It is what men were born to do.”
It’s clear Hague was ready to go out on his shield, as fighters say. But it’s also evident that knowing the passion and danger of the fight game, the ECSC should have done more to keep a banged-up fighter out of the ring.
As MacKechnie puts it, it’s the ECSC’s job to protect fighters from themselves.
“The fighter is always going to say they’re ready to go. They always want to fight, even if they were knocked out yesterday. That’s why the commission is in place. Conditions are there to protect the fighter and for the safety of the fighter.”