Column: Athletes are actors in sports' tragedies

PARIS - By the fourth round it already was clear - although not to Nick Blackwell himself - that he was going to lose. Chris Eubank Jnr.'s uppercuts were snapping Blackwell's head violently backward, like a crash-test dummy slammed into a wall. But because the British middleweight champion kept coming back for more, the referee allowed the savage beating to continue for another six rounds until Blackwell's left eye was so grotesquely swollen that a ringside doctor ruled he couldn't continue.