Why didn’t Ivan Drago face criminal charges for the Apollo Creed fight? The ref tries to stop it, Drago pushes the ref several feet back, then proceeds to punch Apollo several more times, and Creed dies.
There’s been a lot of ring deaths over the years and it’s accepted as a risk. But I don’t know of any that came after one boxer physically assaulted the ref when he was trying to stop the fight, and then beat his opponent some more. It would also be a high profile case since it was a famous former champion who died.
Fights are also not stopped by simply throwing the towel in the ring. Refs are supposed to ignore that, because it can some idiot fan throwing stuff in the ring. You can climb up the ring steps & let the ref or an official you want to stop it (Mayweather-Corrales). You can simply enter the ring to stop it (Jones-Barrera 1, Tyson-McNeeley), which is what Duke should have done.
If Rocky had thrown the towel in, would Drago have even cared?
Clubber Lang also shoves Mickey to the floor before he suffers a heart attack and dies.
Rocky Balboa also forgot about the whole “irreversible brain damage” they talked about in 5. Antonio Tarver would have been ridiculed for the rest of his career for having a life and death struggle with a senior citizen.