An 18-year-old boxer died after a knockout in Montreal. The fight should've never happened

At the end of the fourth round in a six-round fight on Aug. 28, 2021, Jeanette Zacarias Zapata went into convulsions.

A left uppercut and a right hook from her opponent were among the string of punches that had become too much to overcome for the 18-year-old Mexican boxer.

Her trainer, on-site paramedics and a doctor assigned to the event rushed into the ring to assist her as she lay unconscious at Montreal's IGA stadium.

It was Zapata's sixth — and last — professional fight. She died five days later at Sacré-Coeur-de-Montréal Hospital.

Her death came three and a half months after she had suffered a concussion in a knockout loss in her home country.

"This interview is really difficult for me," Irene Zapata, the deceased boxer's mother, told Radio-Canada's Enquête investigative team, while sitting next to her husband inside their home in Aguascalientes, Mexico. 

Holding back tears proved to be a nearly impossible task. 

"It's been really difficult without her," said the grieving mother. "I lost my daughter, my friend, my confidante."

During the interview, Enquête shared information it had uncovered about their daughter's death. It provided the couple with their daughter's radiology report that helped ensure the fight in Montreal went ahead.

It was a fake document.

"I'm traumatized," said the boxer's father. "I can't believe it."

Shortly after Jeanette was hospitalized in Montreal, Groupe Yvon Michel (GYM), a well-known boxing promoter that set up that fight, said the boxer had undergone neurological exams given that she had been knocked out in her previous fight.

In 2023, a Quebec coroner ruled that the young woman's death was accidental and may have been precipitated by Second Impact Syndrome (SIS). SIS occurs when