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Steve KimESPN
Longtime boxing referee Eddie Cotton died Friday morning after being hospitalized due to the coronavirus, the International Boxing Federation announced. He was 72.
According to his wife, Ruby, Cotton was hospitalized two weeks ago with pneumonia. He was then diagnosed with COVID-19 at the hospital.
The resident of Paterson, New Jersey, began working fights professionally in 1992. He was a referee until 2014 and had been serving on the IBF board of directors.
“I gave him his license as a professional referee,” said Larry Hazzard, the commissioner of the New Jersey State Athletic Control Board since 1985. “I was his mentor. I thought he was one of the greatest referees who ever did it.”
Cotton presided over a multitude of world championship fights, but he gained the most notoriety for being the third man in the ring when Lennox Lewis stopped Mike Tyson in eight rounds at the Pyramid in Memphis on June 8, 2002.
“I specifically selected Eddie to be the referee in that fight because I knew this was the type of fight you needed a referee like Eddie Cotton to officiate — and he did an excellent job,” said Hazzard, who administered that fight.
“He was a very friendly guy, very outgoing, very honest, greeted everyone with a smile and a kind word. It’s a great loss to humanity.”