Junior featherweight contender Tramaine Williams had a terrifying moment when he collapsed in the ring during his fight with Ryan “Stone” Allen.
The fight took place on June 20 at Thunder Studios in Long Beach, California, where referee David Solivan stopped the fight at 1:54 of the first round, awarding Allen the win by knockout, after Williams lost consciousness and suffered a seizure.
Williams (20-2, 6 KOs), 31, of Modern Haven, Conn., competed in the Team Combat League, a team competition in which cities have “fight teams” that compete in one-round fights. Williams hasn’t fought professionally since April 2023, when he lost a unanimous decision to Elijah Pierce at the Mohegan Sun Casino in Uncasville, Conn. Williams attributed his decline to binge drinking, which he continued until five days before the fight.
“So when I stopped drinking, I was dehydrated. You know, alcohol dehydrates you,” Williams said. “So I had about five pounds to lose. So on top of stopping drinking, I had five pounds to lose. So I was already dehydrated from the alcohol, and then I lost more weight in training. I didn’t eat. And when the fight came, I didn’t hydrate properly.”
Williams admitted that boxing kept him away from alcohol, but his drinking had been “occasional” since he was 19. He drank when he wasn’t at camp and stopped when he was training, a cycle he was used to.
“This time I was so close to the point where I had to lose weight and then fight,” Williams said.
Williams was originally scheduled to fight two weeks earlier in Atlanta, but the fight fell through, leaving him concerned.
“It put me in a weird position where I felt awkward, like I wasn’t needed,” Williams said.
Williams realized something was wrong mid-fight as he tried to find his rhythm.
“It’s crazy because when I was fighting, I was shy — and I’m never shy when I’m fighting,” Williams said. “The last thing I remember is rolling around [a punch] and I turned him over, and once I turned him over, I remember waking up in the back of the ambulance.”
Paul Guarino, a Williams manager who was on the East Coast and acting as emergency contact, described the harrowing experience.
“So I was watching it live and at first, because the angle was weird, I thought he was teasing me for a second and then all of a sudden he just collapsed,” Guarino said. “I just passed out and because I was his emergency contact because I brought him into TCL, so everyone from there was calling me and it was a surreal moment.”
Williams left his phone at the arena, which caused confusion among his loved ones about his condition. Teddy Price of TCL rode with him in the ambulance and stayed with him while he was in the hospital.
“I didn’t sleep most of the night,” Guarino said. “I didn’t really get an answer from him. Either the TCL people or the doctor called me. Then we talked the next day, and everything was fine and he was able to go home. I think it was just a freak accident because they said it was dehydration.”
In a twist of fate, Guarino once managed Allen, who was in the ring with Williams. Williams recalled what the doctor at the hospital told him.
“The doctor came in and told me I was hydrated,” Williams said. “He said everything was back and everything was fine. I didn’t have any underlying medical issues. I’m not epileptic. I’m not anything like that. He asked me more questions, and I had to be forthright with him and tell him I’d been drinking all week.”
“His MRI that they did that night was spotless,” Guarino said. “Thank God Ryan Allen didn’t hit him at that point.”
Williams concluded with words of wisdom from his first boxing trainer, Brian Clark.
“He said, ‘How are you?’ I said, ‘Everything’s fine.’ He said, ‘Are you sure? I just called to check on you. I told you if you’re going to do this, you have to do it right or don’t do it at all.'”
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