'Dad, open your eyes, please. I've come to see you': Wife of dead boxer can't break the news to young son

Subriel Matias and Maxim Dadashev in action during the ninth round of their junior welterweight IBF World Title Elimination fight. Photo / Getty Images

The wife of late boxer Maxim Dadashev has opened up on how seeing his father on his death has impacted her young son.

Elizaveta Apushkina told the Pravda newspaper that she still hasn't been able to tell her three-year-old son that her father has passed away.

Dadashev passed away after suffering severe head trauma in a junior welterweight world title eliminator against Subriel Matias in Maryland last month.

Apushkina said her son Daniel has suffered nightmares and keeps asking when his father will return home.

"Our son said goodbye to him [Maxim] in the hospital," she told Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper.

"I could not help but let him say farewell.

"Perhaps this was wrong, because my child should not have seen this," she added.

"Maxim lay all in wires, in drips. There were 30 or 40 drips...the whole room was filled with pipes, apparatus, and cylinders...and our child saw it all. It was very hard for him."

"I told him that dad is sick. Then, after two nights, my son woke up, and began to call his dad," she said.

"He still does not know that Maxim is dead," Apushkina revealed.

"And this morning, when I took him to nursery school, he said: 'Will we fly to dad in America?' I replied: 'Dad is ill'. He asked: 'Dad will recover, and we will fly?"

"I said: 'Yes, we will fly.'

"I don't know how to tell him. I cannot gather enough courage."

Dadashev, 28, absorbed repeated violent blows to the head before trainer Buddy McGirt stopped the fight following the 11th round.

Matias, Dadashev's opponent, landed repeatedly to the body with combinations.

Dadashev, who like Matias entered the fight with a 13-0 record, laboured to counter with much of anything over the latter part of the fight, instead covering up with Matias stalking him.

After the bell sounded at the conclusion of the 11th, Dadashev plopped down on the stool in his corner surrounded by his training team.

Dadashev attempted to walk to his dressing room but collapsed in an aisle by floor seating surrounding the ring. Emergency medical technicians immediately attended to Dadashev, placing him on a stretcher for transportation to the hospital. He then began vomiting.

- With Washington Post