Referee ignores the towel and lets Agapkin take more punishment
The towel went in. The fight kept going. In Lviv, during the bout between Mykyta Agapkin and Vasyl Tkachuk, the corner made their call to stop the action — and the referee threw the towel back out. Agapkin absorbed more shots before the TKO was finally waved in. It was one of those moments that makes you question who is actually in the ring to protect the fighter.
The towel is supposed to mean something
Every fighter knows the deal. When your corner throws the towel, the fight is over. That is not a suggestion. It is a signal built on decades of boxing tradition, designed to stop damage before it becomes permanent. In Lviv, that signal was ignored.
Mykyta Agapkin was stopped in the first round by Vasyl Tkachuk. But the stoppage did not come when the towel landed in the ring. It came after. The referee picked up the towel, threw it back toward the corner, and let the fight continue. Only after more punches landed did the TKO get called.
What the referee did — and why it matters
The job of a referee is not to make the fight more exciting. It is to make sure both fighters leave the ring safely. When a corner throws the towel, they have already made the calculation: the risk of continuing outweighs any chance of turning the fight around. That decision belongs to the corner. Not the referee.
By tossing the towel back, the referee took that authority away from the people who know Agapkin best. The people who could see his eyes. The people who trained with him for weeks leading up to this fight. That is a serious overreach, and the boxing world has reacted accordingly.
Reactions from the sport were immediate
Clips of the incident spread quickly, and the criticism followed just as fast. Fighters, coaches, and commentators pointed to the same issue: this kind of decision puts lives at risk. Boxing already operates in a space where the margin between a TKO and a serious injury is measured in seconds. Giving a concussed fighter more time to absorb shots because the referee wants to keep the action going is the wrong call, every time.
There is no official statement from the governing body overseeing the event at the time of writing. That silence is its own kind of answer.
A pattern the sport cannot keep ignoring
This is not the first time a boxing official has made a decision that raised serious safety questions. The sport has been wrestling with inconsistent officiating for years, particularly around stoppages. Some referees stop fights too early. Others, like in Lviv, stop them too late or not at all when they should.
Agapkin's corner made the right call. The referee overruled them. That sequence should not be possible, and the fact that it happened so openly — in front of cameras, with no immediate consequence — is the part that should concern everyone who cares about the sport.
