PAHOKEE, Fla. -- A trainer says he didn't stop a fight that left his boxer in critical condition because Emiliano "The Marvelous" Valdez wanted to go the distance and win for his mother.

"How could I stop the fight?" trainer Nelson Lopez said. "They would have said, `It's ridiculous, a trainer bringing a fighter and not letting him fight.' I don't want anyone to get hurt, but that's the sport we choose."

Valdez, 26, remained in critical condition Wednesday, three days after he went into a coma during a nationally televised fight. State boxing regulators are reviewing how and why Valdez went down and never regained consciousness in a pro welterweight bout.

Regulators said they didn't know that another Lopez-trained fighter died earlier this month.

Valdez was knocked out in the final round of a 10-round match at the Venice Arena when Teddy Reid of Washington, D.C., landed successive blows to the head. Valdez also was knocked down in the second round and staggered from a big right by Reid in the fifth.

Valdez had surgery Sunday night at Bon Secours Venice Hospital to remove two blood clots in his brain and to repair a severed blood vessel.

Lopez said Reid "sucker-punched" Valdez, then later came to the hospital remorseful and in tears.

Lopez said he allowed the fight to continue because Valdez appeared to have won the eighth round and wanted to keep going to win for his mother in the Dominican Republic.

"The kid's been like family to me," Lopez said. "He said, 'Don't stop the fight. I can take him.' I think in the ninth round he got hurt but didn't feel the effect until the 10th. He raised his hands and looked at me. I can still see it in my mind."

Another fighter trained by Lopez, 18-year-old Elijah Fenwick, died five days after a blow to the head suffered during a Jan. 11 sparring match at Pahokee. Fenwick was an aspiring amateur fighter from Michigan.

Fenwick had been hit in the head with a baseball bat. Lopez said when the fighter arrived from the North he wasn't told about the blows or that Fenwick suffered from seizures.

"I think we will want to look at a number of things," said Chris Meffert, executive director of the Florida State Boxing Commission.