This is Part II of a two-part series. Part I.

Some fighters walk through the fire trying to win even if their cause seems hopeless. And some fighters quit.

In 2006, Paulie Malignaggi fought Miguel Cotto at Madison Square Garden before a roaring crowd on the eve of the Puerto Rican Day Parade.

"It was like fighting the devil in hell," Malignaggi said afterward. "It was a very lonely feeling in the ring that night.”

In round one, Malignaggi suffered a bad cut from a head butt. In round two, he was knocked down. He left the ring with the first loss of his career and broken bones in his face (including a fractured orbital bone) that took six months to heal. But he fought valiantly and went the distance, winning four rounds (five on one judge's scorecard).

"People watch a fight and, when it's over, they turn off the TV and go to bed," Malignaggi would remember. "The next day, they're out doing whatever they want to do. My whole life changed after that fight. I had surgery on my face, spent the whole summer recuperating."

Victor Ortiz made a different choice. On June 27, 2009, he and Marcus Maidana were engaged in an exciting back-and-forth slugfest. Maidana went down three times. Ortiz (marketed by HBO as a rising star) had been knocked down once and was leading on all three judges' scorecards in round six when a hook to the body put him on the canvas for the second time. He rose and waved the fight off.

Interviewed in the ring after the fight, Ortiz proclaimed, "I'm not going to go out on my back. I'm not going to lay down for nobody. I'd rather just stop when I'm ahead. That way, I can speak well when I'm older. I'm young, but don't think I deserve to get beat up like this."

Quitting is a fact of life in boxing. Quitting in a high-profile fight attracts particular attention. Sometimes the surrender is justified. Other times, the fighter's resolve is questioned.

There was a time when the heavyweight championship of the world was the most coveted title in sports. But even then, some fighters surrendered.

On July 4, 1919, Jack Dempsey challenged Jess Willard for that very title in a historically brutal fight. Dempsey smashed Willard to the canvas seven times in round one, the latter absorbing as horrific a beating as has ever been administered in a prizefight.

After three rounds, his jaw and nose were broken. Six teeth had been knocked out. There were cuts above and below both of his eyes. "The right side of his face," historian Randy Roberts wrote, "looked like a peach that had been repeatedly dropped onto concrete." After round three, Willard understandably told his corner that he could fight no more.

On September 23, 1952, trailing badly on the judges' scorecards, Rocky Marciano knocked Jersey Joe Walcott unconscious with a now-legendary right hand to claim the world heavyweight championship. Eight months later, they fought again. As round one wound down, Marciano landed a two-punch combination sending Walcott to the canvas. He raised himself to a sitting position, appeared unhurt before sitting there until the count of ten, after which he got up and complained of a quick count.

Willard fought with honor against Dempsey. In his second outing against Marciano, Walcott did not.

Sonny Liston quit against Cassius Clay and then, arguably, against Muhammad Ali.

In their first encounter, Liston remained on his stool at the start of round seven, claiming that his shoulder hurt. By that point in the fight, Clay had established his superiority and was beating Liston up.

Fifteen months later, they fought again. Midway through round one, Liston was dropped by a chopping right hand. With the newly-named Muhammad Ali alternating between prancing around the ring and standing over him, Sonny (who could have gotten up earlier) remained on the canvas for seventeen seconds. The referee (ironically, Jersey Joe Walcott) never gave Liston a count and (with prompting from Ring Magazine editor Nat Fleischer who was sitting at ringside) declared Ali the victor.

On November 9, 1984, James "Bonecrusher" Smith challenged Larry Holmes for the heavyweight crown. As the bout progressed, Smith suffered a gash and grotesque swelling around his left eye. Midway through round twelve (of a scheduled fifteen), referee Davey Pearl called time and sent Holmes to a neutral corner while ring doctor Donald Romeo examined the cut. Romeo told Smith that the cut was "bad" and asked, "Do you want to stop?" Bonecrusher nodded his assent.

Romero should not have asked Smith if he wanted to stop fighting. The doctor had a straight medical decision to make: either the cut was sufficiently severe that it was a medical necessity to stop the fight or it wasn't. It was the referee's role to ascertain Bonecrusher's state of mind.

Vitali Klitschko was undefeated and the WBC heavyweight champion when he fought Chris Byrd on April 1, 2000. Klitschko was leading 89-82, 88-83, 88-83 on the judges' scorecards but quit after the ninth round with what was later diagnosed as a torn rotator cuff. Vitali's courage was questioned by those who didn't understand the nature of his injury and how continuing to fight that night could have damaged his shoulder for life.

Three years later, Klitschko fought Lennox Lewis and was leading 58-56 on all three judges' scorecards when the fight was stopped by the ring doctor because of horrific cuts above and below Vitali's left eye. Those cuts, plus another cut inside his mouth, required sixty stitches to close. Klitschko's anguished cry of "No!!!" made clear his anger at the stoppage and confirmed his courage.

More recently, on two occasions, Daniel Dubois (who will rematch Oleksandr Usyk for the undisputed world heavyweight belts on July 19) chose to not continue fighting.

Dubois suffered a broken orbital bone and nerve damage around his left eye before retiring on his stool after round nine of a November 28, 2020, fight against Joe Joyce. Given the nature and potential consequences of the injury, that decision was appropriate.

Then against Usyk on August 26, 2023, Dubois took a knee near the end of round eight and rose at the count of nine. The following round, he was dropped by a stiff jab, rose with apparent reluctance at the count of ten, and voiced no complaint when referee Luis Pabon stopped the fight.

There have also been notable championship bouts in boxing's lighter weight divisions when a fighter, by his words and actions, said enough is enough.

On November 12, 1982, Aaron Pryor and Alexis Arguello engaged in a classic struggle that ended with a crushing knockout leaving Arguello unconscious on the ring canvas. Ten months later, they did battle in another enthralling encounter.

In round ten of Pryor-Arguello II, Alexis, who was taking a beating, again found himself on the canvas. Arguello was a warrior, one of the greatest fighters ever. He could have gotten up. But he didn't. He had done the best he could and realized that it was over. He sat with an incredibly sad look on his face and later acknowledged.

"It's hard to accept, but it's good to accept. I did it with grace and just accepted that the guy beat me. Even though I did my best, in the tenth round I accepted it right there. I said, 'This is too much. I won't take it. I'll just sit and watch Richard Steele count to ten.'"

Arguello took the punishment before he quit. Walcott, in the second Marciano fight, didn't.

Speaking of those two fights, Teddy Atlas says, "Fighting is a metaphor for life. There's nothing original about my saying that. Arguello tried in the second Pryor fight. Some people are honest and some people aren't. Arguello was honest. Getting up at ten-and-a-half is dishonest. I can live with honest the way Arguello did it."

Bernard Hopkins is known for his iron resolve. On December 17, 1994, The Executioner journeyed to Quito, Ecuador to fight Segundo Mercado for the vacant IBF middleweight crown. The deck was stacked against him.

"It was his country," Hopkins remembers. "The promoter was against me, I knew the judges would be. I got treated like s--t the whole time I was there."

And he was fighting at an altitude of 9,252 feet.

"Fifth round," Bernard says, continuing the saga, "I didn't see the punch. He's punching, I'm punching and he got there first. I don't remember falling at all. That's how hard I got hit. I remember being on the canvas and asking, 'How did I get here?' People would have understood if I didn't get up. There was a thought to stay down.

"But when you sign up to be a fighter, you waive that option. Before you think about quitting, you think about how do I survive. So I got up. He knocked me down again in the seventh round, and the judges scored the fight a draw. Four months later, we fought again and I knocked him out."

Against Mercado, Hopkins fought for something he didn't have. Seventeen years later when he boxed Chad Dawson for the first time, Bernard was doing so to preserve the status quo as the WBC and Ring Magazine 175-pound champion. And his resolve came into question.

With 22 seconds left in the second round, Hopkins missed with a right hand, leveraged himself onto Dawson's upper back, and appeared to deliberately push his right forearm down on the back of Chad's neck. At the same time, he wrapped his left arm around Dawson's torso to steady himself and apply additional pressure to Chad’s neck.

In response, Dawson rose up and, using his shoulder, shoved Hopkins up and off. Bernard fell backward to the canvas, landed hard on his left elbow and shoulder, and lay there. Asked by a ring physician and referee Pat Russell if he could continue, he said only if it was "with one hand."

Initially, Russell declared Dawson the winner on a second-round TKO. Ultimately, the California State Athletic Commission changed the verdict to "no contest." That ruling allowed Hopkins to retain his belts. Six months later, they fought again and Dawson won a well-deserved decision.

Was Hopkins really hurt in the first Hopkins-Dawson fight? When asked directly, Bernard references "the pain I felt" and adds, "I didn't expect to get thrown down. And then I thought I'd land on my ass, not my shoulder."

Dawson stated his feelings at the kick-off press conference for Hopkins-Dawson II when he declared, "I want to make one thing clear. I came to fight, and he pulled a stunt. Legends don't act the way this guy acts, don't do the things this guy does. Legends don't punk out."

That said; more than a few fighters quit against Hopkins. He ground opponents down. But the most high-profile incident of a fighter quitting against Bernard was a one-punch knockout.

On September 18, 2004, Hopkins defended his four middleweight championship belts against Oscar De La Hoya. The judges' scorecards were split through eight rounds. In round nine, a hook to the liver dropped De La Hoya and made the judges irrelevant.

"I took the life out of his body," Bernard said afterward. "He wasn't getting up."

De La Hoya had a more nuanced explanation.

"We're talking about the whole psychological aspect of where I was in my life at that time," the Golden Boy acknowledged years later. "The fight was competitive. But it was a very unhappy time in my life. He hit me with a good body shot. I went down. I've asked myself a thousand times since then, 'Could I have gotten up?' And the answer is 'yes.'

"But I wanted everything to be over. Not the fight. Being the Golden Boy, everything. It wasn't something I consciously thought out when the referee was counting. But those conflicts inside me caused me to stay down. You have to go really deep into the root to understand."

Reflecting back on it all, Hopkins observes, "Do you go on even if you know you're going to get slaughtered? Where does intellect come in and the brain says, 'I can't go anymore. I'm finished.’ It's in the spirit and mind of the individual. You hear fighters say all the time, 'I'll die on my sword. You got to carry me out on a stretcher.’

"But you don’t know what a man will do until that man is tested. Will he walk through the fire? Will he live by the code of the fighters who came before us? Because when the time comes, that option of quitting becomes negotiable and the truth is tested."

And then there's the most famous and least concealed act of surrender in boxing history.

On June 20, 1980, Roberto Duran decisioned Ray Leonard in Montreal. Five months later, they fought again in New Orleans. In round eight of their rematch - trailing 68-66, 68-66, 67-66 on the judges’ scorecards - Duran famously said "no mas." Since then, various reasons for his surrender have been advanced. He had stomach cramps. He quit because Leonard was mocking him. He was weak from having lost too much weight.

"I love Roberto Duran," Bernard Hopkins says. "But we all know that Duran quit that night. He was getting embarrassed. Leonard was fighting in a way that Duran didn't feel a fighter should fight, and Duran quit out of frustration because he couldn't get his way."

But the public wasn't paying for an A-side vs. B-side club fight that evening. The only thing Duran deserves credit for in Duran-Leonard II is that he quit honestly. He didn't say, "My eye is damaged. I can’t see."

My own view is that unless a person has been in the ring, he should think twice before criticizing a fighter for quitting. We're not the ones who are taking the punches.

People wax eloquently about fighters like Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier:

"They were warriors. They understood the rules of engagement. Look at how badly they were hurt in Manila. Both of them. But they kept fighting and created a masterpiece that will stand forever as arguably the greatest fight of all time."

Yeah! And look at the condition that Ali and Frazier were in when their lives ended.