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Sugar Ramos, a Cuban featherweight boxing champion whose fists led to two ring deaths — one inspiring a Bob Dylan song — died Sept. 3 in Mexico City. He was 75.

He had cancer, the World Boxing Council said.

Mr. Ramos was best known for his 1963 fight at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles with Davey Moore in which he won the featherweight title for the first time. It was the only fight card held at the ballpark, and it was deadly.

Mr. Ramos had been battered by the champion in early rounds of the bout but came back to stop him in the 10th. Moore left the ring on his own but lost consciousness in his dressing room and slipped into a coma.

He died two days later, sparking an outcry about the safety of boxing and prompting California Gov. Edmund G. “Pat” Brown to call for the sport to be banned. Dylan would later memorialize the bout in the song “Who Killed Davey Moore?”

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Mr. Ramos was no stranger to tragedy in the ring. Five years earlier in Cuba, he stopped a fighter named Jose Blanco, who also died.

Mr. Ramos was born Ultiminio Ramos on Dec. 2, 1941, in Matanzas, Cuba. He lived in Mexico after fleeing Cuba in the early 1960s.

He started boxing professionally at age 15 and retired in 1972 with a record of 55-7-4 with 40 knockouts.

A power puncher despite standing only 5-foot-4, Mr. Ramos drew large crowds to his fights, largely because he never backed up. He fought in an era of 15-round battles and six-ounce gloves.

Doctors who looked at tapes of the Moore fight didn’t blame Mr. Ramos’s punches for the boxer’s death. The ring at Dodger Stadium had only three ropes and they weren’t padded. Moore’s head snapped on the bottom one as he fell in the 10th round, and his brain swelled.

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Mr. Ramos would defend the title that he won from Moore three times before losing it by to Vicente Saldívar in 1964. He gained weight and fought Carlos Ortiz for the lightweight title in 1966, losing by knockout. He was knocked out in a rematch a year later and never fought for a title again.

But it was his fight with Moore for which Mr. Ramos would mostly be remembered. He shrugged off suggestions he killed Moore in the ring, saying his injury was caused by the rope and complaining that no one gave him credit for putting up a good fight against a top champion.

Notable deaths in 2017

Remembering those who died in 2017.

Soon after the fight, a fourth rope was added to boxing rings, and they were padded.

Dylan, in his 1963 song, asked the question: Who was to blame for Moore’s death?

“‘Not us,’ says the angry crowd,/whose screams filled the arena loud./ ‘It’s too bad he died that night/but we just like to see a fight.’”

— Associated Press

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