Loser of Indio Fight in Critical Condition : Surgery: Morales has operation to remove blood clot from brain after Canizales wins decision.

Bantamweight boxer Fernie Morales underwent emergency surgery for removal of a blood clot on his brain Saturday night after he collapsed in an Indio parking lot following his loss in a championship fight.

Morales, from El Paso, Tex., was listed in critical condition at John F. Kennedy Memorial Hospital Sunday afternoon, according to Ali Tahmouresie, who performed the operation.

Morales lost a 12-round decision to International Boxing Federation bantamweight champion Orlando Canizales of Laredo, Tex., at Indio’s Desert ExpoCentre. About an hour and a half later, witnesses said, Morales fainted while walking across the parking lot with family members.

“He’s unconscious, he is in critical condition,” Tahmouresie said Sunday. “But I think he has a fair chance to come out of it.”

Morales was knocked down in the second and 12th rounds. In the 12th, Morales was knocked down with only seconds remaining. That punch, State Athletic Commission physician Robert Karns said Sunday, might have caused the blood clot.

“Otherwise, we would have seen signs of the injury earlier in the fight,” Karns said. “I spent a lot of time with Morales in his dressing room afterward, and he was neurologically intact then. We took urine tests (required in championship fights), talked to him . . . he was distraught at losing, but seemed fine otherwise.”

According to the fight card’s matchmaker, Don Muse, Morales’ father drove his son to the hospital, three blocks away, where the fighter walked unaided into the emergency room. The surgery was performed at about 7 p.m. Saturday.

Muse said Morales’ father told him late Sunday afternoon his son was sedated but aware of his surroundings.

“His dad told me the family could tell that Fernie knew when family members were in his room,” Muse said.

Karns said Morales’ was the first such boxing-related case he had seen.

“In nine years of attending fights as a ringside physician, that was the first time it’s happened, and the unusual part is that Morales did not take that bad of a beating,” he said.

Morales, 25, who grew up in East Los Angeles but who now lives in El Paso, was ranked No. 16 in the world by Boxing Illustrated.

Morales earned a purse of $10,000, Canizales $100,000.

The defeat dropped Morales’ record to 28-5. Canizales, now 29-1-1, was defending his IBF championship for the eighth time.