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I'm not that knowledgeable about physiology, but what would cause someone to die after being choked?
Dying after being stabbed is obviously blood loss, dying while being choked is bloodflow restriction/breath loss, but I can't see what would cause death after the choking stops.
If you are choked, you will stop breathing, and if you stop breathing for a duration, you will suffer brain damage. If your breathing does not restart, you die. It may have been that after the choke ended, Neely was too brain damaged to be resuscitated, which makes sense since most accounts indicate he was choked for a pretty long period of time (10 mins, definitely enough to kill someone).
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Drugs in the system. Having a weak heart that gives out from the struggle. Either because of a defect, or some sort of systemic damage. Both, as habitual drug abuse often damages the heart.
Reading about the scant number of MMA fatalities actually revealed a lot of those fatalities were people with a undiagnosed heart condition who died in their first or second match.
Also brain bleeds, and organ failure brought on by dehydration.
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