Why and what’s the reason for? These words from the Bob Dylan song Who Killed Davey Moore? (an American world featherweight champion who died as a result of injuries sustained in a bout against Cuban Sugar Ramos in 1963) echoed throughout the boxing community this past week. “He called me when he was turning pro and asked me a lot of questions about what he needed to do to be successful in this business,” recalled Joe Calzaghe, the Welshman who ruled the super middleweight (10st) division for a decade, the same weight division in which Darren Sutherland hoped to achieve his own glory. “He seemed bright and articulate and ambitious. I told him to call me any time. You wonder how it can just end like this.”

At around 3pm on Monday, Sutherland was discovered dead in his flat in Bromley, south London, by his manager, Frank Maloney. He had hanged himself after a short but torturous period of self-doubt about his career. “Darren had lost confidence in himself as a fighter,” his distraught father, Anthony, reflected, “and he was worried he wouldn’t be able to step up to the next fight.” An outstanding prospect in a solitary, lonely profession, Sutherland had sunk tragically into the loneliest place of all.

“I saw him at Brentwood a week last Friday — Tyson Fury and John McDermott were boxing for the English heavyweight title,” revealed former world cruiserweight champion David Haye. “We had a little catch-up and I asked if things were okay. He had a little mark under his eye which I asked him about and he was a bit peed off because his eye had been reinfected, he said. A thumb in the eye from a Russian boxer had resulted in Sutherland requiring emergency surgery at Dublin’s Eye and Ear hospital in 2006, throwing his career into doubt.

“I thought he was a little bit down because he couldn’t box for a little while but it would have cleared in a month or so. There is a lot of mental pressure about being a boxer and people handle it in different ways.

“I don’t know what demons Darren was battling but they must have been pretty serious. I thought he could handle the pressure now because he wasn’t at title level yet. He was learning his trade and fighting journeymen. There was a lot of pressure at the Olympics and he brought Ireland to a standstill when he fought, so he should have been used to handling and dealing with pressure. I can’t see it being pressure when you’re waiting for your fifth pro fight and you’re fighting somebody who is handpicked and is probably going to get knocked out. He has always travelled alone to many places and was known as someone who travelled where there was good training. He lived in Sheffield by himself when he was a teenager [training with Brendan Ingle] and he was used to being around London.

“I thought he was a very mentally strong guy and one of the best prospects. He had been at university and had plenty going on. From the outside I don’t know what the issues were but it’s very, very sad.”

Sutherland had reached such depths of depression that 10 days before taking his life he sat down with his trainer, Brian Lawrence, and let his problems pour out. “He told me that his life was over, that he was feeling down, feeling abandoned,” Lawrence related. “He said he had lost his confidence, he was really down and wanted to pack up boxing. This was the first time I had heard anything about any of this from him but I’ve heard about depression since then. I don’t know if he had depression before but, if he did, it was kept from us. It just happened so rapidly and it was too late for us to do something about it. One minute he’s saying he doesn't want to box any more and then after a meeting with Frank Maloney [Sutherland’s manager] all is well again. He said his head was not right and we tried to tell him to take time off but he was so focused and when he did something he gave it 100%.

“He had dinner with Frank and his family on Saturday and I talked to him on Sunday. We thought he was okay. We knew he wasn’t going to make his fight next month because he was missing training but he was up and down, and we thought he’d be okay.”

Maloney, recovering from an operation after suffering a heart attack, acknowledged from his hospital bed, “I may feel that I might have let him down.” For several months after he signed Sutherland following the Beijing Olympics, Maloney had allowed the 27-year-old to live in his home. “Not only have I lost someone I feel was one of the best and most talented fighters I’ve ever had the opportunity to work with, I feel like I’ve lost someone who was a bit closer to me than just a boxer I managed,” Maloney added.

Sutherland’s father suggested that “Brian Lawrence was spending more time with another fighter and not enough time preparing Darren for his next fight and Darren was getting depressed about this” but a study carried out last year at McGill University in Montreal reached a profound conclusion. “Depression is one of a number of persisting symptoms experienced by athletes following sports concussion,” explained Dr Alain Ptito, neuropsychologist and lead investigator for the study. “The prevalence of depression in the general population is around 5% whilst the prevalence of depression in head trauma patients can reach an astounding 40%.”

Over the past few months two prominent ex-boxers — Alexis Arguello, a former world champion in three weight divisions from Nicaragua, and Arturo Gatti, a Canadian multiple titleholder most renowned for his trilogy of bouts against American Micky Ward — have taken their own lives. Gatti’s wife of just more than a year, Amanada Rodrigues, was held for several weeks by police in the Brazilian state of Pernambuco on suspicion of strangulation and a crime of passion. But the official cause of death was recorded as suicide by hanging.

Arguello was a more complex character. Elected mayor of Managua, the Nicaraguan capital, in November 2008, he fought alongside the Contras against the Sandinistas, the communist group which toppled the government in the 1970s.

One of the most devastating punchers in boxing history with a gracious and engaging public persona, his life outside the ring was often volatile, including bouts of depression, bankruptcy and a cocaine problem.

“I wish I could have the guts [to kill myself]. I can’t,” Arguello told American author Peter Heller in 1986. “I keep hurting and I say, ‘Alexis, you have to stay here’. I’d make my family rich if I were to die. They would get $3m if I disappeared. They want me here but I’m lonely in the world. Even my wife knows this. She senses it. I wish I could leave this place but I can’t do it. I see things and I get disenchanted. The beauty of the world has disappeared.”

For Sutherland’s family, something beautiful has died and all that they — and we — are left with are questions.