By Luke Furman

Family and friends of Dawid Kostecki do not believe the former fighter committed suicide in a Warsaw prison on August 2nd.

Prison officials claim Kostecki committed suicide by hanging with the use of bed sheets.

Kostecki's name was well known in Poland, but he received international attention back in 2012, when a scheduled fight against Roy Jones Jr. was set to take place in Poland - and then canceled at the last minute.

The bout got called off, only days before the contest was scheduled, because Kostecki was convicted of being the ringleader of a criminal organization and was imprisoned. Pawel Glazewski stepped in on very late notice, and lost a ten round decision to Jones.

Kostecki continued to have several brushed with law in the years to come.

He returned to prison again in Warsaw in 2016 for five years after his fifth conviction, for drug trafficking, car theft, running a prostitution escort ring, and income tax evasion.

Kostecki (39-2, 25 KOs) had his last fight in November 2014, when he lost an upset eight round decision to Andrzej Soldra.

Kostecki's family are getting lawyers involved to investigate the boxer's passing. He was scheduled to leave prison in two years.

Kostecki was said to have committed suicide in the morning of August 2. It's claimed that he hanged himself on a sheet, lying on a prison bunk. The inmates did not notice anything because Kostecki had covered himself with a blanket.

The director general of the Prison Service in Warsaw has already set up a team to clarify the circumstances of the death of the former boxer.

According to some of the conspiracy theories being kicked around, Kostecki was the target of certain figures in the criminal world and he was also an alleged target of politicians, who were being linked to using the boxer's escort services.

Luke Furman covers boxing for bokser.org.