If all goes well, Khabie operates unseen. This being boxing, “all goes well” means none of the combatants end up in the hospital. Those are the fights that stick with Khabie, that keep him awake at night, like a bout a few years ago at a beer garden on Long Island where a boxer was knocked unconscious. For five minutes that felt like five hours, the boxer did not move.

Khabie never expected to work in boxing, but knew early he would become a doctor, even back in Boy Scouts when his favorite tasks included constructing a bandage in the woods. A longtime sports fan, he entered orthopedics because they combined both passions, because the first time he removed a screw from a leg, his instructors asked not about removal technique, but about a football game the night before.

After college at the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard Medical School, Khabie worked at the Kerlan-Jobe Orthopedic Clinic in California. There, he served as assistant physician for the professional sports teams in Los Angeles. Lakers center Shaquille O’Neal occasionally pulled pranks on him.

Khabie enjoyed caring for athletes (as an assistant doctor, he examined and called in a prescription for the tennis champion Steffi Graf at the United States Open). But boxing, with no place to hide, all the energy and raw aggression, drew him in. His first bout as a ringside physician took place at a cafe in the Bronx, which later became a Red Lobster and had a makeshift ring inside.

On the recent Friday in Queens, Khabie called his work typical: eight fights, three boxers knocked down, two repeatedly, one serious gash opened by a head butt.