With another tragic loss of life in the boxing ring I have read comments on youtube either asking for a ban of boxing or to have boxers fight with head gear. Some even argue that UFC and MMA is less dangerous as these are alledgedly not as harmful to health. I have been a fan ans following the great 80s and 90s and it hurts my heart to read people wanted to ban boxing.
Strange, because MMA was always seen as the "bad boy" of the two sports. Boxing should be seen as any other high risk sport. Motor racing is hazardous, why not ban that too? People die scuba diving. And mountaineering. If people banned everything dangerous there would be nothing left to do. Eventually action crochet would be competing with speed tiddlywinks for TV viewership ... until they found out that excessive crochet can give you arthritis and that will be the end of that.
The only way I see MMA being safer is that 1. the bouts are shorter, 2. the smaller gloves aren't as damaging (this might be a myth, or at least a trivial difference), 3. time spent on the mat grappling is time not spent smashing each others heads in, and 4. no standing 8 count. Boxing seems to have more deaths per year, but I don't know the rate (measured against participation levels). Fact is though, MMA fighters have and tragically will continue to pass from injury. who's to say one should be banned because the rate of death is higher? death is death, less incidence compared to one doesn't make it more acceptable. i mean, realistically, what solace can mma fans really bring themselves to feel regarding a degree of relative safeness in a combat sport where the athletes there are getting their heads bashed in with fists, knees and elbows for 5 minute rounds? what i'm saying is, if there are calls for boxing to be banned, mma would be in line too.
I hear that argument all of the time and its getting on my nerves. The thing is that deaths in those sports are accidents, it is not part of the sport that people who participate in it are damaged at regular basis. In boxing and football however it is absolut normal that you get braindamaged it is completely normal to cause micro traumas to the brain that eventually cause a big bleeding or a punch drunknes. That is makes the comparison completely invalid.
The strange thing is that most of the people calling for bans are neither fans nor participating in the sport. I have boxed in my youth and college years but despite being hurt a couple of time with cuts and broken hands I never thought of boxing as being more dangerous as soccer or field hockey.
Mma is definitely less harmful. They take way less shots to the head cause of grappling and the stoppages are happen way faster. I think one of the worst things in boxing is the count. Going down means that your brain is pulling the safety lock and you should just make sure that you brain is safe from any more harm. By trying to overcome that you are just going into such deep and dangerous waters. and listen man i love the sport too and watch it for 10 years now and practiced it as an active amateur and i have always said that i would blame no government for banning the sport. It is cool and stuff but it is also barbaric to watch 2 men harming each other for our entertainment.
Seriously? I highly doubt that you had a lot of fights when you are saying this. Amateur boxing is already very dangerous. My trainers had over a 100 fights and there brains were just absolut messes. I can also remember that i was stuttering in my most active days. In the last couple of years sport scienties revealed the high risk and danger of football. We are talking about a sport with full body gear where it is not the priority to punch your opponent in the face and it is already so dangerous, just imagine how bad amateur boxing let alone the pro game has to be.
I get where you are coming from but I just love the sport maybe too much that I see it colorful glasses. I was never too good a boxer and some matches gave me a ringing headache for days after the tournaments. Maybe it was my luck that was just mediocre so I never made it far so in my college years I had around twenty fights and was never koed but was hit so badly at one fight I was blurry in my head for over a week. Boxing is one of the most brutal sport no doubts therefore I have utmost respect for those valiant athletes who sacrifice their health for glory and the for the entertainment. But I dont think people should call for it to be banned because I imagine how much heart anyone of these boxers have put in there. its just sad.
I, too, feel that MMA is less dangerous than professional boxing (though not really that much). Simply because it has much less contact caused by striking offense. MMA also has less number of rounds and they have safer protocol to stop the fight. The damage that a boxer receive in their body, especially their head, much more than in MMA as there are multiple way to beat your opponent in the contest. Not just a simple knock-out, but also submission as well. The referee even will push you away before you finish your downed opponent to clear out the danger. In boxing, there are potential cumulative damage and the referee will still keep you continue fighting as long as you stand. And even if you are down, he'll still count it to 10.
The idea in boxing is not to play one-for-one with the opponent but to hit and not get hit. The same as a poor boxer would be advised to retire, so would a racing driver with poor reactions or a mountaineer with a jelly grip. It's not invalid.
I've been noticing in mma lately that pretty much as soon as somebody gets knocked down the ref dives in and stops the fight. Makes it safer for sure and keeps guys from jumping on top and pounding the guys face it. And of course they can tap out with no shame like there is for a boxer.
I'm not trying to defend anyone saying to ban boxing, but I think that boxing is actually a lot more dangerous. MMA has more risks if you look at it short term, there's more ways to get injured, you can break your back, your neck, you're dealing with potentially more powerful impacts (smaller gloves, kicking). But in boxing, you will get hit, in the head, non-stop for YEARS as a professional. There's just no way around that. At least in MMA there's a variety of ways to fight so the damage is not so focused in a particular area. I don't think boxing should be banned, but I don't think it's necessarily a double standard that people are more critical towards boxing in this regard than MMA.
We might as well ban just about everything then, Cigarette smoking a few years back caused 450,000 plus deaths a year. How about we start with that , and it isn't even a occupation ,its literally poison you are able to legally buy and do for leisure. Theres over 20,000 boxers GLOBALLY and about 10/15 deaths per year.....banning it is just DUMB.
Is it a coincidence that MMA and the LBGT movements should gain a certain amount of public prominence and acceptance at roughly the same historical moment? I do not think so.
