These Quicky Stoppages have Got to STOP

Quick stoppages are trash

 

Do those who are against ref stopping a fight as it should be decided 'Mano Mano' with no outside intervention, also believe a doctor should not be permitted to stop fighter continuing as they are not recumbent on the floor, or are against fighters being stopped from fighting due to a mere abnormality found on a brain scan prefight?

Boxing at times needs someone to intervene to protect a fighter, yes it can appear premature to those on safe side of the ropes, for refs it is an in exact science, but it is a decision that has to be made in seconds, all this that a fighter should be allowed to be 'carried out on their shield' was for Sparta gladiatorial fights not 21st century sporting arenas.

There are plenty of outlets for no or minimal rules fisticuffs if that is your liking.

Sod it i will jump on the bandwagon, damn they turned our great sport into a place for pussies when they covered those bare fists with mufflers, got fighters wearing mouth guards, giving fighters a whole minutes rest every 3 minutes even if no fighter has been knocked down and if you knock opponent down you have to go to a neutral corner........'elf n safety' gone mad it tell ya.

 

I gave an answer to this topic in another Joyce-Takam topic thread. Like there, I've read p1 here.
My response. You're not going to get what you want until boxing becomes more honest than it's ever been in its entire history !
The chances for that are slim and none, and Slim just left town.

It's debatable if boxing has overreacted during the past 50 years. But ~75 years ago, before advanced scanning and boxers fighting more often, too many boxers went into fights while concussed. This resulted in deaths and too many punch drunk retired boxers (pugilistic dementia). Some of these boxers were visibly cognitively damaged by their 40s.

As for Joyce-Takam, that was an obvious business "the guy we wanted to win, wins" stoppage. And I had no bias/ fav in that fight.
I don't know what was more ridiculous, the Joyce-Takam stoppage or the Ruiz-Arreola cards If you follow the $$$, you'll have the explanation.

 

Who said they weren't ? But claiming a fighters health should not be taken into account at all is stupid. They could've given Takam a 8 count before the stoppage. But in a general point fighters health matters. Saying it doesn't is some real BS if thats where you're getting at

 

Not at all, but these quick stoppages have GOT to go. I am over it. Fighters are definitely over it as well.

 

I just watched it myself. Not the WORST stoppage, but still bad. Yes, Takam took some heavy blows and only in the beginning was throwing back, by the end he wasn't, BUTTTTTTTT, he had the awareness to bob and weave some of the shots and block his face with his gloves. AWARENESS!!! That alone should have kept the ref from stopping it.

 

I agree to a point. but would much rather see a premature stoppage than see tragedies happen when ref's dont care
like Benn/McClellan remember the commentator called McClellen a coward when he took a knee

 

Have you guys calling for more blood & guts ever been in the ring yourselves ??? I seriously doubt it

 

If fighters don’t like bad stoppages than I am allowed to dislike them as well!

 

I think we need to dispense with the notion that it's people's nature to care deeply about the welfare of strangers since there is so little evidence on offer and so much counter. There would literally be no homeless if that were so. Nobody would go hungry. There would be no war. The fact is that actual practical concern for other people's welfare is rare in humans and needs massive amounts of outside enforcement to show effect. Of the dozen or so people claiming I must be cold hearted in this thread, I'd bet that not a one of them has actually paid the hospital bills of a wounded fighter, took care of their families, nursed them back to health, sent flowers or a card to their funeral. Just because you know their name doesn't mean that they are your friend.

The average amount of charitable giving is about two percent, which is a rough indication of how much they care. About 1/4 people volunteer their time for an average of one hour a week. I think that one third of people care enough to give 2 percent of their salary and one hour a week to strangers. That is how benevolent people are. These are the most benevolent among us. It doesn't amount to a drop in the bucket compared to the indifference or even hostility of the average citizen. If someone tells me that they care, I want to see some action. What are you prepared to do? Because otherwise you don't really care. You just want other people to think that you care. Or maybe you're deluding yourself that you are a better person than you really are.

Because caring too much for strangers is negatively correlated with survival in an evolutionary sense. There are limits to all of our faculties. If you spend all day caring about strangers then you don't spend enough time caring for your friends and family who are essential to your survival. If you care too much for others then you don't care enough for yourself. Empathy is a trade off. It's not for free. The optimal strategy, what we seem to be hard wired for is to care deeply about the people closest to us and less deeply the further out relationship bonds become. In fact, the strong tribal urge tends to reinforce local relationships and run counter to too distant empathy as we defend those near to us from those who are far away.

Empathy is not a mistake. Misplaced or excessive empathy is because it leads to trivial attachments and distracts us from more important priorities. Not only does it distract us, but it can interfere with the operation of other important values. Consider the modern helicopter parent who is constantly hovering around their child to prevent harm coming to them. Their undo attention actually damages the child because the child will not learn independence and proper coping strategies such as courage.

There is a word for an overattachment to objects: fetishization. Many people on the left make a fetish of empathy and it leads them astray. Aristotle's golden mean suggests that the proper balance of all virtues is moderation. Too little or too much of something is bad for you. Too much courage is recklessness, too little is cowardice. Avoid the extremes. When people become overly attached to distant trivial objects that is as unhealthy as not being attached at all like a sociopath. There is too much suffering in the world and if a person is too sympathetic they will become overwhelmed. They will cry watching the news, give all of their belongings away, or devote their lives to unworthy causes. They fall victim to conmen and to people who will use them.

Thank you. A few here are claiming that this is a modern sport which appeals to modern sensibilities and are forgetting that it is an ancient sport which also appeals to ancient sensibilities. It is frankly sadistic. There is no good way of getting around that.

Yes, my initial point was that a few more punches here or there, a few more seconds wouldn't make a meaningful difference, and the hand wringers claiming even one more punch could kill fighters were overreacting. That's my specific point. But as a general matter of philosophy the question then becomes are you comfortable with the idea of people dying or being injured for your entertainment? There I have to acknowledge that yes, I made that bargain when I started watching the sport. You cannot watch boxing if you are unwilling to let people be injured for your amusement. That's the goal of the contest. We are watching two people injure each other for our amusement. That's almost entirely what the game consists of and the more one person can injure another the more we are amused. That's why we have the knockout reels and fight of the year awards. We celebrate who can give and take the most pain.

It's like that old story about the man who offered a woman a million dollars to sleep with him. She says "yes.' Then he offers her five dollars. She asks 'What kind of girl do you think I am?' He responds 'We've already established that. Now, we're haggling over price.'

Once you admit to yourself that is what we are doing, then you must decide for yourself how many deaths or injuries you are comfortable with. The price is blood and conscience. How much you enjoy boxing is the amount you are willing to pay. I was okay with abortion until I realized that it accounted for a million dead babies a year. It's a matter of scale and I found the extent of the murder shocking. Every year was another genocide and my conscience pricked at me. I decided that women's freedom to do as they wanted with their bodies couldn't justify that level of carnage. We do that with everything. Seventy thousand drug overdoses, eighteen thousand gun deaths, thirty-eight thousand vehicular deaths, four thousand drownings. It's the calculus of existence. How much suffering are we willing to tolerate for a greater good? Context matters. When you consider that over eight hundred people die cycling, fifteen to twenty people die racing, one hundred from horseback riding, twelve die from playing football, the fact that ten people a year die boxing doesn't seem that bad. In fact, it seems relatively safe and I'd be okay with it maybe doubling before I gave up watching it.

Aside from that, I think that you are beginning from the assumption that the sport should be as safe and healthy as we can possibly make it, that all decisions should be guided by safety as a rule. I don't think that's actually a necessary condition for the sport. Like I said, the nature of the sport is the antithesis of safety first. It's natural ethos is almost safety last when you really think about it. Not everything should be as safe as possible. We've been conditioned to think that way because we live in a nanny state and we've forgotten that there are other ways of doing things, other competing goods. Sometimes safety must be sacrificed for the sake of those greater goods. We may not agree exactly on what they are, be they liberty if you are a liberal, be they God if you are a Christian, be they happiness if you are a hedonist, but I can't think of any creed where life is at the very pinnacle.

That's what I've been saying. We've already tacitly agreed that there will be death and injury for our entertainment. That number is not zero. Everything beyond that is haggling. If you won't accept any death for entertainment then you cannot accept boxing.

 

i believe you are wrong about people caring. i suppose its a matter of degrees, or process, cause i dont know anyone that would deny a hungry person a meal. and ive known many people throughout my life that repeatedly put others well being before their own, cause its who they are. im not saying they are trying to live some spiritually meaningful life, im saying thats their nature, they can feel the pain you feel. actually feel it.

 

We don’t want more death and you saying so is just damn idiotic. Yes we don’t need premature stoppage in respect to referees.

 

Spot on, C.J.