http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/sportSkills We sized them up. We measured them, top to bottom. We've done our own Tale of the Tape, and we've come to a surprising conclusion. Pound for pound, the toughest sport in the world is . . . Boxing. The Sweet Science. That's the sport that demands the most from the athletes who compete in it. It's harder than football, harder than baseball, harder than basketball, harder than hockey or soccer or cycling or skiing or fishing or billiards or any other of the 60 sports we rated. In Page 2's Ultimate Degree of Difficulty Grid, boxing scores higher than them all. But don't take our word for it. Take the word of our panel of experts, a group made up of sports scientists from the United States Olympic Committee, of academicians who study the science of muscles and movement, of a star two-sport athlete, and of journalists who spend their professional lives watching athletes succeed and fail. They're the ones who told us that boxing is the most demanding sport -- and that fishing is the least demanding sport. We identified 10 categories, or skills, that go into athleticism, and then asked our eight panelists to assign a number from 1 to 10 to the demands each sport makes of each of those 10 skills. By totalling and averaging their responses, we arrived at a degree-of-difficulty number for each sport on a 1 to 100 scale. That number places the difficulty of performing each sport in context with the other sports we rated. On the grid below, click on each sortable category to find out how our 60 sports rank in each skill. A glossary key is included at the bottom of the grid that explains each category. So put on the gloves, get in the ring and let the roundhouse hooks begin.
Now, I understand this is common knowledge amongst hardcore fans, but I thought it was cool that they have a graph and everything explaining why. Check out the link.
Who would win in a fight? a guy with a bike, a guy with a football or a guy with a baseball bat? :hey
Interesting. While I don't really disagree with the fact that Boxing is a difficult sport, I wonder about their choice of 'experts'. I'm not really sure that a SportsCentre anchor, two reporters and a baseball/football player count as experts.
i've been in basketball, baseball, martial arts, track and field, tennis, table tennis and gymnastics and believe me, there is no harder sport than gymnastics boxing #1 gymnastics#2
Yeah, that's absurd. - Although it IS hard work lifting all those steroids into your mouth every day.
I was an amateur boxer, and a US national team cyclist, and I must say, they're pretty much equal. Both require constant aerobic output with no breaks, and both demand that you exert 100% whenever your opponent decides to, no matter how much you're hurting. (Actually, cycling is tougher in that regard) - But boxing hurts more when you lose. :-((
There's other things factored in too, like "nerve", "Hand-Eye coordination", "strength", "durability", etc... I doubt in Cycling you ave to worry about getting your head smashed in, or having to compete while having a swollen liver, swollen eye, fractured orbital bone, and broken jaw.
