Israel Vázquez losing his eye.

That's really messed up. This sport is barbaric man. I sometimes wonder if it should be banned. I enjoy watching it but the fact is we are watching men injure each other, knock each other unconscious and give each other brain damage.

 

just goes to show the price some fighters pay to feed and take of their family

 

Really depressing man. And according to an ESPN article in Spanish, it seems it was more of medical negligence and him not taking care of himself and/or listening to the doctors.

Truly sucks to see a warrior go down this way

 

God bless him. He will be remembered as a warrior for many years to come. War Machine Vasquez. That sounds kinda fitting. What a bad mofo.

 

Though for some health comes first...

 

To be honest, health should always come first. I hate when people **** on fighters for quitting due to injury or even too much punishment. I think most of those guys are not worrying so much about the pain, but are thinking about their health in the future. That's not cowardly to me.

There's nothing more important in life than health, without health, money, love, etc doesn't matter at all.

 

it hurts me to say. But it's the right thing to do. I love boxing but seeing what it can do to people can be disturbing, to say the least.

 

Although I've been guilty of this more often than not, I want to try to rethink the phrase, "doesn't have the heart" for those who quit (although it might be an entirely different problem )

 

It is a shame. He is such a warrior, there's usually a big price to pay for being a warrior.
I agree with Babality in that boxers are not cowards for quitting. Their values may be different, which prioritises health and regular income more than proving to themselves that they're a 'warrior'. They want to see another day, and they want future paychecks as this is their main career. It doesn't make for great viewing, but if we had it our way, we would love to see our favourites completely destroy opponents. What that may entail can be problematic.

However, if they prioritised health like they should do, they wouldn't be in this God foresaken sport in the first place.

There are levels of quit ultimately. Morales quit vs Garcia because he couldn't do it anymore, couldn't pull the trigger. He was completely finished. Same with Golota. That's understandable.
Victor Ortiz level quitting means quitting at any adversity - as evidenced in Berto 2, Maidana, Mayweather and Collazo. These Ortiz level 'quits' are not well justified in my personal book.

 

I wonder what kind of effect this will have on his brother. Even though everyone knows this is the kind of risk you have to take as a pro boxer, if my older brother was losing an eye I'd definitely feel disheartened.

 

When I was in high school, an ex-football player came by to give a talk. He played on a hurt leg and had to have it amputated below the knee later. Boxing ain't the only sport that costs physically.

You mean like that time when Britain banned boxing and all the best fighters moved to America which then ruled the sport for a century? Or the way that other places tried to ban boxing and boxers just fought in illegal matches run by the mob?

You aren't going to stop fighting. That's human nature. The best you can do to temper the violence is to regulate it to acceptable levels of safety. Besides, a lot of our "sportsmen" are little more than jumped up hoods who'd be shaking down grandmothers for their pension money if they weren't doing this.

 

For me s*** like this actually makes it even more despicable for people to avoid fights because 'my health comes first', and then go on to put themselves above all of the great fighters who didn't put their health first and who risked serious injury for legacy. I have no problem with someone who puts their health first, but don't go s***ing on other fighters who didn't, like Floyd did with Ali when he put himself above him because Ali had 7 losses. And don't go around calling yourself TBE atsch:twisted:

 

No doubt the wars with Rafa contributed to it, but a lot of people are blaming the medical procedures he went through down in Mexico for the loss of it.

For me, the first three fights with Rafa are amongst the greatest fights I've ever seen. And I still watch them on the regular.

 

This is the thing, common sense would make us want to ban this very senseless sport. However, humans can be quite violent and a notable fraction will always engage in this type of activity, and combat sports enable them to channel this energy effectively.

I think then, what is most reasonable is if they somehow come up with very padded headgear and very padded gloves (far more padded than amateur gloves and headgear, far, far more), which will mean less knockouts, but the sport will be far less brutal.