Since the UFC pushes Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) into the mainstream, an age old question remains: Why Is MMA safer then boxing? The main premise behind the debate has always been that unlike boxing, in MMA, there are more routes to success than striking your opponent. Highlighting the obvious, you will find less painful paths to victory, therefore making some losses in MMA less damaging on a fighter’s body and brain. The Unified Rules of MMA make it feasible for a MMA fighter to win a bout by judges’ choice or by possibly submitting their competitor. The resulting notion is that MMA athletes suffer fewer traumatic injuries and the odds are lessened they may become jaded drunk. But, proponents of boxing are always quick to point out the bigger gloves employed in MMA and the fact the rules allowing for leg strikes and elbows. Therefore”it is time” to have an in-depth appearance to both sides of this debate. Prior to getting into the thick of the debate, I’d like to highlight one of the key reasons I chose to write this article. Shawn O’Sullivan, a retired fighter that I have met many occasions, resides in my mind. On paper, his life seems like a success story. However the real truth is that his boxing profession killed his chances of having a successful life after his career was over. A brief documentary on his story can be found below.Many would consider O’Sullivan’s career somewhat illustrious because he had been the 1981 World Amateur Champion, 1981 Canadian Athlete of the Year and 1984 Olympic Silver medalist at light middleweight. Also many believe his gold medal bout against Frank Tate very controversial as it seemed like the fix was in. Despite scoring two standing 8 counts in around two the judges given that round to Tate. Upon going pro, he found himself fast retired in 1988 with unsuccessful comebacks in both 1991 and 1997. Shawn’s overall listing of 23-5-0, with 16 knockouts passed him without reaching his dreams of competing in a world title bout. Following four more fights in 1997, a neurologist refused to renew the license he needed to continue boxing due to brain damage he saw during a CAT scan. Now, O’Sullivan is living with the difficulties of brain damage, however, he does not regret his career in boxing. Throughout my many discussions with O’Sullivan, he almost always slurred his speech and had difficulties recalling parts of his life. Sadly, his ability to talk about his story is all he has to show for his illustrious career. But, that’s hindered as a result of the culmination of blows to the head that he endured during his boxing career. O’Sullivan suffers from boxer’s dementia, commonly called being”punch drunk” caused partly as a result of his fighting style and gruelling sparring sessions in the gym. If you’d like to find out what I mean, take a few minutes and see his bout against Armando Martinez. What remains untold to many, and something which highlights the significance of this article is that O’Sullivan was pushed into boxing by his first coach: his father. Rumors are his father was allowing his son spar against heavyweights and even larger men as part of the everyday reality test for O’Sullivan. As parents, one may feel uncomfortable advocating that your kid partake in any battle sport from the fear of their long term consequences. Therefore signing your child up to either boxing or MMA training could become a matter of which is safer? Is there a possibility that you could help select the lesser of two so-called evils. Until recently the whole debate behind MMA is safer then Boxing was entirely theoretical. There remains to be little scientific facts and findings to support the claim. The University of Alberta’s Dr. Shelby Karpman led a review of over a decade’s worth of health care exams from approximately 1,700 fighters in Edmonton, Canada. According to the study, Fifty-nine per cent of MMA athletes sustained some kind of injury, compared to 50 per cent of fighters. However, boxers were more likely to lose consciousness in a bout: seven per cent versus four per cent for MMA fighters. Regardless of the facts to as which game is safer, ” The Canadian Medical Association has called for a ban on both MMA and boxing. By highlighting a 2014 University of Toronto study showed an MMA fighter suffered a traumatic brain injury in almost a third of professional bouts. It’s not my intention to cast doubt onto the protection of a game, however both boxing and MMA have had cases of deaths that are well documented. Lately a MMA fighter died because of complications cutting weight. John McCain, who once labeled the sport of MMA”human cockfighting,” sat ringside in the 1995 boxing death of Jimmy Garcia. However, very few serious life threatening injuries in MMA come into mind as none have occurred on its primary stage. A fighter’s death inside the Octagon has never occurred and it never will. Nonetheless, it’s something which must be in the back of everybody’s mind once we see fighters getting knocked out lifelessly. Rendering a competition not only defenceless but unconscious remains to be the title of the fight game if it’s MMA or Boxing. That’s where a fighter’s fanfare, bonus cash and constant hype derives. UFC President Dana White declared MMA the”safest game in the world, fact.” The concept that MMA is the most popular sport in the world is crazy. Tennis, golf, track and field, swimming… are”safer” sports in that they lack head trauma all together and present little risk of death. Touting up security should come with a responsibility to completely study the ramifications of your sport. The construction on what will be called the UFC Athlete Health and Performance Center starts this shortly and will take 15 months to finish. Alongside medical insurance for training injuries, this is MMA’s next most significant step towards taking on more of a top role in sport security. With that said, Dana’s end game is that Scientific study will finally develop MMA as a”safer” choice for battle sport athletes when compared with boxing. But, it might just further the game’s reverse relationship. Since MMA increases in popularity, boxing’s visibility at the national consciousness continues to fall and it is simple to finger stage. Additionally, it can’t be stressed enough the first generation of fighters are just getting out of this sport over the past few decades. Science has an incredibly small sample dimension to check at with respect to aging MMA fighters right now, although UFC originals like Gary Goodridge are already feeling the consequences. We probably still require a couple more”generations” of fighters to retire and grow old to get an actual feel for the effects of the sport on them since they age. And by that I mean boxers that have had to compete with other high level athletes, not fighters who were the best of a sport that was still very much in the developmental stages. Fighters like George St Pierre, Demetrious Johnson and Ronda Rousey are not likely to deal with any longstanding consequences of brain injury primarily due to their runs of dominance as well as their capacity to prevent substantial damage. Johnson recently said on the Joe Rogan Expertise that”There’s not enough money in the world for me to risk brain damage” Johnson, like many other educated fighters, knows that carrying too much damage in his career will hurt his longevity both inside and outside the game, and that’s why he’s so conscious of his safety in the Octagon. Perhaps that is the reason he’s never lost consciousness from the Octagon. Whatever the scenario, it’s tough to use findings of yesteryear to find out the security of the game now. So much constantly changes inside the sport of MMA that trying to compare between eras is basically the same in trying to compare very different sports. Maybe then a much better approach is not to look at the sport’s past, and rather on its current and foreseeable future. The debate as to which sport is safer because of the glove size is moot. The amount of punishment a fighter takes over their livelihood is individualistic and highly dependent on a fighter’s style. The most important selling point as to why MMA is more powerful than boxing is actually the glove dimensions. The boxing glove has been created to protect the hands, not the person being punched. However MMA practitioners argue that they use the bare minimum in hand protection. Any debate surrounding the fact that a hand will break before the head is not exactly the most attractive strategy to advocate for a safer sport. The same goes for the standing eight count. Arguing that permitting a concussed fighter to continue at a fight after being knocked down just furthers brain injury. In MMA we witness a lot follow up punches following a fighter is left unconscious — maybe equally damaging to permitting a fighter to continue after getting devastating blows. There are so many factors in determining the devastation of a landed punch–out of technique to time, to whether or not the receiver saw the punch coming–which it would be almost impossible to determine at a live match that glove size could have caused the most damage. Furthermore, there are quite a few different rules and elements that determining which sport is safer. The average period of a Boxing match is normally longer then that of an MMA fight. There are so many variables that are individualistic into the fighter. I’d like to declare each game equally as dangerous, but until additional research is completed, one can’t create such a statement with much confidence. The inherent risks in both sports are intrinsically connected. The capability of a fighter to achieve longevity in the game is more dependant on the abilities of the fighter themselves their various sports parameters independently. Generalizing that is safer with no scientific evidence to support such a claim remains to be a matter of opinion.
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