How is it different from any other congenital defect? If you know that it is likely to seriously cut your life short, and waste most of the years that you do have, and it effects nearly everyone - why not try to cure it? I think most people would want to if it was any other abstract health problem. And this is even without considering the further dangers of 1. “accidentally” killing off all other life and 2. “accidentally” rendering the planet uninhabitable for humans either. It’s hard to comprehend that there could be any “incentive” to not try making a few changes.
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Helmets have been compulsory in Hurling for years now, and before that were fairly common anyway. Also, Gaelic football is fairly tame compared to Rugby, American football and Aussie rules.
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No, because you are wrong.
MMA has a absolutely stellar safety record when compared to boxing. There have 131 deaths due to boxing since 1981 and four in MMA in the same period. Compare that to 117 high school and college kids dying since 1983 playing football.
So why don’t we ask “Why is football still a sport?”
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I say, old chap.
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If you’re trying to understand how people fought with such-and-such weapons, or with their bodies, then it makes sense to have some way of sparring or even fighting with suitable substitute weapons, or with their bodies, and to have certain rules for safety and courtesy. But apparently boxing doesn’t allow grapples and does allow dangerous head blows so… wtf? no one will understand how people fought, and many will suffer brain injury.
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Actually not quite. There’s a scoring system based on points. Though knocking the other guy down for a count of 10 is a way to win decoupled from points, it isn’t necessary that he actually be unconscious or beat to shit. In most cases its more about exhausting the other guy while landing enough hits to win on points, or exhausting him enough so he stays down. It could be argued that a properly fought boxing match, with technically proficient boxers, shouldn’t involve anyone getting beat to a pulp or injured. Though in practice beating the other guy senseless works just fine. I’d assume rule changes to make “noone hurt, win on points” the only option would remove much of spectacle or result in something kind of boring. Which is presumably why MMA is more popular than other, more structured competitive martial arts sparring.
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I agree with this comment. I’ve always wanted to try it, but even with my passing knowledge, boxing has a lot to offer in terms of gaining physical and mental strength.
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Interesting analysis from Bloomberg: that the popularity of boxing has been declining not because of it’s perceived brutality, but because of dynamics within the television industry.
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I went to what was supposed to be Bellator’s first MMA match in Longbeach. Seeing the guys come out after a match all patched up, hands swollen, knees and feet messed up, I couldn’t help but wonder if there is an easier way to make money. Especially when I saw some WWF wrestlers there and they were all hunched over and could barely move. Diamond Dallas Page was the only guy who could walk without a limp or cane, and raise his arms above his head.
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Jack Johnson, one of the greatest.
And of course Rocky Marciano, the greatest.
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This traces down to gladiator games and beyond. People watch other people fighting each other, news at eleven.
After all, why not. If it does not hemorrhage into my news, I can tolerate even soccer. (And it does, so I am bitching about it. Keep it confined to dedicated sports channels/media that I can comfortably ignore, and I shut up.)
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I’d imagine boxing popularity is declining because it’s a farce - the best boxers rarely face each other, fixing seems rife, and most big fights are on ludicrously expensive pay-per-view.
It had a tragic result, but I remember watching the Benn-McClellan fight in 1995, and there was something transfixing about it. At some very basic level it was compelling.
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I figure it’s got something to do with money and dads’ fear of getting old.
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[quote]MMA has a absolutely stellar safety record when compared to boxing.
There have 131 deaths due to boxing since 1981 and four in MMA in the
same period. Because it’s safer than MMA?[/quote]
Interesting. Not sure I buy it (I’d like to see how many participants there are in sanctioned MMA bouts vs. boxing), but the rules for MMA seem to be generally more pro-safety than boxing.
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Why would someone want to make physical encounters between two consenting adults illegal?
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Boxing does involve lots of physical training and toughness, and generally isn’t the kind of fake choreography that too much professional wrestling is, but it’s still about causing the other person enough brain trauma that they’re unable to stand up after you hit them. There’s no place for it in a civilized society.
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See also:
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Who gets the authority to define what has or has not place in a “civilized” “society” (and what do these two things mean anyway)?
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Horrible stat of the day -
Of the 36 wrestlers at Wrestlemania 6, one third of them died before the age of 64.
Pre-determined it might be, but those bumps and big spots take a hell of a toll on the human body.
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So people should only be allowed to make their money if it is easy? 
Have you considered that they enjoy the sport and consider the difficulty and painful challenge to be life-affirming? They demonstrate to themselves over and again that they can stand across from the toughest men and women in the world and prove themselves equal to the task. Compared to that, life’s other challenges must certainly seem minuscule. Few people can ever say that. I certainly have never gotten that feeling from accounting.
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