I remember a buddy of mine and I playing full contact chess with a chess board and a bunch of boffer weapons. We’d duke out every capture. Pawns used a short sword, knights a longsword and shield, queens a long and short sword…
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that sounds awesome! a live action version of Battle Chess! or Base Wars!
That’s a good point. I can buy that argument as excellent justification for more controls/banning if you can come up with stats? If it’s possible to prove direct harm to 3rd parties as a result of boxing brain injuries, then it ceases to be an issue of individual choice.
Nope.
Also, nope.
Thank you.
So… would this mean that an attacked piece would actually have a chance to win the encounter? Or do you just go through the motions, and always let the attacker win?
It isn’t a pure either/or. Some things consenting adults choose to participate in impose undue burdens on the rest of society. An individual may choose to ride a motorcycle without a helmet, GaryBuseyize himself, and be a medical cost to the state (i.e. you) for the rest of his life. This is why we have helmet laws, not so much as a moral judgment. At a higher level, the Koch brothers choose to burn coal like it is going out of style, dumping the effluent in the air and washing their hands of the problem. Downwind states then get to enjoy deforestation from acid rain and all of us see our collective climate go to shit. That behavior should be roundly discouraged by a carbon tax, or cap and trade, or something. Again not for moral judgment reasons but because it the people who choose to wreck our collective environment need to bear the cost of cleaning up their mess.
If you could guarantee that a brain injured boxer or linebacker would never be a burden on Medicaid, you might have a point. But you can’t make that guarantee so some reasonable regulation is in order. It shouldn’t be allowed for people to engage in risky behavior with the understanding that someone else will pay for cleaning up their mess.
So, abolish mountain rescue, the coastguard, ban skiing, mountain biking, private cars…?
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The problem with boxing is easy to solve - go back to the old days of bare hands boxing.
With bare hands it is really easy to break you hand if you punch someone in the face or anywhere in the head so the fight tends to be more about punching chest and torso.
The immediate result? No deaths and no knock outs.
And it would become a sport again, not carnage.
Hemingway never got to see downhill mountain biking.
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Every capture was a gamble- Although the weapon restrictions were designed so that a knight stood a better chance than a pawn in any given contest.
So, you could have a perfect strategy fail because your opponent got in a lucky torso shot. It was a kind of awesome combination of strategy, physical skill, and luck.
I have this thing about geeky chess variants like Knightmare and Doubles chess. 
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Often connected with Marfan syndrome http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marfan_syndrome but whether it is or not it’s not so much a consequence of the sport itself, they died because of the heart defect, and any excercise or vigorous activity might have triggered their death.
Marfan is associated with being very tall and having long limbs, which is obviously associated with being good at basketball.
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So allow dueling, vendettas, crystal meth and untreated schizophrenia?
Occasional accidents are very different from high risk activities. From your point of view, when the Koch brothers dump their shit in my air, that’s perfectly fine. Had we followed your point of view over the years, the Cuyahoga river would still be on fire.
People who drive private cars buy insurance or post bonds, people who drive boats pay extra taxes and buy insurance, etc. all to take care of their emergencies when they arise. If boxers were prohibited from boxing without proof of special boxer’s medical insurance, I’d be perfectly fine with that.
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Perhaps some sort of system that would conduct health checks on boxers, preventing them from fighting if they do not meet certain standards of health (both physical and mental) and would refuse to allow fights that do not have proper medical facilities and personnel? You could charge a fee to cover that, effectively licensing someone to box.
I mean, we’ve got socialized medicine here anyway, I don’t see any reason to withhold treatment because I don’t like someone’s behaviour.
Another alternative is to set up an equivalent to New Zealand’s Accident Compensation Corporation (ACC). You are free to choose to insure your own physical goods or not as you desire, but the whole country provides the risk pool for personal injury. It works pretty well.
The USA would probably denounce this as socialism though, as no-one gets to rake in an obscene profit from running it …
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Some people do test the patience of the rescue services though…
The rules of sports are designed to minimise the possibility of this and only “bad sports” actively try to hurt their opponent. You’re the fucking coward for even trying to make this mindless comparison.
boxing injuries are accidents that result from trying to score points with clean hits
No they’re not. They’re a direct result of punching someone in the head - the favoured target for “scoring points with clean hits”. You pro-fight sports types really need to work on your arguments because no one is buying your shit with this complete garbage… but I’m in no way surprised that fans of fighting sports aren’t the sharpest tools in the shed: it kinda comes with the territory.
So do any of the “won’t somebody not think of the child-minded adults” crowd in here have any salient reasons why boxing should continue, apart from selfish enjoyment of it? I’m still not seeing a single valid talking point from any of you.
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How many consenting parties developed brain injuries from:
Tying up, gagging, whipping, and penetrating someone with various objects
Thanks @anon15383236 for making the excellent point that those around the consenting adult often have to deal with the awful results of brain injury, let alone the desperation of watching a loved one’s mind slip away as a result of early-onset Alzheimer’s.
…but don’t let thinking people get in the way of you guys wanting to watch people punch each other in the head.
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[quote=“anon15383236, post:137, topic:49851”]
Ingesting pot every once in awhile, or even, you know, regularly =/= voluntarily killing your brain with drugs. Do some research. [/quote]
There are drugs besides pot. Meth’ll fuck you right up.
Anyway, you’ve got me backwards. I wasn’t supporting drug prohibition. I think boxing is fucking stupid, mind you, but I’m not convinced that people should be barred from willing participation.
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Clearly the world needs some form of slap-based combat sport.
