I know that this would ruin multiple billion dollar industries as we know them (boxing, MMA, gridiron football, more), so nothing substantive will change, but in my opinion there's a grotesque conflict when we're paying people to put up with TBIs, broken bones, et cetera.
There are sports where violence and injury are clearly not the goal but aren't negligible, such as racecar drivers and baseball pitchers, and I don't know how to approach those -- but violence as sport seems far more clear cut.
There certainly are sports that ban head strikes. Certain forms of karate, for instance. Fight fans _like_ seeing heads get punched, and they like seeing knock outs. There's not currently a very big market that wants to see fighting without head strikes.
I think that's a huge symptom of my point. You can strip out tackles from football and make MMA way safer, but the large MMA competitions are popular because they're closer to two people doing whatever they can to win a fight than something more restrictive, like karate or wrestling. As you mention, the fans will be pissed at safening the sport, and I'd almost bet money that the vast majority of the fighters would be pissed as well -- just like I've seen plenty of coworkers and workers in other industries get angry at OSHA regulations, even the ones that are as ridiculously straightforward as labeling the bottle of formaldehyde so someone doesn't spritz it around a clinic.
Full contact but restricted martial arts also exist and mitigate risks by limiting the range of allowed techniques. Some of them do it in different ways than others. Judo is full-contact but disallows strikes, which makes it massively different than something with strikes. Semi-contact karate avoids the full-contact part, which makes it different in a different way.
Full contact practically always comes with risks, and full contact with fewer restrictions comes at much greater ones. Spectator expectations or other parts of culture may encourage the athletes to take risks and go to greater lengths than they otherwise would. But it's difficult for me to agree that modern society should have no place for sports that mentally healthy people actually want to participate in just because it comes with a risk of physical injury or intentional roughness. If they wanted to participate in a different sport, they'd have options.
In the end it's of course a matter of where to draw the line. Rather few people would nowadays want to allow fights to the death even if the participants wanted that. (Although, in reality, I don't think such a sport would get that many willing and actually voluntary participants either.)
I think if someone seriously injured themself doing parkour or base jumping (or bare knuckle boxing) there's an implicit assumption that people partook in that activity knowing the risks whereas with a professionally recognised high stakes sport (where the athletes may also have contractual obligations to perform) then there need to be higher standards and awareness.
For instance why is head trauma more of a problem in NFL than rugby when rugby players don't even wear helmets
I'm also wondering if that's partially connected to exactly the fact that they don't wear protective equipment. In many cases it's of course definitely helpful to have protection, but since it can also make the risks less obvious, using heavy padding might also encourage heavier contact. If, on the other hand, none of the participants are under any illusion of safety, that could discourage recklessness and perhaps even encourage a sense of mutual respect.
Helmets generally don't offer that much protection from concussions. They do reduce the risks of other serious head injuries such as fractures, as well as more superficial injuries, but if helmets make people think they can take heavy contact with abandon, that might increase the number and severity of concussions.
The most common preference is somewhere between a Captain America movie and a John Wick movie, I think.
Folks who can't stand to see real violence wish it just didn't happen, the way I wish street fights didn't happen. But you're not gonna get anywhere offering what an MMA fan understand as an inferior product. And the MMA fans know there's karate and wrestling and BJJ to watch, they just aren't as interested in it.
I don't try to rationalize it much. I know most people, especially in the circles I'm in, can't stand to look at it. I don't mind that.
The idea that society has moved past the need for violent spectacle or something just doesn't work for me, because I enjoy the sport. And plenty of other people do, too
Fighters for the most part are going to do what will make them the most money. If the fans are there for knockouts, they're gonna go for knockouts. If BJJ tournaments offered the same money making opportunities that MMA does, a bunch of fighters would very happily switch
Ironically the growth of UFC and Boxing tells me we're trending back to the Roman days. Sure we won't have full on gladiators but everything old is new again feels like...
To hold up Roman as some sort of maxima doesnt really hold up. Its just that they were rich so they invested more in spectical, just as we do now.
Hah, not so much - https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=biffs+bumps+bra... - big hits are a big thing, to the point TV specials and such are made on it.
If so, then you agree with the person you responded to, you just want to draw the line in a different place.
That feels like an ad hominem, but I'll focus on what I think your point is.
I don't really have a problem with amateur MMA, etc. But paying people for violence as a sport isn't just acknowledging it; it's encouraging it. And it's encouraging athletes to push themselves into injury, some of which is life destroying.
Should people be allowed to attend private sex clubs where consensual sexual violence is a key part of the group activity?
My complaint falls away when you remove the profit or the long-term injury.
Boxing is beautiful so are many of the other martial arts, but there is something just so magical about a good boxing fight that can have skill and technique, emotion and grit. And actually watching all the other adjacent sports - MMA, Muay Thai, Kickboxing just serves to elevate boxing and show how much further you can take an idea when you specialise.
From what I know, boxing seems way safer than say NFL nowadays but you know it's not "fighting".
We didn’t catch Lance Armstrong using PEDs for something like eight years.
They're not being stupid by continuing the fight and trying to hide injuries. They are trying to get a w instead of an l, and sometimes that just means you need to keep the fight going another minute or two until the time is up. That can literally mean the difference between having a successful career and retiring with a mediocre record. It can be the difference between a shot at the world title, versus being on the free undercard fights. Fights. They are making a calculation, and probably the same one I would make in their same situation. It is very easy to look back on the reckless youth as being stupid. Fortunately, I have enough recording of myself from that era to see that I actually had thought it through pretty well, I just didn't realize how bad it could be in the future. But, if I had a world title under my belt, none of my current maladies would feel nearly as bad :-D
But wanting to continue when even your coach knows it’s over is a kind of pressure sale situation. You’re in the moment and sort of trapped, and having a concussion and a brain full of adrenaline makes you have even worse judgement.
I blame the committee, only partially the refs since the refs aren't makign the rules.
To be clear my disagreement was with the parent that said adrenaline made the fighters stupid.
For me, I can hardly think of a worse use of a life than fighting for sport. There is not a single fighter on earth I would trade places with. Not one.
My girlfriend was a martial arts trainer for a few years, and many of the girls she worked with cited Ronda specifically as their inspiration. They're not competing, this is a hobby, but they're doing it because they were inspired by people like Ronda.
I just envy their discipline...
I have to ask, what's your ideal life look like?
When I consider how Naoya Inoue fought 11 rounds with a broken orbital socket I am profoundly inspired by the heart he demonstrated and his will to win - his focus and his skill to change strategy mid fight.
It's easy to handwave his ability to fight through pain thanks to adrenaline... until you try it for yourself.
It's inspiring to know just how much we can overcome ourselves if we want something enough.
What's the deeper meaning of getting heart disease and myopia by sitting at a computer learning how to be a good programmer?
What's the deeper meaning of doing anything? It's all temporary vanity. In a million years, even the Pyramids will have worn away!
It's all ships in bottles to keep us busily interested til we die. :D
All things are full of weariness; a man cannot utter it; the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing.
What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun.
Is there a thing of which it is said, “See, this is new”? It has been already in the ages before us.
There is no remembrance of former things, nor will there be any remembrance of later things yet to be among those who come after.
And steroids make you not only dumber but more violent.
Scientific American agrees[1] that violence is not correlated with testosterone:
> "When aggression is more narrowly defined as simple physical violence, the connection between [testosterone and violence] all but disappears."
Another study finds higher testosterone promotes pro-social behavior[2].
Personally I've found that rather than androgens being a mediator of violence, estrogen seems to be a much powerful inhibitor of rage/violence-potential. Low estrogen causes particularly difficult-to-control emotions. Generally when someone is taking high amounts of steroids they are likely also taking anti-estrogens (blocking testosterone's conversion to estradiol).
This low estradiol, due to another drug, not steroids seems to be what most often causes violent emotional dysregulation. Generally not testosterone or other androgens without anti-estrogens.
Perhaps my TRT is making me extremely dumb though ;-)
0: https://lithub.com/it-turns-out-theres-not-a-lot-of-science-...
1: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/strange-but-true-....
2: https://news.emory.edu/stories/2022/08/esc_testosterone_anim...
Tell me that you have no idea about physiology without telling me.
Slightly off-topic though; you're acknowledging that they might contribute which isn't unfair here.
Suppose that there are enhancement drugs. They work, and a lot of competitors are using them. Then it becomes far more believable that the current champion is enhanced and has managed to hide it, than that someone who is not enhanced has miraculously managed to beat the entire field of people who have such a big advantage.
My view lead to me being certain about Lance Armstrong years before he was caught.
The fact that Greg was such a brittle rider - a god one day and barely finishing another - gave me hope that he was legit. The fact that he has focused in retirement on cheating cemented that for me.
Last I heard he was trying to watchdog riders sneaking small electric motors into their bikes. Even 50 watts is a lot of boost for a cyclist.
Why not bring a gun to an MMA fight while they're at it too
The most effective doping agents are often the easiest to detect, and modern anti-doping programs like the biological passport and whereabouts program are very effective. It's no reason to be complicit -- the science continues to evolve, athletes who go awry will continue to get caught, and athletes who follow the rules will continue to have to work hard to stay within the boundaries (it is not trivial to stay within WADA guidelines even as an amateur athlete; a lot of people who get medical treatment for a common issue would violate the rules a few times over without realizing it).
But to look at an entire sport and disregard them all as cheaters without evidence does nothing but encourage young athletes to feel like they need to risk their health in order to compete and belittle the accomplishments of clean athletes. We need to hold cheaters accountable, not throw in the towel.
I agree that "a lot of competitors are using them" is an assumption. In the case of Lance Armstrong, so many other bikers had been caught before him that it was no longer an assumption. But that does vary by sport.
I entirely dismiss the argument that our tests catch cheaters. There have just been too many examples over the years of athletes getting away with cheating for years. At this point the burden of proof is on those who think we're catching them. In fact as articles like https://www.shu.ac.uk/news/all-articles/features-and-comment... show, anonymous surveys show that most athletes are getting away with it.
All that said, I agree on holding cheaters accountable. And think we should go farther. If someone who trains with you gets caught, you should also be punished. On the assumption that there is a chance you were just not caught, and if you weren't doping, you likely knew and didn't tell. That would create social pressure to not put your teammates at jeopardy. And I think THAT would finally end cheating.
Haha no, definitely not. For clarity, we're talking about banned substances, which isn't always the same thing as performance enhancing drugs. It is actually debated whether a lot of the WADA banned substances are performance enhancing drugs; but WADA would rather athletes don't take things that could be harmful to them because they might enhance performance so they tend to err on the side of adding things they worry about or have evidence of athletes abusing.
Moreso, I mean that it's simplistic to assume that the type and amount of illegal substances you can get away with while skirting an increasingly aggressive testing framework will be sufficient to be the world champion. There's a risk tradeoff here and a million variables in high performance training -- athletes put their entire career on the line when they take banned substances and get no guarantee of return. Take the recent case of Collin Chartier in triathlon: reached #14 in the world, started doping over the off season, caught within a few months of use, and career is now over.
> In the case of Lance Armstrong, so many other bikers had been caught before him that it was no longer an assumption.
Right, and once they're caught, they're banned. They are no longer a "competitor who is using them". Your logic makes an assumption that the population that is left just hasn't been caught yet, rather than that their negative tests actually indicate a lack of doping. And that is an assumption.
> anonymous surveys show that most athletes are getting away with it
These surveys come up with numbers showing anywhere between 1% and 70% of athletes have consumed a banned substance. Remember that weed is a WADA banned substance that 50% of the US population has tried. These studies are glorified guesses that vary depending on the wording they use.
We are still looking at whether over the counter pain killers are mood altering substances. I’ve seen circumstantial evidence of this in myself. (Though I don’t think I’d want me or a friend to fight on painkillers - reduced coagulation and bruises are no joke).
It would change the strategy of the sport, but it may help prevent brain damage over time.
What would make sense would just be to disallow head strikes. Hit your opponent in the head and forfeit.
Or you could go in the other direction, and let fights be to the death.
What's the benefit of the middle ground? If you want to see what works in a fight, it's crippling the other guy. If you don't want people to be crippled, you probably shouldn't allow crippling them in the future either.
Among the sets of rules that allow head strikes, traditional boxing is the worst.
It is much more dangerous than any kind of kickboxing or MMA, because the boxers have few methods to defend themselves and few other means of winning, except by a knockout that is easiest to achieve by a head strike. Even during the Greek antiquity, pancration (i.e. MMA) was considered to have a much lower risk of injury than pugilism (i.e. boxing).
But they distinguished between that and stand up striking aka pugilism? Though the latter is a Latin word hmm
I'd be very uninterested by non head striking martial arts.
Martial Arts is a search for truth. It's not only about fighting as it is also about discipline, self improvement, peace, community and some spritualism
But if you care about combat them you have to fight/spar. No point pretending taichi is a combat skill if no one in two generations or more have applied it practically.
MMA is the closest we can get to a controlled safe arena to facilitate that search for truth.
Do what works. Love him or hate him, the Conor McGregor shoulder punch was a great moment of reminding people that the spirit of MMA should be formless.
For that reason I find it frustrating that UFC has banned 12oclock elbows and football kicks and grounded knees. Not because I want to see people's heads getting smashed but because the obvious desire to not get struck by those would promote less risky takedowns and would probably make the sport less wrestling dominant.
Pankration allowed striking, kicking, wrestling and submission grappling, so it was very similar to the MMA of today.
However, the pankration fighters did not bandage their hands with leather straps, like the pugilists, so they were not able to hit as hard the head of the opponent.
Moreover, they had plenty of other options for winning a match, so striking was not as emphasized as in pugilism, which remains true today in MMA vs. boxing.
> Martial Arts is a search for truth.
> But if you care about combat them you have to fight/spar.
> Do what works.
The truth is that barehanded fighting has been obsolete since the invention of rocks.
If you want to see what works, expect to see a lot of strikes that break the opponent's knee, and wrestlers putting their opponent's eyes out.
If you don't want to see that, how are head strikes supposed to be different?
> No point pretending taichi is a combat skill if
Huh? Nobody does pretend it's a combat skill. It's a set of exercises† practiced voluntarily by grandmothers, and imposed upon schoolchildren, for notional health reasons. If you suggested to either group that it might be relevant in combat, they would find that hilarious. (In fact, I have read a Chinese comic series in which there's a running joke that someone is seen as a martial artist when, in reality, all they can do is morning exercises. That person eventually defeats a gorilla -- the gorilla has been beating up actual martial artists by copying their moves, faster and stronger -- by doing some morning exercises, which it copies. Their total uselessness in combat means that the gorilla is no longer threatening.)
It is best known for the funny narrations that people make up to accompany and describe the exercises.
"I have a watermelon."
"Here you go."
† Well, really, tai ji is the interaction between yin and yang. The exercises are tai ji quan.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=rRGrzPU0zDY&pp=ygUQdGFpIGNoaSB...
I think taiji gets a bad rap. Although I haven't done explicitly taiji, when I did some shaolin quan which included baduanjin I was very impressed with how holistic the training was (with the exception of combat application). I think the training was "boring" but has the necessary ingredients for preparing the body to be conditioned for very fluid movement which turns out is very good for long term health and preservation of your MSK system. I came away impressed that we've had so much of this figured out for so long well before we had the science to explain it. Baduanjin was actually designed to be accessible regardless of age or prior skill level.
> The truth is that barehanded fighting has been obsolete since the invention of rocks.
So with a rock or even a rock weapon like an axe or whatever you are telling me you think you could take on Khabib? That rocks have completely obsoleted physicality and skill so now you will win.
> If you want to see what works, expect to see a lot of strikes that break the opponent's knee, and wrestlers putting their opponent's eyes out.
This quora post captures exactly what I think is about the search for truth in martial arts - there's so much "theory" that struggles to hold up in practice where a bouncer/martial artist reflects on how knee breaks are a low percentage high risk technique when trying to execute in real life. https://www.quora.com/Are-knee-destructions-illegal-in-MMA
I think non practitioners routinely underestimate the difficulty in executing these kinds of techniques under duress. I mean, a proper liver strike is a 1 hit KO and karate teaches the liver kick where you strike the liver with the ball of your foot. How often do you see that technique used? It's like the mma equivalent of the football bicycle kick.
IIRC Jon Jones used knee kicks and they werent so effective that they were banned or changed the face of the sport.
Eye gouging is weird, I'm unsure how it would change MMA and we'll never find out. If they're good as a strike people will stop engaging and resort to kick range but kicks can make you more liable to take downs which then brings you into gouging range in wrestling.
If anything UFC rules has shown that physicality kind of trumps skill unless the skill gap is very large. Which is a frustrating outcome but a truth nonetheless - martial arts is only useful if you're also strong
Some extra awareness will hopefully help