The Weekly Debate. Is boxing too violent to be called a sport?

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1 THE STORY 48 wins in 48 fights is Floyd Mayweather s perfect record in the boxing ring, after he beat Manny Pacquiao at the weekend. Mayweather (opposite) says he will have one more fight, but many people think that he will want to reach 50 wins so that he could beat Rocky Marciano s famous record of 49 victories and no defeats. FACT ATTACK: A HISTORY OF BOXING Women s boxing was introduced to the Olympic games in 2012 Boxing, which is both an amateur (unpaid) and professional (paid) sport, involves two fighters in a ring attacking and defending using their fists alone. Boxing first appeared as an Olympic event in the 23rd Olympiad in 688 BC. Fist-fight contests date back to prehistory. The earliest evidence of boxing appears in carvings from the 3rd millennium BC. The earliest evidence of rules for boxing comes from ancient Greece, where fights were held outside. The Greek god Apollo was considered the inventor of the sport. The first professional boxing matches took place at the turn of the 20th century in the UK and the USA. Matt Wells, a very successful British amateur and professional boxer in the early 20th century The 2012 Olympic games in London was the first to feature women s boxing.

2 BACKGROUND Boxing is a sport in which two people punch each other until one is knocked out or, if there is no knockout, a winner is declared according to how many points judges have awarded them. It has been played competitively for longer than football, rugby, cricket and other sports, and it is popular all over the world. It features in Olympic games and attracts millions of TV viewers globally, many of them prepared to pay as much as $100 ( 66) to watch a single bout the recent high profile fight between Floyd Mayweather of the USA and Manny Pacquaio of the Philippines cost that much on American pay-per-view TV. What s more, it s a sport Britain is pretty good at: at the London Olympics, British boxers won three gold medals, a silver, and a bronze. Professionally, Britain has produced highly successful boxers for years and current fighters such as Carl Froch and Carl Frampton are among the best in the world. So why do some people want it banned, and is it really a sport, or just a glamorous fight? For decades, there have been numerous calls for it to be banned because it can be a highly dangerous sport. Just a couple of months ago, Australian medical officials called on boxing to be outlawed following the death of a 23-year-old fighter who fell into a A pair of boxing gloves with blood on them from a professional fight at the O2 in London earlier this year coma soon after a match as a result of a head injury. In the UK, the British Medical Association, which represents doctors, has been calling for a ban for decades. The sport is currently outlawed in only three countries: Iceland, Iran and North Korea. Sweden legalised it in 2007 but with far shorter fights allowed than elsewhere (four rounds as opposed to the usual 10-12). Boxers are top athletes who must train super-hard, be super-fit and work flat out to win fights. Boxers must have discipline, tactics and intelligence to win fights. Many fighters from different countries have said that boxing offered them a path out of poverty. Do these fighters therefore deserve to be considered sportsmen? Or is boxing too dangerous and cruel to allow it to be a sport? Is banning it an option, or does it just risk making boxing an illegal activity without proper rules and regulations, increasing the risk of injury and even death? DID YOU KNOW? More people are hospitalized each year in America due to injuries sustained playing baseball, softball, basketball, watersports, golf and ice skating than boxing! We believe that a so-called sport where two people knock each other in the head as often as you possibly can to win a bout seems rather barbaric. You re not allowed to hit the organs beneath the belt, whereas you re allowed to hit the organ above your shoulder, which is the most important organ in the body. Shaun Rudd, president of the Australian Medical Association, Queensland.

3 Classification Professional and amateur boxers take part in contests according to their weight and fight against boxers in the same weight class. There are several classes, including heavyweight (which has no weight limit), cruiserweight (boxers with a maximum weight of 90.7kg) and flyweight (maximum of 50.8kg). Confusingly, different boxing associations use different terms: for example, the World Boxing Organization calls cruiserweight junior heavyweight. Boxing dangers The dangers of boxing have been known and discussed since the time of the ancient Greeks. Of all their sports, they considered boxing to be the one that caused the most injuries. An inscription from the 1st century BC states that, A boxer s victory is gained in blood. There is other written evidence from the time that boxing caused severe injury and even death. According to the Journal of Combative Sport in the USA, between January 1960 and August 2011, there were 488 boxingrelated deaths. The journal says 66% of these deaths were due to head, brain or neck injuries, while one was caused by a skull fracture. As well as head injuries, boxers can suffer broken teeth, eye injuries, cuts, bruises and cracked ribs. Head injuries According to the American Association of Neurological Surgeons, some 90% of boxers will sustain a brain injury, and between 14% and 50% will have symptoms of long-term brain injury. Being hit on the head can cause fractures to the bone of the head and face as well as tissue damage in the brain. It can also damage the surface of the brain, tear nerves, cause internal bleeding and produce blood clots in the brain. The association says that, over time, boxers can suffer permanent brain damage, pointing out that the force of a boxer s fist is equivalent to being hit with a 6kg bowling ball travelling at 20mph. Boxing gloves add weight and energy to punches, creating extra damage. Mohammed Ali Ali is one of the most famous and popular boxers of all time, considered by experts to be one of, if not the greatest heavyweight fighter ever. He won 56 fights and lost just 5, as well as scooping an Olympic gold for the USA in But in 1984, Ali was diagnosed with Parkinson s Disease. The blows he received to the head throughout his career are thought to have played a direct part in him getting the illness. He is the most high-profile boxer to have become seriously ill as a result of the sport. One fight in particular his second to last is thought to have had a very damaging effect on Ali s health. Boxing involves landing several blows to the head, which can cause serious long-term health problems. Ali in 1966

4 Michael Watson Where as Ali retired after a long career in the ring, British boxer Michael Watson was forced to retire early (at the age of just 26) after he suffered serious injuries in a fight with fellow Briton Chris Eubank. In the fight, which took place in 1991, Eubank delivered a heavy blow to Watson s head in the eleventh round that left Watson on the ropes. At the start of the twelfth round, Watson was clearly unwell and wobbling on his legs when Eubank delivered further punches and the referee ended the fight, with Eubank declared the winner. Watson collapsed soon after and, with no ambulance or paramedic at the venue, it took almost half an hour for him to receive hospital treatment. As a direct result of the fight, he spent 40 days in a coma and required six operations to remove a blood clot from his brain. He spent over a year in hospital and six years in a wheelchair. For eight months after his surgery, he was unable to hear, speak or walk. He can now speak and write again, but his life was changed forever by the horrific injuries he received in the ring. Heavy blows to the head can cause haemorrhages, which are heavy discharges of blood from a damaged blood vessel. This is what causes some boxers to fall into a coma. But punches to the head can cause less obvious damage that is still very serious: they can lead to tiny tears of the blood vessels in the brain that can affect mental health. Constant battering of the brain can also bring about Alzheimer s Disease in later life. What is a sport? Are boxers entitled to be called sportspeople just as footballers like Lionel Messi are? The dictionary definition of a sport is: an athletic activity requiring skill or physical ability and often of a competitive nature. By that definition, boxing is absolutely a sport, in the same way that football, rugby, tennis and other sports are. The difference is that in boxing, the athletic activity is punching, and the physical ability required is to punch harder than your opponent, while avoiding their punches. What makes it unacceptable to many doctors is that the punches are aimed at the head, one of the most sensitive and important parts of the human body. John Hardy, a brain expert based in London, says, We shouldn t get our fun out of watching people inflict brain damage on each other. Boxing is a sport in which the aim is to leave your opponent knocked out on the floor. Does the fact it is a fight make it less of a sport than, say, golf or cricket? Should fighting sports such as boxing, kick-boxing and mixed martial arts be described as something different? There are other sports that contain elements of violence, such as rugby and ice hockey, but there are few, if any, calls to stop considering them a sport. Michael Watson, surrounded by his team, collapses after his fight with Chris Eubank in 1991.

5 Other dangerous sports While it is clear that boxing can be extremely dangerous, it s important to remember that there are other dangerous sports that very few, if any, people want banned. In terms of overall injuries, a study in the USA found that the highest number of sportsrelated injuries that required medical attention were reported among basketball players, with a total of 409,799, followed by American football (376,115) and cycling (317,041). As far as head injuries go, cheerleading which is commonly practiced in American schools and cycling are two of the most dangerous sports in the US. Nearly 85,000 head injuries were caused by cycling in 2009, and about 600 deaths each year are caused by head injuries following a fall from a bike. The vast majority of these could have been avoided if the cyclist had worn a helmet. But if competitive cycling is considered a sport, despite the risks to the millions of amateur cyclists worldwide, why shouldn t boxing be considered a sport? Of course, more people cycle and play contact sports such as football and rugby than box, so there will be a higher number of injuries sustained in those sports. But if boxing is too violent to be a sport, could it be argued that cycling and football, which both cause injuries to amateurs and professionals alike, should also be struck off the list of sports? Boxing benefits For the young people who take part in it, boxing provides a number of positives: as a high-energy activity, it helps to keep them fit and healthy and, in particular, improve the strength of the heart. According to the BBC, one hour spent punching a punch-bag can burn 354 calories that's almost as many calories as you get in a Mars bar and a can of cola! The American Centres for Disease Control Prevention says that boxing is the ideal exercise for people who want to lower their risk of becoming obese (dangerously fat) and it also reduces the chance of acquiring heart disease, diabetes and cancer, among other illnesses. Boxing clubs are also good places for youngsters to make friends, learn social skills and have some fun outside of school and college. Saftey procedures Although the sport does bring several safety risks with it, boxing s authorities have taken steps to reduce the danger, including ensuring that boxers wear gum shields to protect their teeth and that medical staff are now in arenas for professional fights. Between 1984 and 2013, there was a big difference between professional and amateur men s boxing: the amateurs had to wear protective head guards that cushioned blows. Some safety campaigners urged professional boxing organisations to introduce headguards, too, but in 2013 the International Amateur Boxing Association announced that headguards were to be removed from men s amateur boxing (but not from women s). This came as a result of two studies that said removing the guards would actually reduce the number of concussions suffered by boxers.

6 My opinion is that the brain should not be the target in any sport, and no amount of juggling with the regulations can take away the risk. Experienced and outstanding boxers are themselves aware of the risk, difficult as it may be for them eventually to call a halt. John Corsellis, a British brain specialist who identified damage to the brains of boxers from repeated blows to the head in the 1980s. Boxing damages your brain; don t let anyone tell you any different. Former featherweight world champion boxer Barry McGuigan. Discussion 1. How would you define a sport? 2. Is boxing too violent? 3. What can be done to make boxing safer? 4. Would banning boxing just mean people would continue fighting but without proper supervision and safety procedures? 5. Or is banning boxing the right thing to do? 6. Should all fighting sports be re-classified as something other than sport? Glossary Bout A contest. Parkinson s Disease A serious condition in which part of the brain becomes damaged over many years, leading to serious health problems and, in some cases, death. Alzheimer s Disease A common type of dementia, which is a loss of mental ability due to the gradual death of brain cells. Concussions Sudden but short-lived changes in normal mental functions that occur after a blow or other injury to the head. They cause loss of memory, loss of consciousness (being knocked out ), seeing things (such as stars or blurry vision) and feeling confused and lost.