At what point will mixed martial arts be considered a “regular” sport?
Recently, at the Canadian Medical Association annual meeting, nearly 250 delegates voted—by a vast majority—that it should campaign for a ban of “mixed martial arts prizefighting matches in Canada.”
The outgoing CMA President, Dr. Anne Doig, was quoted, “we are concerned when people engage in activities, the sole purpose of which is to pummel, kick, punch, scratch—whatever methods they use—until either somebody is seriously hurt or injured or somebody cries uncle and submits.”
Just the quote itself pretty much tells us what Dr. Doig knows about today’s mixed martial arts—not much. Yet, her opinion is obviously shared by many of her colleagues, and by many of the general public.
Yet, MMA is highly regulated in the 7 provinces that allow it here in Canada and the 44 states it is legal in the United States. The sport has vastly improved its set of rules in the past 15 years, outlawing certain types of strikes and holds deemed to be “too dangerous.” There are physicals, before matches that allow only healthy athletes to take part and doctors are always present at the event, ensuring competitors are kept safe during and after a fight.
Make no mistake—mixed martial arts is dangerous. People get hurt in the cage. Fighters are knocked out. Combatants are cut, often in spectacular fashion. Bones are broken, ligaments are torn, and organs are ruptured.
When you get right down to it: MMA is as dangerous as the average football game.
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Every week on the gridiron, a player goes down with a concussion. I have seen more gruesome knee injuries while watching football than I care to remember. And then there are the several athletes that have been paralyzed, sometimes forever, after a collision during a football game.
Let’s face it: there are several dangerous sports out there. Does the Canadian Medical Association propose we ban them all?
We cannot completely regulate “safety.” If MMA is banned, where does it end? Boxing would have to go. Many more boxers have died as a result of what’s happened in the ring than mixed martial artists in the past 20 years. To be fair, the CMA wants boxing banned as well.
So long, football. Every NFL and CFL season, there are countless concussions. On every play of every game, someone is using his head, whether it’s to block or make a tackle. There are also studies available that show ex-NFLers have a much shorter average life span than other humans.
Hockey? Just ask Eric Lindros. His career, like many, many others, was cut short due to concussions. Not as fortunate, Don Sanderson, who passed away a few weeks after hitting his head on the ice after a fight in a senior men’s hockey game in Ontario in 2009.
I think we would have to ban any extreme sport—the name says it all, doesn’t it?
Skiing might have to be stopped, as several people have perished on the slopes including Sonny Bono and Michael Kennedy.
Luge has to be considered, in light of Nodar Kumaritashvili’s passing at the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver. Bobsleigh has had its share of deaths on the track as well.
Cycling is much more perilous than we might think. The Tour de France, the sport’s most celebrated event has endured its share of tragedy with Fabio Casartelli’s fall, and subsequent death in the Pyrenees in 1995 remembered well.
Motorsports, in this light, are completely out of the question. Ayrton Senna, Dale Earnhardt, Jerry Unser, Scott Kalitta, Neil Bonnett and literally, hundreds of others died as the result of a crash.
We can go on: water sports, baseball, cricket, basketball, have all seen athletes die during the course of the action.
In the past several years, MMA, led by its premier promotion, The Ultimate Fighting Championship have attempted to make the sport as “safe” as possible.
In the end, it is up to the individuals to make that ultimate choice: whether stepping into the cage is truly the right thing. Once that decision is made, there is a chance disaster could strike and a fighter could end up seriously hurt, or like Michael Kirkham—dead.
The 30-year-old died due to a brain injury, a few days after going unconscious during an MMA fight earlier this summer in South Carolina. He is the second man to perish due to an injury in a sanctioned North American MMA event: Sam Vazquez passed away 42 days after a bout in Texas in 2007.
And it will happen again, I’m sure. But, from the top on down, the MMA community is trying to do the best job it can to ensure its fighters are as safe as possible. But as we can see, there in no way to ensure 100% safety, whether it’s in a cage or on a field.
I’m also sure, that whenever two people fight as sport, no matter how many rules and regulations are in place, it will never be universally considered “regular.”
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