Brave or Grave? Let them decide! (Is boxing worth the risk?)

Member Name: angusreid

Product:	Is boxing worth the risk?
Date:	20/01/02 (636 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Good to watch, entertaining and gives some people a chance to get off the streets

Disadvantages: Brain Damage, death, injuries.

RISK!

Don’t we take them every day of our lives?

Isn’t walking across the street a risk?

What about walking home alone at night, isn’t that a risk?

So boxing is a VISIBLE risk, one that has everlasting kickbacks on families and supporters of this violent, but sportsman like game.

Like it or loath it, boxing has been around for many, many years, and will be no matter what happens with medical boards and the like.

From bare knuckle boxing, the Marquis of Queensbury decided to introduce some sort of methodical balance to this brawling, biting, hair pulling, spitting street fight, and make it all together more of a sport.

Taking it off the streets and into arenas, village halls and barns.

Boxing itself has come on leaps and bounds since then, but even movies such as far and away, starring the estranged couple, Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman, show the strengths and importance that these fights had and the influence a boxer held over their peers.

The introduction of gloves, early in the twentieth century was greatly influenced by managers who wanted their boys fighting next week, not next month when the cuts had healed.

You see, gloves stop the bone against bone, skin splitting punches, which cause half the ugly scars that boxers, have to bare for the rest of their lives.

Further down the road, we find that amateur boxers have to wear head guards to protect them from brain damage and other injuries such as concussion.

Now all boxers must go for regular check ups and brain scans to make sure they are fit to box and entertain us.

Okay, the evidence that a punch landing on the head causes a vast amount of brain cells to die, is not in dispute.

A punch can kill, that’s not in dispute.

Being repetitively punched can lead to long-term brain damage, that is not in dispute.

The risks that boxing holds, that is n
ot in dispute.

Why do people do it then?

Lets put it this way

If you climb mountains, are you at risk?

If you race cars and motorbikes, are you at risk?

If you go hang gliding, is that safe?

The list goes on, the risks are real.

So boxing is different, as it is a violent sport, where punches are swapped rather than rosettes or pendants.

The dangers are there for all to see, and are not masked or played down in any way.

Followers of the sport will remember Michael Watson, and his disastrous fight with Chris Eubanks.
This not only changed the life Michael, but also changed Chris Eubank form possibly the greatest boxer in his class, to an average boxer, who was, in my opinion, scared to hit out at another man with the same power he used in that punch.

There have been other notable accidents, deaths and some sights that wake you up to the dangers of boxing, none more eye opening than Casius Clay, or Mohammed Ali, if you prefer that name.

Listen to him speak and watch him move, and you realise that boxing is not a game, but a very dangerous sport.

On the other side of the coin, the social aspects of boxing may be seen as an escape for mindless thugs, who if not put into a ring with gloves and a referee, would street fight, and join gangs or turn their skills to ill gotten gains, such as violence, muggings, and even murder.

What would become of the likes of Mike Tyson, who cannot even be handled by a referee, if he was not given the chance to box and get off the streets?

Not the best example, with his ear nibbling fetish and time served for rape (did he or didn’t he, the saga goes on!).

Boxing is at its peak in inner city areas, where poverty is most rife and crime and violence an every day contention.

Gangland murders are so plentiful in the US of A that they welcome any activity that stops people terrorising the street
s of, again, inner city residential areas, or downtown ghettos, whatever you wish to call them.

These people are given an opportunity to hit each other while at the same time learning respect, discipline and control.

Sure not all make it, some cant be controlled and end up back on the streets, back behind bars, and sometimes, murdered in revenge attacks.

Is it the same in England though?

Well, there was an incident when a boxing promoter (Barry Hearn I think) was shot when an alleged boxer who he had duped for some cash (all allegedly).

Maybe the underworld affairs of our country are all too often brushed under the old doormat and left to mingle with the dust.

The streets at night, and often in the day are not the safest place to be.

I for one, would rather they hit each other then my mother or wife for her handbag.

Getting back to the risk of boxing, yes, it is there.

Yet each of these boxers knows the risk from a very early age and they know what could befall them at any moment.

The decision to box professionally is an individual choice, not mine or anyone else’s.

Should we ban boxing?

No.
If we ban boxing, then we need to ban all sports where injury’s can happen and fatalities occur.

Fox hunting nearly always results in death, be it for a fox, but then they don’t volunteer to play.

In fact I have never seen a queue of foxes raising their paws saying “Pick me, Pick me” when they start blowing the horn for that contemptuous event of death they call a sport.

Boxing has financial rewards second to few events other than drug dealing.

If people are happy to box each other, it is their concern.

We don’t have to watch it.

Let them decide themselves if the risks out weigh the rewards.

If it is banned, I fear that it will go back underground and the injuries will b
e far worse than what they inflict on themselves now.

Summary: