1. Adil Sajjad
1,028 words
Concussions and Combat
“The UFC, listen, we don't hide from it, it's a contact sport and that's what these
guys do... In the 20-year history of the UFC, it will be 20-years in November, there has
never been a death or a serious injury.”
These were the words of Mr. Dana White in January of 2013, the UFC president
explicitly made clear that while concussions were an ever-present problem in combat sports,
it wasn’t necessarily their problem because they ‘actively look to minimise and treat’
concussions. That is true, the UFC sanctions a mandatory three month medical suspension
for any fighter suspected to have suffered general mental trauma. Though the question is,
how much can the threat of such trauma in a combat sport really be prevented, and is
treatment really even relevant once someone has already developed a degenerative brain
disorder? (see: Muhammad Ali/Gary Goodridge)
It should be of no surprise to anyone that the realm of combat sports is riddled with
broken bones and crushed limbs. Yet it’s often been called the purest form of competition;
from modern day boxers and mixed martial-artists to the wrestlers of ancient Greece. I’m not
ashamed to say I agree with that sentiment. In some sense, the supposed barbarity may be
what draws us to it. Maybe the sight of two evenly matched individuals in an act of physical
aggression against one other for the sole objective of glory quenches a primordial bloodlust
that can be attributed to human evolution. That’s okay then, right? Perhaps we relate to the
poetry of someone literally fighting for every pay-check in the same way the average joe feels
he has to ‘fight’ to put food on the table. Maybe. However, what neither of these theories
explains is why we react so differently to physical and mental trauma in general. What merits
a loud ‘ooh’ or ‘ouch’ sound when it comes to fractures, causes a pained and uneasy silence
when it comes to brain damage. Don’t believe it? There’s a way to test this kneejerk reaction:
show any boxing fanfrom the 60’s and 70’s one of Muhammad Ali’s recent interviews and
it’ll become painfully clear.
Before we go any further, it should be explained that the reason there is such a focus
on the UFC when talking about MMA is because it is undoubtedly the largest, busiest, most
profitable and the most prominent organisation. It is essentially the face of the entire sport
in the same way that when one mentions basketball, the NBA immediately comes to mind.
Until recently there wasn’t exactly a wealth of research on the topic of concussions in
MMA, however the University of Toronto only just finished carrying out an investigation
over the span of seven years from 2006 to 2013, in a bid to illustrate the average number of
concussions (via KO for MMA and boxing) in the UFC in comparison with other contact
sports. They found that for every 100 athletes 6.4 will suffer a concussion, this is trumped
only by American football which had an average of 8.4 (American Journal of Sports
Medicine).
This statistic is made all the more concerning whenyou take into account the level of
mental trauma suffered by mixed martial artists who lose a fight by technical knockout
(TKO). In this scenario the majority of TKO’s take place when the referee decides that a
fighter is in a disadvantageous position and is showing no signs of ‘intelligent defence’. For
the layman, this means that the referee may decide to stop the fight if one fighter is perched
on top of the other, pinned down fighter, and is repeatedly raining down haymakers. From
this the referee will look to see if the defending fighter is actively looking to improve his
position and isn’t just at the mercy of his opponent. Sometimes the defender will manage to
wriggle out of harm’s way and sometimes they won’t. What matters is the massive amount of

2. Adil Sajjad
1,028 words
damage a fighter can take if the referee is slow to act. It’s possible that the losing fighter
could take up to 10 unanswered shots to the head. When including the number of fights that
end in TKO the number of average concussions soars to 15.9, dwarfing every other
mainstream sport on Earth.
In the history of mixed-martial arts as a modern sport, there have been ten recorded
fatalities from both sanctioned and unsanctioned ‘amateur’ bouts. Of these fatalities, nine
can be attributed to blunt force trauma to the head. Truly worrying.
It’s for this reason that fighter safety is so important, doubly so for MMA, and the
task therefore becomes to find ways to minimise the risk of brain damage without overly
transforming the sport. For example, some of the more obvious sounding solutions such as
protective headwear wouldn’t be advisable in MMA as they would minimise a fighters ability
to perform any submissions to the head area altogether if there is an obstructive helmet
shaped pad that reaches under the chin. Should the fighters be asked to sacrifice a large,
maybe crucial portion of their game for the sake of minimising the risk of one particular type
of injury?
This becomes uncomfortable territory as the immediate question that follows is:
What’s more important, fighter safety or the sport itself? Ethics or entertainment? It seems a
simple question to answer, of course an athlete’s wellbeing should be held above all other
factors but the hard truth is this: most fighters need the money. If interest in the sport
depreciates then so does the size of their pay-checks. At UFC 157, a pay per view event, Liz
Carmouche fought in the main event for the bantamweight title and made only $12,000
(according to CSAC disclosed salaries via mmajunkie.com). While this isn’t entirely
consistent with every event, it should illustrate the type of money you can look to earn even
as a main-eventer if you’re not a fan favourite (or willing to swing haphazardly in every
fight). While it might make everyone feel good to say that the sport must be changed, doing
so may put hundreds of athletes out of work altogether.
Was it poetry, or barbarity after all?