8 ms·

It's really hard to call - see how much push back you also get from fighters when the ref calls it too early and so much stakes are on the line. Some extra awa

It's really hard to call - see how much push back you also get from fighters when the ref calls it too early and so much stakes are on the line. Some extra awareness will hopefully help

acover 3y ago
Fighters will try to hide broken arms and try to continue the fight.
- hinkley 3y ago
  Adrenaline makes you stupid. And fighters may be using PEDs that make them even dumber. We didn’t catch Lance Armstrong using PEDs for something like eight years.
  - freedomben 3y ago
    Adrenaline does make you stupid, but years of training makes you smart. The reason you train so intensively is that when the adrenaline is up you will fall back to muscle memory. 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
    - hinkley 3y ago
      We train the fighters to go until the ref tells you to stop, for similar reasons to what you already illustrated. Which is why I blame the refs and the committee. They know exactly what goes through your head when you’re in a fight and it’s their job to keep your opponent relatively safe. And they aren’t, which is why I don’t watch. 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.
      - freedomben 3y ago
        Agreed. 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.
    - thefaux 3y ago
      What is the deeper meaning of being a world champion fighter? I pursued a risky sport for many years myself until I was struck by the utter hollowness of it. How would my winning benefit anyone besides me? What was the purpose beyond self exaltation? How was this the best use of my short time on earth? 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.
      - DiggyJohnson 3y ago
        What sport? Simply asking out of curiosity?
      - shrimp_emoji 3y ago
        *As Saladin* Nothing... Everything. 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
        NoGravitas 3y ago
        Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher, vanity of vanities! All is vanity. What does man gain by all the toil at which he toils under the sun? A generation goes, and a generation comes, but the earth remains forever. 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.
      - djtango 3y ago
        It's inspiring. 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.
  - chrisfosterelli 3y ago
    Obviously PEDs are bad but IMO non-falsifiable accusations about athletes using them are uninteresting. You can always claim (and someone usually is) that an athlete is dirty and just hasn't been caught yet for some reason. Slightly off-topic though; you're acknowledging that they might contribute which isn't unfair here.
    - silverquiet 3y ago
      I assume that all professional athletes are on PEDs of some sort (I read awhile back that essentially all tennis players are on some heart medication that is allowed and they probably don't all have a heard condition). I don't think they care about what is legal, just what is detectible. The incentives are just too big for them to abstain.
      - hinkley 3y ago
        I think there’s a loophole with endurance athletes and asthma medication as well. But I would not immediately think, “mood or judgement altering” there. 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).
      - chrisfosterelli 3y ago
        You're maybe thinking of Meldonium, which is banned. The drug was developed in the 1970s and is a very common OTC sale in eastern Europe. It was banned in 2016 when WADA decided it was possible it could be able to act as a performance enhancer. Maria Sharapova, a tennis champion, made the news later that year when she tested positive, and received a two year ban which was later shortened when the court determined she had originally started taking it years ago in good faith on a doctor's recommendation. About two hundred other athletes from eastern Europe across different sports received positive tests shortly after the ban as well, a lot of which were reversed when it turned out they were detecting use from 2015 (it takes months after use for it to stop showing on tests).
  - DiggyJohnson 3y ago
    They aren't stupid they're just trying to make a career of it. Even though I think more work needs to be done on this issue, I do understand how things got this way.
  - 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 3y ago
    They might also just be trying not to lose their career
  - reaperman 3y ago
    Which PEDs make them dumber?
    - hinkley 3y ago
      Anything that affects the adrenals reduces higher order thinking. And steroids make you not only dumber but more violent.
      - reaperman 3y ago
        This is refuted by Chapter 3[0] ("Violence") of the book "Testosterone" by Rebecca M. Jordan-Young and Katrina Karkazis. 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-linking-testosterone-to-violence/ https://lithub.com/it-turns-out-theres-not-a-lot-of-science-... 1: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/strange-but-true-testosterone-alone-doesnt-cause-violence/#:~:text=Indeed%2C%20the%20latest%20research%20about,the%20connection%20all%20but%20disappears https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/strange-but-true-.... 2: https://news.emory.edu/stories/2022/08/esc_testosterone_animal_study_15-08-2022/story.html https://news.emory.edu/stories/2022/08/esc_testosterone_anim...
  - Sheeny96 3y ago
    > PEDs that make them even dumber. Tell me that you have no idea about physiology without telling me.
unethical_ban 3y ago
I think the argument is that if you can't defend against 3 head shots in quick succession, you've lost, period. As in, that should be a statutory definition of losing a match. It would change the strategy of the sport, but it may help prevent brain damage over time.
- hinkley 3y ago
  Pretty much my sentiment. In a bar fight with no friends acting as referees, these rapid head shots could easily be a precursor to a 3rd or even 2nd degree murder charge. You’re not going for a win anymore, you’re trying to inflict permanent damage.
matwood 3y ago
Fighters need to be protected here regardless of what they think. You can find videos of people being put completely to sleep, waking up, and going right back to fighting like nothing happened. They are unaware they were even put out.
thaumasiotes 3y ago
> It's really hard to call - see how much push back you also get from fighters when the ref calls it too early and so much stakes are on the line. 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.
- adrian_b 3y ago
  There are several sets of rules of kickboxing variants that do not allow any kind of head strikes, but they are not popular. I agree that such rules are the only acceptable with the exception of the matches between professionals who are fully aware of the risks, but who are willing to risk their health against an appropriate compensation. 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).
  - djtango 3y ago
    TIL pankration had striking... 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.
NegativeK 3y ago
I don't think that sports that pay people to suffer violence should have a place in modern society. 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.
- ok_dad 3y ago
  I don’t understand why they don’t use more gear, like helmets, and perhaps disallow head strikes and other dangerous moves like in other martial arts tournaments. It seems like the brutality is the point. Then again, the NFL has concussion issues but they aren’t trying to punch each other. In any case, it seems toxic to allow this violence for sport.
  - kevinmchugh 3y ago
    Headgear is used in some combat sports, including Olympic boxing. It makes the head a bigger target, which means the head gets hit more. Those strikes may be less severe, since they're cushioned. But taking more hits is bad. 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.
    - NegativeK 3y ago
      > Fight fans _like_ seeing heads get punched, and they like seeing knock outs. 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.

It's really hard to call - see how much push back you also get from fighters when the ref calls it too early and so much stakes are on the line. Some extra awareness will hopefully help

acover 3y ago

Fighters will try to hide broken arms and try to continue the fight.

hinkley 3y ago
Adrenaline makes you stupid. And fighters may be using PEDs that make them even dumber. We didn’t catch Lance Armstrong using PEDs for something like eight years.
- freedomben 3y ago
  Adrenaline does make you stupid, but years of training makes you smart. The reason you train so intensively is that when the adrenaline is up you will fall back to muscle memory. 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
  - hinkley 3y ago
    We train the fighters to go until the ref tells you to stop, for similar reasons to what you already illustrated. Which is why I blame the refs and the committee. They know exactly what goes through your head when you’re in a fight and it’s their job to keep your opponent relatively safe. And they aren’t, which is why I don’t watch. 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.
    - freedomben 3y ago
      Agreed. 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.
  - thefaux 3y ago
    What is the deeper meaning of being a world champion fighter? I pursued a risky sport for many years myself until I was struck by the utter hollowness of it. How would my winning benefit anyone besides me? What was the purpose beyond self exaltation? How was this the best use of my short time on earth? 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.
    - DiggyJohnson 3y ago
      What sport? Simply asking out of curiosity?
    - shrimp_emoji 3y ago
      *As Saladin* Nothing... Everything. 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
      - NoGravitas 3y ago
        Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher, vanity of vanities! All is vanity. What does man gain by all the toil at which he toils under the sun? A generation goes, and a generation comes, but the earth remains forever. 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.
    - djtango 3y ago
      It's inspiring. 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.
- chrisfosterelli 3y ago
  Obviously PEDs are bad but IMO non-falsifiable accusations about athletes using them are uninteresting. You can always claim (and someone usually is) that an athlete is dirty and just hasn't been caught yet for some reason. Slightly off-topic though; you're acknowledging that they might contribute which isn't unfair here.
  - silverquiet 3y ago
    I assume that all professional athletes are on PEDs of some sort (I read awhile back that essentially all tennis players are on some heart medication that is allowed and they probably don't all have a heard condition). I don't think they care about what is legal, just what is detectible. The incentives are just too big for them to abstain.
    - hinkley 3y ago
      I think there’s a loophole with endurance athletes and asthma medication as well. But I would not immediately think, “mood or judgement altering” there. 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).
    - chrisfosterelli 3y ago
      You're maybe thinking of Meldonium, which is banned. The drug was developed in the 1970s and is a very common OTC sale in eastern Europe. It was banned in 2016 when WADA decided it was possible it could be able to act as a performance enhancer. Maria Sharapova, a tennis champion, made the news later that year when she tested positive, and received a two year ban which was later shortened when the court determined she had originally started taking it years ago in good faith on a doctor's recommendation. About two hundred other athletes from eastern Europe across different sports received positive tests shortly after the ban as well, a lot of which were reversed when it turned out they were detecting use from 2015 (it takes months after use for it to stop showing on tests).
- DiggyJohnson 3y ago
  They aren't stupid they're just trying to make a career of it. Even though I think more work needs to be done on this issue, I do understand how things got this way.
- 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 3y ago
  They might also just be trying not to lose their career
- reaperman 3y ago
  Which PEDs make them dumber?
  - hinkley 3y ago
    Anything that affects the adrenals reduces higher order thinking. And steroids make you not only dumber but more violent.
    - reaperman 3y ago
      This is refuted by Chapter 3[0] ("Violence") of the book "Testosterone" by Rebecca M. Jordan-Young and Katrina Karkazis. 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-linking-testosterone-to-violence/ https://lithub.com/it-turns-out-theres-not-a-lot-of-science-... 1: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/strange-but-true-testosterone-alone-doesnt-cause-violence/#:~:text=Indeed%2C%20the%20latest%20research%20about,the%20connection%20all%20but%20disappears https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/strange-but-true-.... 2: https://news.emory.edu/stories/2022/08/esc_testosterone_animal_study_15-08-2022/story.html https://news.emory.edu/stories/2022/08/esc_testosterone_anim...
- Sheeny96 3y ago
  > PEDs that make them even dumber. Tell me that you have no idea about physiology without telling me.

unethical_ban 3y ago

I think the argument is that if you can't defend against 3 head shots in quick succession, you've lost, period. As in, that should be a statutory definition of losing a match. It would change the strategy of the sport, but it may help prevent brain damage over time.

hinkley 3y ago
Pretty much my sentiment. In a bar fight with no friends acting as referees, these rapid head shots could easily be a precursor to a 3rd or even 2nd degree murder charge. You’re not going for a win anymore, you’re trying to inflict permanent damage.

matwood 3y ago

Fighters need to be protected here regardless of what they think. You can find videos of people being put completely to sleep, waking up, and going right back to fighting like nothing happened. They are unaware they were even put out.

thaumasiotes 3y ago

> It's really hard to call - see how much push back you also get from fighters when the ref calls it too early and so much stakes are on the line. 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.

adrian_b 3y ago
There are several sets of rules of kickboxing variants that do not allow any kind of head strikes, but they are not popular. I agree that such rules are the only acceptable with the exception of the matches between professionals who are fully aware of the risks, but who are willing to risk their health against an appropriate compensation. 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).
- djtango 3y ago
  TIL pankration had striking... 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.

NegativeK 3y ago

I don't think that sports that pay people to suffer violence should have a place in modern society. 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.

ok_dad 3y ago
I don’t understand why they don’t use more gear, like helmets, and perhaps disallow head strikes and other dangerous moves like in other martial arts tournaments. It seems like the brutality is the point. Then again, the NFL has concussion issues but they aren’t trying to punch each other. In any case, it seems toxic to allow this violence for sport.
- kevinmchugh 3y ago
  Headgear is used in some combat sports, including Olympic boxing. It makes the head a bigger target, which means the head gets hit more. Those strikes may be less severe, since they're cushioned. But taking more hits is bad. 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.
  - NegativeK 3y ago
    > Fight fans _like_ seeing heads get punched, and they like seeing knock outs. 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.