Football or boxing - Which sport is more dangerous?
doubledragon
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Here's an interesting article I was reading about a former NFL player turned boxer named Ray Edwards who said that in his opinion, football is more dangerous than boxing. The article was written in 2013:
Former NFL player: Boxing is safer than football
The colorful characters that occupy boxing's heavyweight division have a wide range of reasons for entering the harsh world of the fight game. Ray Edwards might be the only one to do so because he thought it would reduce his chances of getting injured.
Edwards, who spent seven seasons in the NFL playing defensive end with the Minnesota Vikings and Atlanta Falcons, now makes his living squaring off against huge men intent on punching him in the head as frequently as possible.
Yet Edwards is adamant that the brutal and unpredictable nature of pro football makes his new career choice a safer option with a bigger long-term upside than putting himself on the line inside the gridiron.
"It might sound crazy to some people but for sure I believe boxing is a safer sport than football now," Edwards told Yahoo! Sports. "Football is the only sport that is 100-percent injury prone.
"[In football], you don't know what is coming, where you are going to get hit, how you are going to get hit," he continued. "You play for a long time, chances are you are going to tear your MCL or ACL. You can break your leg, snap your femur, break your arm, break your neck."
But what about boxing?
A glance at the battered faces of post-fight combatants tells only part of the story of a sport where inflicting pain and damage with the fists is an intrinsic facet of any contest.
However, while Edwards respects and understands the risks posed by his new profession, from his point of view, those dangers are more acceptable than those NFL stars face every week.
"In boxing you know where the hits are coming from – it is the guy stood in front of you," Edwards said. "In boxing you might break your hand or break your nose and if you get knocked out you can get a concussion. But also, the referee is right there and you are more protected. In football, you never know. The game moves at such a pace that you might never see it coming. You can get hit when you are completely defenseless."
Football's dangers have never been more in the spotlight, and with all factors considered, some doctors are open-minded to the theory that it may be even more dangerous than boxing.
"I would have to agree that boxing is a more controlled environment," Dr. Jeffrey Kutcher, director of the nationally recognized Michigan NeuroSport program at the University of Michigan, told Yahoo! Sports. "It is an individual sport and you see what is in front of you. Medical personnel is right there at ringside and can stop a fight, you have one medical professional who has his eyes on the two fighters at all times.
"In boxing the risk of concussion and head trauma is obviously very high but that is only one area of risk," Kutcher continued. "For sure, the rest of his body is going to prefer boxing to playing football, where the range and severity of the potential injuries is virtually without limit."
Edwards signed a five-year, $27.5 million contract with the Falcons in 2011, but was released in November 2012 after struggling for playing time. He says he's invested wisely enough to be able to live in comfort for the rest of his life and his foray into boxing is motivated by a desire for competition, rather than fiscal incentive.
He has fought four times as a pro – he's 4-0 against the likes of Nick "Turbo Tax" Capes and Cory "Spare Tire" Briggs – and insists he has no plans to return to football even if an NFL team came waving a lucrative contract in his direction.
"There is some faulty thinking there," said Dr. Anthony Alessi, a leading neurological expert who has served as a ringside physician for Connecticut boxing bouts for the past 17 years. "In football, accidents and injuries are a byproduct of the game, but the main objective is to get the ball over the line and score points.
"In boxing, the object of the sport is to neurologically impair your opponent, to injure their brain in some way to stop them from performing. It sounds graphic, but that is effectively what you are looking for – a knockout."
Countless former fighters continue to suffer from dementia pugilistica, a direct result of taking repeated blows to the head, which includes symptoms such as slurred speech, loss of memory, declining mental ability, tremors and coordination issues.
Yet football has it own problems. The NFL is facing more than 200 legal cases brought by more than 4,000 former players accusing the league of hiding the dangers of head trauma. And a recent story in the Washington Post highlighted the plight of former NFL Man of the Year Reggie Williams, who has been financially crippled by a series of medical problems that require daily treatment, 24 years after the end of his playing career.
The level of health care support given to former players is a particular sticking point for Edwards, who claims the league's policies do not go far enough in caring for players of yesteryear. Those factors – combined with the obscenely brief shelf life of a pro football player (3½ years) – was a critical reason behind his transition to boxing.
"The average career of an NFL player depends on your position, but it can be as short as three and a half years," Edwards explained. "Then you have still got the rest of your life.
"In boxing, Floyd Mayweather has been at the top for 16 or 17 years, and guys like Bernard Hopkins are still going even into their late 40s. I am 28, but by staying as disciplined as I am and maintaining my condition I can have a long and successful career in this."
Edwards admits he still has a long way to go before he achieves his goal of shaking up the heavyweight division. But even at this infant stage of his new career, he has stirred up a thorny talking point – across two sports.
Comments
Depends on how many times you get hit in the head!
@doubledragon This guy was undefeated through 2016. Then he got knocked out. Then I don't see any fights for him. What happened next? Can you do some research and find out for the forum.
Gotta love the reasoning employed by the Dr here:
"There is some faulty thinking there," said Dr. Anthony Alessi, a leading neurological expert who has served as a ringside physician for Connecticut boxing bouts for the past 17 years. "In football, accidents and injuries are a byproduct of the game, but the main objective is to get the ball over the line and score points.
"In boxing, the object of the sport is to neurologically impair your opponent, to injure their brain in some way to stop them from performing. It sounds graphic, but that is effectively what you are looking for – a knockout."
The intent of the respective sports is irrelevant. All that matters is the injuries that come out of it. I'm not sure I agree with what Edwards say but the doctor sure didn't do a good job refuting it.
Yes, his last fight according to Wikipedia was that knockout loss in 2016, he finished his career having fought 14 times with a record of 12-1-1. I think he hung it up after that last knockout loss.
I think boxing is the more dangerous sport because a lot of boxers have died over the years from injuries sustained during fights, but I will say this, the more gruesome injuries are in football, snapped legs, arms, broken necks, just look at the Joe Theismann injury, you're not going to see that in boxing, bone protruding through leg and stuff like that.
ufc fighting. boxing and football pale in comparison.
but if we have to take a pick of the two choices, id say boxing on an individual level. football on an overall percentage level to overall earlier age exposure to the amount of folks that play versus boxing. and when we are talking “injury” a much wider amount of injuries can happen while playing football. folks break legs just playing touch football.
UFC is safer than either one. The gloves provide far less protection so you can't hit as hard as in boxing. The fighters also don't wrap their hands in 3 pounds of tape to harden their fists. Fights end right after knockdowns unlike boxing where you can be knocked down, get back up, and get drilled again. Serious injuries are very rare with broken legs probably being the most common from knocking shins. UFC has never had a death and there's only been a few in sanctioned MMA fights - and nearly all had pre-existing conditions or dehydrated during training.
Football by far.
Terry Bradshaw was AMAZING!!
Ignore list -Basebal21
just give up. seriously.
Well, at least you had a well-reasoned, cogent response.
right! you should try it one day vs proving yourself wrong with your own words.
100% serious response here - what exactly did you take issue with in regards to UFC being safer than boxing and football?
fair question. ill give ya another shot. and since you asked, you have to allow me to give the honest answer. obviously after the football exchange i kinda took everything half-heartedly. still sorta do.
after going back and reading it, ya “jumbo shrimped” yourself again. you said ufc is safer BUT the gloves provide less protection. and then rejumbo shrimped it again by saying they cant hit as hard. but then again you said the gloves provide less protection, right? so even if they werent swinging with all their force (which they are) the less protecting gloves would provide equal damage. maybe its just the way it was worded, but it seemed pretty conflicting again. even the glove comparison as a whole isnt really a valid comparison bc its not a “simply fist” sport. while similar to boxing in many ways, ufc is vastly different in so many different ways. sure a basketball and a baseball are both round too. same issue here w the gloves. its early but the prosecution's case is already taking on buckets of waters.
another reasonably absurd comparison you applied thats easy to call out was the lack of deaths in the ufc as compared to boxing or football. evidence of boxing has been established dating back to 688ad. but lets forget about that, lets talk football. football has been going on since the 1820s. princeton and harvard, i think. not only that, its a team sport that plays numerous games per year. the percentage of deaths is infinitely higher bc of the 200 year time span multiplied by the number of players per team multiplied by the number of games per season. now lets talk ufc. the ufc was founded in 1993. 1993. its an individual sport where a participant may fight 2-3 times a years. at most. to base your debate on the fact that ufc hasnt had a death yet against a sport that dates back to the 6th century or a team sport thats been going on for over 200 years isnt necessarily a plausible apples and apples arguement. i could continue with additional issues, but i honestly think thats more than enough precedence to stick to my initial assessment.
OK, I assumed you understood what I was saying here. My apologies for not being clear. Boxing gloves are there to protect the wearer not the opponent. MMA gloves provide less protection to the person throwing the punch. This limits the force with which they can hit because they are far more likely to damage their own hand than when using boxing gloves. MMA fighters also don't wear tape (which hardens the fist further) under their gloves like boxers do. This all adds up to boxing punches being worse than MMA punches. Boxers can hit harder, and more often, because their hands are far more protected. And, well, in boxing matches punching is all you do. That's hardly the case in MMA fights and, quite often, the punching is done when neither guy is standing, significantly reducing the power.
I didn't actually compare deaths in MMA to football. Although football has far more - 9 teens alone in 2019 as of September 2019 - I didn't compare them in that fashion. It's a little tough to compare the two but this article shows that football players suffer concussions slightly more often than MMA fighters:
https://bleacherreport.com/articles/2830774-football-vs-mma-which-is-more-dangerous-athletes-and-physicians-weigh-in
Beyond brain injuries, consider the other injuries you see in football - torn ligaments, dislocations, and neck injuries. Neck injuries of the paralysis type are extremely rare in MMA - I'm not aware of ANY in UFC, while I can think of multiple in the NFL and even more if I include NCAA. Broken bones are the most common serious injury in MMA (besides being knocked out, which generates an automatic medical suspension and return-to-action protocol).
None of the three sports are "safe". We can all agree on that. We're not talking swimming here. Still, of the three, UFC/MMA is the safest.
what did the teens die of in 2019? guessing most of them were heat exhaustion? must be why the pros play in the winter? 😉. yes they start in the summer but you failed to mention that they added a game this season starting earlier this year. bazinga.
as for the teens and over-heating, stupidity doesnt count in the “dangerous” department for me. sure, the dude died when he jumped into the great-white infested water dressed as a seal. most would label him an idiot vs enjoying a dangerous sport.
as for ufc injuries, ive seen all the same ones ive seen in football on top of seeing someones eye get ripped out, their skull exposed and a million other much more graphic injuries than ive ever seen at a boxing match or football game.
LOL, OK, that was funny.
But the "heat exhaustion" thing goes back to what I said about MMA deaths (again, none in UFC, but some in other organizations) - the deaths are pretty much always related to a pre-existing condition.
Eye ripped out? When? I've only seen that once - and it was in a pro wrestling match (Vader vs Stan Hansen, 2/10/90 - Vader literally shoved his eye back in and kept going!). Skull exposed? So...a bad cut? I'd rather have that than get Theismann'ed.
veta arteaga. sure, you could describe it as a “cut”, i guess. but no, google it. i refuse to look at it again. huge elbow to the forehead. if you can find pics that allow the graphic nature when the bloods washed away, you can clearly see her skull. a lot of it.
then theres cyborg and the muai thay guy that goes by just “jeremy”. list goes on and on really.
@Tabe
in case others are reading, i want them to know i enjoy our sparring matches with each other, its always kept light hearted w/o name calling or any of the other immature stuff that most succumb to.
On behalf of the "others" we stopped reading awhile ago. Carry on
m
Fellas, leave the tight pants to the ladies. If I can count the coins in your pockets you better use them to call a tailor. Stay thirsty my friends......
Sure, that looks bad but, relatively speaking, that's nothing. It's a deep cut, it bleeds a lot, but there's no danger of anything resembling a permanent injury other than a possible minor scar from stitching.
Funny, I was going to send you a PM saying the same thing. High-five, man.
Speak for yourself.
i didnt read your reply but it seems as if you are reading them still. 😉
Barely. Just enough to annoy me
m
Fellas, leave the tight pants to the ladies. If I can count the coins in your pockets you better use them to call a tailor. Stay thirsty my friends......