Ding Ding

By Cameron Ross

The glare of you opponent’s glove shimmers under the spotlights as it comes toward you like a leather torpedo. As it connects with your face your skull is pushed against your brain and the impact reverberates through your head and you feel the waves exit your ears.

Visions like this occur thousands of time over the course of a single boxing match. Professionals do not wear protective headgear, which makes the punches more intense than amateurs who practice in gyms. Barley 100 years ago boxing was done with bare knuckles.

In December of 2006 there were officially 1,344 deaths recorded that came as results of organized boxing. Many of the deaths were from sanctioned fights in the U.S. and occurred in a professional setting where medical attention was available.

While some professional sports exhibit extreme health risks, none result in more critical injuries than boxing. The contests are competitive battles between two warriors using the most primitive combat techniques. Gloves are worn are to take power off punches and prevent extensive damage to the boxers’ hands.

Boxers are among the most well conditioned athletes in the world, boasting immense cardiovascular endurance as well as uncanny physical strength. While there is no standard for measuring the power of a punch, many boxers will say a punch from a fellow trained boxer is similar to running face first into a telephone pole.

Doctors in Great Britain have been lobbying to ban boxing for decades. American doctors are the main opposition against their arguments. Professionally sanctioned bouts (fights) involve medical tests before each and every fight and require that a doctor is present ringside, checking fighters between rounds.

Boxing deaths occur from severe trauma to the head nearly all the time. Most cases involve a SDH (subdural hematoma), which is where space builds up between the dura and the arachnoid. Separation of these two layers can cause ICP (intracranial pressure), therefore compressing and damaging delicate brain tissue.

Separating the brain from tissue inside the skull can cause almost immediate death in many instances. In other cases, boxers have had their brains knocked loose from their spinal cord.

No matter how one looks at it, a boxer’s fitness level, no matter how supreme, can not save them from the most feared danger of the sport, death. It is not cardiovascular strength or lack of endurance that kills these warriors, but rather surreal displays of strength used in the spirit of competition.

Aerobic styles of boxing have become popular methods of fitness but when the sport is taken to the elite level, it becomes deadly. Punching a bag or thick pad held by a friend will help a person gain strength and help them be more adept to self-defense. Exchanging punches in a ring trying to subdue one another seems unnecessary but some people just love the sport of boxing and it is their right to compete at any level they want.

Boxers are athletes and they bask in their glory when they defeat an opponent but after enough fights, when they are no longer in the ring, they frequently suffer. A shaking hand from nerve damage makes it difficult to write. Damaged canals make it difficult to hear. Constant chronic headaches make concentrating difficult. Damaged and misshapen eyes result in double vision. For some people these lifelong symptoms and side effects are worth the time in the spotlight.

While a former boxer watches television to help himself space out after taking his Vicodin he better absorb the gory reflecting off his platinum title belts hanging on the wall.

What matters in the end is health, and many boxers have their health destroyed at the cost of pushing it to the limits. Stepping into a ring with steel in your spine and adrenaline pumping to your heart is an indescribable feeling, like going to war. The difference is that boxers want to be in the ring, whether they know it is healthy or not.