Grown Up Choices

Sports are often dangerous. Especially if you're driving 200 mph, running full speed and tackling someone headfirst or even running the Baltimore Marathon this past weekend. This Saturday, a player from the Rutgers football team left the game paralyzed from the neck down. This sort of injury happens in football. And in worse cases, deaths occur. In fact, from 2000 to 2005, 28 football players died from direct injuries and another 68 died indirectly from causes such as dehydration. In the past ten years there has been an awareness movement by the NFL's players union that is attempting to bring light and gain benefits for players whose bodies endured the heavy toll of such a physical sport. Brain damage is at the forefront of the safety issues. I mention this because I'm a fan of Mixed Martial Arts, a sport that is still fighting to be legalized in some states such as New York due to safety issues. The perception is that the sport is brutal. The sport was rough around the edges during it's inaugural years but since then it has been regulated by the same state athletic commissions that regulate every other sport. Misnomers about killing opponents as a method for victory are believed as widely as people believed that death panels were a part of recent health reform. Public ignorance, whether it is over sports, politics, or human rights is a pet peeve of mine. You too?

Get the facts straight. Johns Hopkins and other neutral entities have found that MMA has a safety record that is consistent or better than most contact sports that are part of american culture. The truth is it is a regulated sport with less damage to the head than boxing or football and so on. It's true, there have been 2 deaths in MMA. That's 2 in the history of the sport, unlike the 96 that occurred in football during a five year span. In order to utilize grappling, fighters do wear smaller gloves than boxers. That leads to more broken hands than boxing. But I'd rather have a few screws in my hand than a few loose in my head.

So while the New York Times and others ignorantly bash what they aren't familiar with, the public's support of the sport is growing. It is strange that wrestling, boxing, karate, jujitsu, and grappling are acceptable - unless you do them all at once. Then it's bad. You can punch someone in the face. You can wrestle them to the ground. But don't dare punch someone and then wrestle them to the ground. That's uncivilized.

Ultimately, this is a generational thing. Given time, the public will be educated. Once educated, a person can choose whether or not to like something like anything else. Not, say for example, hate the Muslim faith because of the few that gave it a bad name. I personally am not in a hurry to ride a BMX bike, get tackled by Ray Lewis or get punched in the face by Mike Tyson. But for those that choose to, go for it. The hypocritical nature of accepting boxing or rugby but not MMA makes about as much sense as accepting alcohol and cigarettes but not marijuana. In the long run, quarterbacks might limp around in their later years and smokers might find themselves on the wrong end of cancer. I say as long as we accept war, loud music, sky diving, rock climbing, horse riding, white water rafting, cave diving, bull riding, motorcycling, surfing, downhill skiing or getting punched in a square ring, we might as well allow getting punched while in an octagon. I would rather live in a world with dodge ball and happy hour than in a bubble.