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Toughman promoter: We’re safer than MMA
By Zach Arnold | February 18, 2006
By Zach Arnold
The battle between promoters for the two industries continues. The Rockford Register Star has an article on the upcoming King of the Cage show promoted by Monte Cox in Moline, Illinois. However, the newspaper’s author manages to somehow bring Toughman into the discussion. The topic? Getting athletic commissions to regulate their respective industries.
This is the case of Mark Bjelland, a promoter of Toughman fights in Illinois, including Rockford. The MetroCentre hosted 24 consecutive annual Toughman events until 2004, when state lawmakers passed a bill to put unregulated fight events under the oversight of the Illinois Department of Professional Regulation. The IDPR, which also sanctions boxing, had previously stated that it would not tolerate events that paired trained and untrained fighters or posed serious health risks to competitors.
To Bjelland, the measure is contradictory because even though he is quick to point out “Toughman is very different from MMA†and he personally dislikes the latter, “I believe that you should be free to promote those events and compete in them if that is what you want.†Bjelland argues Toughman is safer than MMA because, among other things, contestants “wear headgear and use padded gloves.â€
Topics: All Topics, MMA, Zach Arnold | 9 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback |
Does Bjelland even realize that more often than not, the accumulated damage from Boxing actually comes during sparring with headgear as the fighters feel they can take more abuse with the gear on, although the gear doesn’t actually prevent concussions? Just because they are wearing headgear doesn’t mean they are any safer, especially if they had no proper Boxing training and take multiple power shots from a hard hitter. The headgear is really only designed to prevent cuts from occuring, not from preventing concussions to the head.
Since mma is such a young (professional) sport, it might be too early to see what long term effects on the brain will be. We assume it will be less than boxing since the repetitive head strikes are much less. However, it remains to be proven whether more strikes with heavier gloves is better or worse than fewer strikes with grappling gloves. I would assume so, but we really only have cases such as Takayama, Johnston and little else to use as test cases. Will mma have its share of punch drunk former fighters or more likely have more of a comparison to pro wrestling with joint problems in the neck, back, knees, etc…?
As for toughdude contests, it is non-athletes with no training trying to re-enact Ali-Frazier. That isn’t good on any level.
The problem with using Yoshihiro Takayama & Brian Johnston as examples of the injury damage that MMA inflicts is that you aren’t taking ‘pure’ MMA only workers, but guys who actually worked in both MMA & Pro Wrestling (both working in Pro Wrestling right before their strokes). Takayama, in addition to his brutal beatings against Fujita, Schilt, Frye & (not as much) Sapp, also suffered extremely bad concussions in Pro Wrestling with guys like Kenzo Suzuki & Manabu Nakanishi right before his stroke. Brian Johnston has a more direct connection as ‘proof’, although he too was involved in Pro Wrestling right before his own stroke.
I agree that Tak and Brian are flawed examples but it shows we just don’t have that much data to go on. I’m not going to take the approach that mma is so safe that no long term health problems will exist. Any sport where real bouts as well as training involves head & body strikes, slams and joint manipulation is bound to have some effect as fighters age. I hope that mma doesn’t have the amount of “punch drunk” fighters that boxing has produced but I can easily believe that fighters at 45-50 years old will be moving a bit stiffly. Are hip & knee replacements along with neck surgery going to be mmas health trend?
I can see some of these hard headed guys like Nogueira, Hunt, Fujita, Cabbage, etc. getting punch drunk later in life when the damage from the concussions they’ve suffered in their wars settles in. Still, I think most injuries will be like Sakuraba’s: shot knees, hips, backs and necks. Of course, there may be the occasional career ending fight like Frank Shamrock-Igor Zinoviev where the perfect slam or punch makes the guy unable to fight anymore.
When you have a sport where the only attacks are punches to the head and body, and they let you fight EVEN after you get knocked down multiple times, that sport is going to be far more dangerous (even with a headgear and padded gloves) than one allows many ways of winning (submissions, etc.), has referees that are sometimes known to end the fight early after a knock-down, and don’t even give fighters 10-count and a chance to get back into the fight after recovering from a near-knockout.
People who believe that MMA is more dangerous than boxing or Toughman competitions are probably thinking of the movie Bloodsport rather than paying attention to what really happens in mixed martial arts.
There seems to be two types of people who object to mma. Those who have never seen it and only know of it via the detractors statement of it as gladiator death battles and those who see a match where a fighter is on the ground getting the crap beaten out of them. For those used to boxing, it can be a disturbing sight seeing a downed fighter being ground & pounded or Silva-stomped. It takes extensive re-education to over come the second group but the reality is that seeing a downed fighter getting pummeled is disturbing. One can point out Randy vs Vitor and say that Vitor might have come back from the bottom at anytime and won via submission, but the reality is that the guy on the bottom took a bloody, ugly beating with barely any fighting back. Or my personal dislike–Silva stomping a fighters face through the mat. If you actually stop and think about it, its pretty hard to defend a downed fighters face being stomped on as true sport. It seems like ground and pound might be the biggest obstacle to over come with mma detractors. Virtually nobody has a problem with judo, ju jitsu, kickboxing, boxing, etc… but when a guy is on his back bleeding like a stuck pick and eating punches and elbows, the calls of bloodsport do resonate. Sometimes the refs stop the matches too soon and sometimes like Frank Mirs latest opus, they let it go too long.
Get a grip and see what the toughman really is. Punch Drunk fighters get that way from years and years of sparring. This is not even close to the span of toughman fighters. The average person trains for months not years on end. Therfore the long term impact of sparring is not even present with Toughman contestants. Also you have to consider that the hits they take are not from world class fighters. There is now way near the punching power. For anyone who has ever been to Toughman fights the biggest contributor to whether a person wins or loses is due to conditioning. In other words most fighters lose because they are to tired to keep fighting not because they are getting vicoiusly beaten.
Lets also consider the career length of a MMA fighter to a boxer. The MMA being so new does have fighters that have fought as long as Tommy Hearns (extremly puch drunk)so it would be infair to compare. The average career of a MMA fighter is less than 2.5 years.
Lets go back to the orginal comments by Mark Bjelland. He said Toughman is safer than MMA. Whether boxing is or not has yet to be determined.
I know that this is dated, but comparing toughman to boxing and mma to boxing or to toughman is crazy.
Yes toughman can be dangerous, not because guys are throwing haymakers, but because they lack the knowledge to properly slip, defend or minimize the damage.
Boxing has come along way since the days of multiple knockdowns. The guys who are punch drunk are the older fighters who were already veterans before the established “three knockdown rule”. Therefore pointing out Hearns, Frazier and Ali is only a comparison to be used without the rule.
As for MMA the danger hear is that there is no knockdown rule, there is minimal padding on the fist, to protect the fist not the opponent and of course use of the knees to the face and being able to punch a downed opponent.
MMA started out the same way as Toughman. The first organization was the UFC and it was tournament driven, with a single winner at the end. And more it had very little rules, I think only eye poking was pretty much it.
Although it is safer now, one of the first casualties appear to be Chuck Liddel. His speech is noticeably more slurred. The casualty will be Forrest Griffin, who actually enjoys being hit in the face.