NY Times op ed: Men’s Health mag does about face on MMA
It Only Looks Dangerous Mixed martial arts is one of the fastest-growing sports in America. Yet for years the New…
It Only Looks Dangerous
Mixed martial arts is one of the fastest-growing sports in America. Yet for years the New York State Legislature has refused to sanction M.M.A. — making New York one of the last states holding out against the sport’s expansion. (Connecticut is a holdout, too.) After helping to block a clause in last year’s budget that would have legalized M.M.A., Bob Reilly, a state assemblyman, called it a violent sport not worthy of our society.
As the editor in chief of Men’s Health, I’d been a de facto supporter of New York’s ban by refusing to put a mixed-martial artist on the magazine’s cover — despite the entreaties of several editors and even my own brother, Eric, who trained in M.M.A. I edit a health magazine, after all, and this is a sport in which men use nearly every means available to beat one another into submission, from jujitsu to kickboxing to simply slugging one another in the face with nothing but lightly padded gloves on their hands.
But I’ve come to believe that, in fact, the New York Legislature is wrong. Mr. Reilly is wrong. And more to the point, I was wrong (an admission my brother will hold over my head as long as I live). Mixed martial arts may be a violent sport, but it is much safer than other, supposedly more civilized competitions, and New York and its fellow holdouts should finally sanction it.
We think of more traditional violent sports like boxing and football as safer in part because of the helmets and padded gloves their athletes wear, and that supposedly protect them from harm. These are, in fact, more like the equivalent of poorly designed sunscreen — protection that allows athletes to submit to even greater levels of punishment.
For instance, studies show that up to 40 percent of former boxers have symptoms of chronic brain injury, the result of repeated, if padded, blows to the head. And recent studies have demonstrated that most professional boxers, including the majority who show no outward signs of impairment, have some degree of brain damage.
In comparison, a 2006 Johns Hopkins study noted a reduced risk of traumatic brain injury in M.M.A. competitions when compared to other events involving striking. The reason is simple: Boxing’s protective padding, coupled with its 12-round bouts and rest periods, means the boxer is subject to dozens of brain-jostling head blows in each fight. In M.M.A., most bouts end in a wrestling match, with one opponent forcing the other into submission; only 28 percent of all M.M.A. bouts are decided by a blow to the head, according to a study published in The British Journal of Sports Medicine.
As a result, M.M.A. fighters have not only a lower risk of cognitive impairment, but of death. There have been only three fatalities in the 17-year history of American M.M.A. But we average almost that many in a single year in boxing: 129 fighters have died in American rings since 1960.
Some might argue that such statistics only make the case that boxing, too, should be banned. But what about hockey or football? Men’s Health has proudly and without controversy featured Drew Brees, Tom Brady and other N.F.L. stars on our cover — despite the fact that football and hockey combined sent 55,000 Americans to the emergency room for head injuries in 2009 alone.
Hall of Famers like Harry Carson, a former linebacker for the Giants, and Pat LaFontaine, who played center for the Islanders and the Rangers, have talked publicly, even courageously, about the physical and emotional toll of their multiple concussions. And watching 41-year-old Brett Favre dragging his swollen body onto the field week after week last season was an exercise in spectator-sport sadism.
Compare that to the Ultimate Fighting Championship, the premier M.M.A. league, where 23-year-old Jon Jones recently won the light heavyweight championship but injured his hand in the process; as a result, he is barred from competition until doctors say he has healed. In fact, fighters who suffer knockouts are suspended and barred even from sparring for three months; in the N.F.L. and N.H.L., we cheer when a player leaves the game on a stretcher and returns the next week — and even louder if he comes back the next period.
The New York State Assembly and Senate both have bills in committee that would allow M.M.A. into the state, and it only makes sense to push them through. In the meantime, I’ve changed my policy: This month Men’s Health features the U.F.C.’s reigning welterweight titleholder, Georges St-Pierre, on its cover. Sometimes the more raw and visceral a sport appears, the more humane it may actually be.
David Zinczenko is the editor in chief of Men’s Health and the editorial director of Women’s Health.
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In other pro MMA news coming out of New York, British band LCD Soundsystem took a break from the stage at Madison Square Garden to call for NY to legalize MMA.
LCD Soundsystem calls for NY to legalize MMA
From: EdibleGumption
Member Since: 6/12/02
Posts: 2154
LCD Soundsystem played their last show ever last night at New York’s Madison Square Garden. In between songs, lead singer James Murphy took a moment to strongly urge New York to legalize MMA. The majority of the hipsters in the crowd probably had no idea what Murphy was talking about it, but I thought it was pretty cool that he mentioned it in his farewell concert.
LCD blog # 1: (sic)
My new martial arts hobby has completely sapped my musical and domestic ambitions, not to mention my shoulder.
I’ve started to train, which is hilarious. I’m 37 years old, and I’ve started at this point in my life to train at fighting as if I were a professional. It’s killing me to have to tour right now, totally ruining my plans. I have a wife and a dog now, and I’d love to see them more, would love to DJ and make music more, be healthy, read, all of that … but I’ve got to be honest with you: it’s the not-fighting that’s breaking my heart. I’m not getting any younger here, you know? If I dick around and let the clock keep sprinting I’ll be 40 before I realise it, and that’s three years more embarrassing in terms of learning to fight. I should explain what fighting I’m talking about: MMA (mixed martial arts), also called ultimate fighting.
I’m in love with it. I think I still have the quickness for it, and the flexibility, and I know I have the head. I suppose I’m totally out of shape, especially when you consider how in shape you have to be to do this, of course, but I can work on that. I had my heart looked at recently, and despite several years doing my nightly best to destroy it and all my other organs, it seems fine. Bored, in fact. My heart is sort of saying “what you got?” in a thuggish voice. I don’t know where I got this heart, to be perfectly honest. My family isn’t exactly famous for its longevity or health, but here I am, old and out of shape, with a resting heart rate of 49 bpm (which is baffling) and it’s taunting me.
My joints, on the other hand, are singing an entirely different song. I’ve already had acupuncture, chiropractic, sports massage, and cupping. In the first few weeks I pulled four of my vertebrae between my shoulder blades half an inch to my right. I did this working on Brazilian jiu-jitsu with my lawyer. After a few weeks of therapy (and continuing to train anyway) the pain has been reduced to a dull, quiet threat.
Basically, I’m settling in to not-being-good-at-something again, and it’s a place I can only mildly tolerate. The more I have to do this “being in a band” thing, the longer this agonizing, humiliating period of being a beginner drags on. I’m thinking I should fake a disease to get out of my musical obligations and then stay home, sitting on my floor, practicing triangle escapes until my back seizes up again and the tingling in my feet gives way to nothing at all. I’m thinking like a schoolchild again, of how to play sick and stay home, in my room, so I can devote myself entirely to my new toy.
