Concussion is the contact sports story of the year, or decade, or ever. It was known for generations that boxing could leave you “punch drunk” but the sports world only slowly became aware that the same, permanent, condition was effecting football players, hockey players, and others.
Both research and reason indicate that mixed martial arts is less dangerous for the brain than is boxing, but it is still a very real issue. UFC CEO Lorenzo Fertitta spoke recently with CNN about the topic.
“I spent some time on the Nevada State Athletic Commission,” he began. “And through that process I really focused on the health and safety issues for the fighters. Spent a lot of time with the lead doctors, both before and after the fights, looking at the fighters, seeing what their injuries were. And I think that because I have that understanding, sometimes, to the naked eye, what looks bad, to me I know what the injury is, and I know it’s not going to be harmful to the athlete, at all.
“In fact, if you look at our track record, we’ve never had a major injury, because we have all these safety precautions – the pre-fight, post-fight medicals.”
Fertitta was asked what steps the UFC is taking for fighter safety around head trauma.
“Massive, massive medical studies,” he replied. “We’re participating with the Cleveland Clinic in funding a program with them, where they’re taking about 800 hundred athletes – 60% mixed martial artists, 40% boxers, and they’re testing them, both from a cognitive standpoint, as well as doing MRIs and CAT scans. Really studying the brain, to see what these effects are. To see if there is anything they can detect to see if one person is more susceptible to brain injury than the other person.
“The other thing is we have a great safety measure in the sense that, if one of our fighters, if the doctor determines they have been concussed, there’s no rush for them to come back and compete. We don’t need them next Sunday, for the game. We don’t need them for the playoffs. They’re in fact suspended for upward of 90 days, where they’re not allowed to have any contact, to make sure that they have enough time for the body to heal itself, before they come back, if they want to come back and compete.
“So its a completely different system than other sports currently have.”
Fertitta was asked if he worried that a scandal like the NFL’s could be in his future.
“At the end of the day, we do everything we can, to make sure the athletes are aware, of what’s going on, and to make sure they are safe,” he said. “Because we are so crazy about it and concerned about it, we had an event recently in Dublin in November that had sold out. The main event was a kid named Joe Duffy, from Ireland. He was the hometown kid who everybody wanted to see. We were made aware that five days, six days prior to the fight, he had a flash knockdown, or a flash knockout in practice. We made the decision to cancel the fight, because fighter safety is the utmost important thing.
“That’s a perfect example of making sure once we get the information, we deal with it, we deal with the doctors. And we made the right decision, and found a replacement, and the show went on.”
Lastly, Fertitta was asked what he would do if there was a traumatic injury, or a death.
“We’re going to do everything we can to prevent that,” he said. “But unfortunately, that is part of sports, primarily combat sports. Historically, boxing has had a problem with that. Even if you go down to high school football, there’s problems with that. Once again, we have to do everything we can to try to prevent that. But unfortunately, it is part of contact sports”
The danger in mixed martial arts has to be viewed within the larger context of death in sports.
As Fertitta, the father of a former star high school football player, noted, high school football is dangerous. Eleven high school football players have died in 2015 alone.
Seven athletes have died from injuries sustained while competing in the Olympics – one runner, one cyclist, a boxer, one speed skater, one downhill skier, and two lugers.
Boxing has recorded nearly 1,500 deaths since its inception in the 1700s.
Auto racing has killed countess drivers, and spectators are not immune. A single accident in 1955 killed approximately 60 spectators, and the driver.
28 people are believed to have died running, in marathons alone, in the USA alone, just from 2000-2009. In 2005, four runners died, in a single event, the Great North Run half marathon in the UK.
Cheerleading in the USA killed 42 between the fall of 1982 and the spring of 2007.
110 school children in Japan have died playing Judo in the last 30 years, and hundreds have suffered catastrophic injury.
Mixed martial arts is not immune. Ten people are believed to have died from injuries sustained during MMA competitions from 1993 to the present.
Douglas Dedge • March 16, 1998 • Kiev, Ukraine • Unregulated • Chief emergency room doctor attributed death to “severe brain injuries.” • First MMA death in the modern era. • Dedge is reported to have passed out in training previous to the fight, and is believed to have had a preexisting medical condition.
Korean identified only as Lee • May 12, 2005 • Samsong-dong, South Korea • Entirely unregulated bout took place in a bar. • Cause of death was heart attack.
Sam Vasquez • October 20, 2007 • Houston Texas • Cause of death was subdural hemorrhage due to blunt trauma of the head, following a KO loss in the third round • First death in a sanctioned MMA event.
Michael Kirkham • June 26, 2010 • Aiken, South Carolina • Regulated bout • Cause of death was subarachnoid hemorrhage of the brain • Kirkham lost his previous fight on April 24 by TKO; Dr. Joe Estwanik believes “this could have been second-impact syndrome.”
Mike Mittelmeier • April 27, 2012 • Bolivia • Unregulated bout allowing face kicks to grounded opponent; there was no ambulance standing by. • Mittlemeier got kicked in the head while attempting a leg lock, illegal under the Unified Rules. • Cause of death was cerebral hemorrhage.
Dustin Jenson • May 24, 2012 • Rapid City, South Dakota • Unregulated bout • Jenson tapped without appearing to take any severe blows. • Cause of death was subdural hemorrhage resulting from blunt force trauma to the head.
Tyrone Mims • August 11, 2012 • Mount Pleasant, South Carolina • Regulated bout • Autopsy results were inconclusive, with no evidence of a concussion or brain trauma detected, no drugs or alcohol detected by toxicology tests. “(Mims) might have had an irregular heart because of some electrical dysfunction,” said Coroner Rae Wooten. “That obviously isn’t seen after death. Once that’s completed, there’s no evidence of that…. There’s just nothing here that explains his death.”
Felix Elochukwu Nchikwo, fought under the name Felix Pablo Elochukwu • April 7th, 2013 • Port Huron, Michigan • Unregulated bout • According to the Michigan coroner’s office, there is “no evidence” that the fighter died from trauma he sustained during an unregulated mixed martial arts match.
Booto Guylain •24 June 1984 – 5 March 2014 • Johannesburg, South Africa • Unregulated bout • Death was a result of complications related to the swelling of the brain.?
Ramin Zeynalov • 29 March 2015 • Azerbaijan • Unregulated bout • Death was a result of brain hemorrhage.
There are going to be more deaths in mixed martial arts.
MMA competition can, like countless other sports, lead to fatality. As such, safety precautions must be adhered to rigorously. Promoters cannot be counted on to take standard precautions like blood tests, pre-fight physicals, a ringside doctor, and ambulance standing by. Fighters and trainers in the USA and Canada have a responsibility to avoid unregulated MMA bouts, and States must make regulation or sanctioning mandatory, most notably for amateur fighters, who are easily exploited. Bouts taking placeinternationally should adhere to the best practices, including but by no means limited to having an MD cage side, and an ambulance on site.
