Boxing Amateur

MMA fights are very exciting since it showcases a lot of action through the different martial arts around the world. Believe it or not, MMA or mixed martial arts would involve at least a dozen martial arts including boxing, taekwando, jiu jitsu, muay thai and others. The reason is because when a number of martial arts when used and combined properly would allow better self-defense. MMA fights would allow a number of people to use several martial arts in one fight.

In a way, fighters can take advantage of the strengths of the different martial arts and perform better. There would be two basic aspects in the mixed martial arts game. This would include the striking and grappling game. The striking aspect would involve the use of boxing, muay thai, taekwando and other martial arts that would utilize kicks, knees and punches to hit one’s opponent. This would result to knock outs since punches and kicks would result in fast and rapid blows. The grappling aspect is called the ground game since this would involve wrestling and jiu jitsu, which requires people to take down their opponents. The ground game is ideal for smaller people since they can negate the height and reach advantage of their opponents when they are both wrestling at the ground.
Winning using the ground game would include striking and submissions. Submissions would involve either manipulating the joints of opponents or choking them out using the rear naked choke. Mixed martial arts is an exciting fight game since everything can happen in a split second. Many people are now training to be experts in multiple disciplines or martial arts so that they can compete and defend themselves in the highest possible level. In fact, millions of MMA or mixed martial arts centers have been established to teach people everything that would make them a better fighter.

Many athletes from a single sport such as boxing and karate are also studying other martial arts. This would enable them to compete in MMA fights, which now have greater commercial appeal. That is why MMA athletes are now earning more compared to other sports. The worlds of mixed martial arts are evolving in a very rapid rate. It may seem counteract other combat sports such as boxing. The MMA sport has grown big on both the real word and digital world. Because events like UFC and Strikeforce are only available on cable TV and pay per view channel, many fans have put up MMA videos online for others to view. The web has helped this sport grown quickly across the globe.

Professional boxing is a dramatic sport, where two athletes, hopefully of equal training and abilities attempt to match skills in the confines of a roped ring. The abilities I speak of are in part a question of physical preparation. Taken into account are the attributes of coordination, stance, balance, and stamina, to provide a few examples. Mental strengths are also essential, and in fact, most every elite boxing coach I know has indicated that they are telling of ring performance.

In success, the mentally and emotionally well prepared boxer dictates the pace of the bout, controls the center of the ring, and yes, he also controls the opponent’s tactics. The control by one athlete in boxing often comes at the expense of the other. In terms of sport psychology practice, the exerting of control often originates from the selected mental strengths that Peterson and Seligman (2000) refer to within their taxonomy as optimistic thought, persistence, courage, and confidence.

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The Golden Gloves is the name given to annual competitions for amateur boxing in the United States. The Golden Gloves is often the term used to refer to the National Golden Gloves competition, but it also can represent several other amateur tournaments, including regional golden gloves tournaments and other notable tournaments such as the Intercity Golden Gloves, the Chicago Golden Gloves, and the New York Golden Gloves.

The national contest is sponsored and controlled by the Golden Gloves Association of America, Inc. Winners from regional Golden Gloves competitions compete in the national competition, called the Golden Gloves Tournament of Champions. The Tournament of Champions is held once a year, and a new tournament site is selected annually. The US Golden Gloves program is currently organized on a territorial basis to give all sections of the country representation. All tournaments are planned, promoted and directed by the Golden Gloves Charities and within the limits of the amateur boxing code.

The Golden Gloves are open to all non-professional pugilists age 16 and over. There is also a Silver Gloves amateur tournament, which is for amateur pugilists age 10 to 15 years old.

Other sports also have their own trophies.  The World cup is one of soccer trophies and it’s a great achievement for every soccer player. Golf trophies are something valuable for golfers and so Basketball Trophies for Basketball players.

Should amateur boxers be concerned about long term brain injury? According to an article published in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) the association between amateur boxing and chronic traumatic brain injury is not significant; researchers say it is currently not possible to come to a decisive conclusion.

The authors explain that in the case of professional boxing the risk of long term brain injury is much clearer. However, this does not mean that the safety of amateur boxing should not continue to be questioned.

If the British Medical Association had its way, both professional and amateur boxing would be banned. However, no recent studies have been carried out to evaluate the dangers in amateur boxing. Therefore, Dr Mike Loosemore, Lead Sports Physician, Olympic Medical Institute, Northwick Park Hospital, Harrow, UK, and a team of sports doctors and clinical academics looked at the evidence to decide whether the amateur sport might lead to chronic traumatic brain injury.

36 observational studies were identified – all of them focusing on amateur boxing and its potential link to chronic traumatic brain injury. In order to minimize bias, the researchers took into account study design and quality. Their definition of chronic traumatic brain injury included any abnormality in neurological examination, psychometric testing, brain imaging, or electroencephalography.

15 of all the studies came to the conclusion that abnormalities took place. However, the researchers commented that the quality of proof was generally poor.

The studies deemed to be of the best quality – the ones that included psychometric tests – concluded that there were no long-term effects of boxing on the function of the brain. Of 17 better quality studies, just four identified indications of chronic traumatic brain injury in a small proportion of boxers in their studies.

Six of the studies used magnetic resonance imaging. Just one of them found an abnormality – one boxer had a cyst – which could have been congenital. MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) is normally considered as the best way of determining subtle damage and degenerative change in the brain.

Studies with positive findings were, in general, of bad design and quality.

The authors explain that amateur boxing is becoming more popular. They stress that their aim in this review is neither to support nor oppose the sport. They conclude that the evidence as such is not strong enough to link amateur boxing with chronic traumatic brain injury.

Accompanying Editorial:
Paul McCrory, a neurologist and sports doctor, University of Melbourne, believes that as modern amateur boxers have shorter careers than their peers years ago, and reduced exposure to repetitive head trauma, the chances of this condition developing are fairly slim.

“Amateur boxing and risk of chronic traumatic brain injury: a systematic review of observational studies”
BMJ Online First
“Editorial: Boxing and the risk of chronic brain injury”
BMJ Online First

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Pierce Egan, the famed 19th-century boxing journalist who coined the term “sweet science,” wrote that “Drummers and boxers, to acquire excellence, must begin young.”

It is as if the fates conspired to push 22-year-old Deontay Wilder toward pugilism just to prove Egan wrong. The 6-foot-7 heavyweight, whose bronze medal on Friday kept alive the U.S. streak of winning a boxing medal in every Olympics in which it competed, never meant to be a boxer. Not like his USA Boxing teammates, all of whom were ducking and diving by age 12.

Wilder grew up as a basketball player in Tuscaloosa, Ala. He was in his freshman year playing at Shelton Community College when his girlfriend became pregnant. It wasn’t by design. An early ultrasound showed that Wilder’s daughter would be born with spina bifida.

“Our hearts dropped,” Wilder said. “Doctors gave us the choice to terminate the pregnancy, but after a while I just said, it really doesn’t matter, this is my little girl.”

Wilder dropped out of school and found work at Red Lobster and driving a Budweiser truck so he could support his daughter and shuttle her to doctors and hospitals to fix her clubbed feet. But there was a hole in his heart where basketball had been, and with team sports out of the question, boxing was something that offered a flexible schedule. Thus, 3-year-old Naieya Wilder helped keep the U.S. medal streak alive by turning her daddy to boxing. “She’s healthy and smart,” Wilder said, proudly.

For the first time in 20 years, USA Boxing established a residence program and required Olympic boxers to live in Colorado Springs beginning last September, a response to America’s dearth of boxing gold in recent Olympics after a gilded history. Wilder, with his coach’s blessing, seized the opportunity to “play catch up,” he says, with intensive training.

But other team members resented being plucked from their long-time coaches. David Ali, father of 20-year-old lightweight Sadam Ali, who lost his opening bout, said before the Olympics that Sadam “could have gotten better training [at home in New York]. He has two trainers here.”

Light welterweight Javier Molina, 18, who lost his first fight at the Olympics, said that the residence program “takes me out of my comfort zone. The only thing I like is I get to know the other Olympians, but I don’t know if that’ll help me. This isn’t like a basketball team.” Molina said that while the USA Boxing coaches are very good coaches, Roberto Luna, the man who has coached him since he was eight, “knows my weaknesses.”

It didn’t help that some of the coaches were loath to part with their prized pupils, and many continued to exert influence from afar by email and phone. Wilder’s coach, Jay Deas, bought into the idea that Wilder needed to make up for lost time, and “did not interfere,” says USA Boxing coach Dan Campbell. “Other coaches didn’t want to cooperate.”

In the broader view, though, Egan had a point about experience. This U.S. team was extremely young, with an average age just older than 20, and only one returning Olympian, world champion flyweight Rau’shee Warren, who lost his opening bout.

Wilder could use more amateur bouts to hone his skills, but his punishing power — in a test prior to the Olympics, his jab measured stronger than all but one other U.S. boxer’s power punch — may ensure this is his last Olympics. Wilder said he’s already gotten calls from promoters. In other countries, so-called amateurs enjoy great financial support.

“International boxers, like Cubans, they get paid to stay amateur; we don’t get paid to stay,” said Ali, the first Olympic team member since Riddick Bowe in 1988 to hail from New York City, where boxing gyms have dwindled from a high of 150 in the mid-1980s to 50. “So we go for it once, and turn pro.”

To the detriment of both amateur and professional boxing.

This edition of articles emphasizes safety concerns, and is in honor of the late award winning actress, Natasha Richardson, who recently died from what initially appeared to be a minor blow to her head in a skiing accident, and to her surviving husband actor Liam Neeson who as a teenager was the youth heavyweight amateur boxing champion of Northern Ireland:

The standing count can serve as a means for the referee to assess the condition of the boxer’s situation in the ring.  This tool of the referee is readily available and is routinely initiated as a result of a blow or from a series of blows.  These eight seconds give the referee an up close opportunity to evaluate and focus on the boxer.  While the referee is administering the eight count, the referee has plenty of time to assess the boxer’s physical condition by assessing his/her: stance, muscle tone, and the eyes.  Within those precious eight seconds, the referee determines if the boxer is capable to continue, or if the bout should be stopped.  At the end of those eight seconds, the referee should either command the bout to continue, or stop it.  Compliments of Ray Silvas, Vice-Chair AIBA R/J Commission; past Technical Committee Chair and National COO of USA Boxing.

Second impact syndrome. Referees who have issued RSC-Hs and who have signed a restriction Affidavit and/or those Officials who perform practice judging, and/or who referee sparring in the gyms should pay particular attention.  All the guidelines focus on the question of when is it safe for the boxer to return to competition after suffering a concussion.  Several serious risks are associated with a premature return to boxing.  The most serious is the second impact syndrome.  This syndrome was first described in 1973 and it occurs in athletes that return to competition before the symptoms of the first concussion have completely resolved.  A second blow to the head, even a minor one, can result in loss of auto regulation of the brain blood supply.  This in turn can result in brain injury and possible death.  All coaches and boxers should also be made aware of this risk.  Many injuries usually can occur in unsupervised sparring sessions.  Therefore, close supervision during sparring sessions should be given to the boxers at all times.  If there are any questions, it is always better to keep the boxer from any further competition/sparring until a physician examines that person.  Compliments of Robert Voy, MD, LBC 49 Nevada ringside physician; past member AIBA medical commission; and past President of USA Boxing