It's just a sport

Coincidences are the food of blogs.

Last weekend our media was full of the return to the ring of NZ's favourite heavy weight boxer David Tua, complete with the pre fight hype, posturing and verbal abuse so typical of the sport. This was while I was researching the guidelines for traumatic brain injury diagnosis and management for a medicolegal case. How could I be comfortable watching the glorification of a brawling boxer who would deliberately, in a few hours time traumatise the brain of an opponent for significant personal gain, while before me lay the clinical records of an accidental head injury patient, to be analysed for the possible outcome of shaming and blaming a doctor who I am sure at no point had intent to maim or wound.

My discomfort was aggravated when the fight finished in the 2nd round with the loser clearly suffering significant brain trauma. A GCS of 14, judging from the short clip of the defender's corner after the bout ended. I bet someone did a CT of his head, probably funded by the public accident insurance. I wonder if anything was found?

Drawing parallel between two vastly different circumstances might seem unfair and some friends have railed against me for complaining about the oxymoron of labeling boxing as a sport and then supporting its banning. They point out that air sports, including some I have personally engaged in, have a far higher death rate. But a glider pilot does not fulfill a personal need by causing grievous body harm to a fellow human. Another pointed out that this was only the top echelon of the sport, for amateurs had head protection which presumably allow them to punch the opponent even harder in the head. Good for releasing all that aggression. Somewhat reassuring, until I saw another TV clip of bar patrons fighting over the outcome of the Tua fight! Presumably they were professionals.

Straining my single brain cell, I wondered why the UK had banned fox hunting but professional boxing continues...do humans care more for foxes than fellow humans? Do we need a new species. Homo Sulgerius.

Now this could get silly and the anti-boxing thing has a certain element of being the domain of greenie, libertarian, tree huggers, but didn't the World Medical Association and the British Medical Association call for the sport to be banned, and the national medical associations of Australia, Bangladesh, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Ghana, Ireland, New Zealand, Nigeria, Norway and South Africa have all lent support to this.

Why do nations permit and glorify such deliberate injury (with long term sequelae) to a fellow human for personal gain, both financial and emotional but forbid so things like smoking in public places because there is a small risk of unintentionally causing harm to other humans. Is it just that boxers have effectively given consent to being harmed when they take up the sport? Is that informed consent? Is it before or after the brain injury sets in?