MMA, topic officiel!

It Only Looks Dangerous
By DAVID ZINCZENKO



Published: April 1, 2011

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.