The Dangers Of Boxing

Issues today in the boxing world is deaths and what causes these deaths. Many say it’s due to weight cuts and many say it’s because of the late stoppages. There’s been an estimated guess that about 1,876 boxers have died throughout history as a direct result of injuries sustained in the ring. So far as of 2019, 4 boxers have died due to the injuries that they picked up while fighting in the ring and their names were Maxim Dadashev, Hugo Santillan, Boris Stanchov, and Patrick Day. Some of these fighters leave the ring thinking everything is ok, but what they don’t realize are the injuries that come after the fight. Maxim Dadashev fought on Friday but didn’t pass away till Tuesday. He was a junior welterweight that died at the age of 28 due to the head injuries that he sustained during a technical knockout by Subriel Matías.

The second fighter to pass away was Hugo Santillan, and he died days later after Maxim Dadashev. Hugo Santillan was only 23 years old when he passed away and the cause of that was from injuries sustained in the ring such as kidney failure, went into a coma, and heart failure. The third fighter to pass away was Boris Stanchov a 21 year old boxer that collapsed in the ring after suffering a cardiac arrest due to a jab in the fifth round. The fourth fighter to pass away was Patrick Day and he passed away at the age of 27 on October 16, 2019 which was about 3 weeks ago. The fighter was in a coma due to brain injuries which ended up in him passing away just a couple of days later after the fight. Boxing is a dangerous sport that can lead to many injuries both physically and mentally. One of the risks that boxers do is weight cutting and how fast they’re able to lose or gain so much weight in such a short amount of time. The reason why these fighters weight cut is so that they can have the opportunity to rehydrate after and to enter the ring with a size advantage. Weight cutting can be very harmful for the body as you increase the chance of decreased kidney function. By dehydrating yourself you allow no water in your system and that’s how boxers lose a big amount of weight in a short time.

The weight there losing is water weight and that’s bad for the kidney because water enables the kidneys to filter blood and maintain the proper balance of potassium and sodium and these are important to cell function. Instead of weight cutting by losing water weight and harming your body a solution to this would be to stop having weigh- ins the day before the fight because if the weigh-ins is maybe a week before the fight and not the day before this gives the fighters a chance to rehydrate themselves properly so that they can enter the ring as healthy as possible. The amount of people that have passed away these days in boxing is significantly less than before and the reason for that is because back than the fights were 15 rounds instead of 12. The reason was for the safety of the fighters because round 13-15 were considered the most dangerous because of fatigue. Another reason for this was because of the 15 round fight between Ray Mancini and Duk Koo Kim in 1982 which resulted in the death of Duk Koo Kim. After that almost all boxing organization agreed that they’ll bring down the total rounds from 15 to 12 and because of this the chances of getting severely injured for them has dropped significantly. Boxing has both pros and cons and i feel like boxing can benefit you in many ways. Boxing can keep you fit, strong, improves your reflexes and teaches you some discipline. Boxing can also improve both physical and mental fitness by making you more motivated and can improve your overall health.

Usually boxing has a bad reputation which doesn’t make any sense to me because boxing by far is the most disciplined sport. I think one of the main reasons why boxing has a bad reputation is because of all the brutal injuries that the fighters get from being in the ring. Sometimes these fighters get concussed and some of them can die or suffer from severe head damage depending on how brutal the injuries were. Some of these fighters step into the ring not knowing what's their pain tolerance and how much pain can they endure before their body gives up. If you're damaged in round 1, that completely affects round 2 and the other opponent has a better chance of controlling the fight and he can determine how the fight can end. Boxers get paid a lot of money because of what their risking. They can make a lot of money depending on how god they are and what contract their in. The top ranked boxer right now is Canelo Alvarez. Cacelo Alvarez was previously offered the largest contract in sports history which was $365 Million dollars for 11 fight over 5 years. Canelo was offered this contract on october 17, 2018 and at the time was the highest contract ever. Canelo held this record for a little bit before a baseball player named Mike Trout was offered an even higher contract than Canelo ALvarez which was for $430 Million dollars over 12 years. Even though Mike Trout has the highest contract in my opinion, I think Canelo Alvarez has the best contract because Mike Trout is getting $430 million dollars after 12 years which is about $36 million dollars per year but, Canelo Alvarez gets $365 million dollars after 5 years which is about $73 million dollars per year.

Once Canelo finishes his 5 year contract he’ll most likely sign another big contract which guarantees him a lot of money in such a short amount of time. Before Mike Trout finishes his 12 year $430 million dollar contracts Canelo Alvarez will already be done with his 5 year $365 million dollar contract and most likely the next contract that comes after it. Canelo’s contract also has some kind of bonus on it which says that he can make even more money if he hits a certain subscription type with DAZN which is a streaming service.

Compared to the early days of boxing less and less people are dying in the ring since they’ve reduced the rounds from 15 to 12. Even though it's more safer now because of the different rules deaths are still occurring and I believe a solution to make sure that these fighters stay safe would be to limit the amount of weight that a boxer can cut in a short period and to do the final weigh-ins a week before the fight to give these fighters a chance to rehydrate themselves and to get back to normal. If they can change that, then I believe there will be fewer casualties and the sport will have a better reputation. Boxing can be both fun and dangerous depending on how you do it, how much you can handle and if your fully committed to it, because this is not a sport to play around in and people, can get hurt if they dont take it seriously.