Gatti's Widow Gets the Fortune

Especially when the guy that hit you was wearing 50lbs of helmet and armor himself.

 

Yep. The big call in hockey right now (other than eliminating head shots) is to reduce the size and hardness of shoulder pads.

 

Obviously, a player would also be less inclined to hit someone as hard as he can if he's not as protected himself.

 

I would think a helmet provides some protection. It provides more protection than no helmet. However, you are correct. It is the brain moving around that causes damage.

 

In the animal kingdom, animals have armor to protect themselves from predators from a different class of animal. If you fight somebody with the same degree of protection you have, you stand a better chance of causing injury rather than preventing it. Gloves were introduced to save polite Victorian society the spectre of blood-soaked men. Once gloves came in, the hands lasted longer and head-injuries got worse.

 

For sure. It stops the skull itself from splitting in half. ::

 

Yep. In boxing, it's not the one-punch KO that'll kill you. It's the long hard fights.

 

I have always thought that they should reduce the glove size not make them bigger. I really haven't studied the issue, but it might be better to get decapitated and knocked cold by 1 blow than to take 250 gloved shots for 36 minutes. Small gloves=more knokouts and more tkos from hand injuries. Either way, in general, a shorter fight is a better fight more often than not.

 

Right but in Rugby, a game which is now approaching the same level of intensity of pro-football, and already exceeds the pace of pro football, armor and helmets are kept to a minimum , steroids are far less commonplace and serious injury is still rare.

The moment Football gets referred to as an "Impact Sport" rather than a "Contact Sport"....that's when the problem starts.

 

That has always been my stance too.

 

I think unprotected players will naturally have more respect for themselves.

 

Yeah but then you have Kid Akeem being broken up by Robert Quiroga who wore 6 Oz gloves that night. Akeem didn't mark up but nearly died.

 

There's always going to be a risk.

 

Midgets don't count. 90% of all fatalities in boxing involve midgets and that is why they should be banned. No athletic man should weigh 115 pounds. If you can make 115, it means you are depleted.Midgets die from weight loss and "dry brains." as well as for being feeble.

 

:atu::laughing::nono:

 

That's the ridiculousness of the modern game... The players feel invincible, they are armed to the teeth and still all anyone wants to whine about is fighting, which hardly even happens anymore

 

Yep. And sadly, opening up the game and making it more watchable post lockout has resulted in way more head injuries. You can't clutch and grab anymore, you HAVE to hit.

 

Waters was once quoted as saying he stopped keeping track of how many concussions he suffered after 15.

Dave Duerson is another former NFL safety who killed himself while suffering from brain damage. People just don't want to believe Gatti killed himself, and like to play armchair psychologist and think a man's refusal to quit in an athletic competition shows how he deals with everyday life. Watch Gatti's fights with Rodriguez, Robinson, Ward 1, Mayweather, DLH, Baldomir, and Gomez and there's no way you can't think of the effects it was gonna have on his brain.

 

Its the whole charade, the old melted-faced bastards like Mickey Rourke hanging around propping up some networks agenda about how "Turo never killed himself, unnnghhh".......get real, he suffered brain damage which affected his character, depressed him, made him flaky. Its not like he came from a settled family to begin with.

 

Hitting and the fear of getting hit were really important elements of strategy for decades... It not only hurts to get hit, but hitting itself hurts when you aren't wearing state of the art armor

A lot of the guys who are willing to dish out big hits in today's NHL would not have been so willing in the older days with less protection (to say nothing of the retribution that was far more prevalent back then-- not saying we need that to come back, but the scales have tipped ridiculously the other way)

I'm pretty sure Guy LaFleur would have been dishing out big hits with the pads of today... He couldn't do that in 1977 because he would have gotten A) hurt and B) maybe jumped and beat up by Stan Jonathan or Bobby Nystrom... It's so different now... Ulf Samuelsson was the first guy to really take advantage of improved pad technology and the increased penalties for retribution... Now, every other guy in the league is Ulf Samuelsson

 

Even fights gatti won he took more punishment than most guys who lost. Im shocked he never died in the ring.

 

It reminds me, I believe round 9 of the first Ward fight. Back and forth back and forth, stoppage was imminent yet it was allowed to continue...

 

Yeah, I have always wondered if the guys with the soft chins end up better, later in life.

I saw Earnie Shavers a month or so ago, and he seems to be in perfect shape and still have all his faculties intact.

Augie Sanchez is probably working in String Theory right now.