We should all be embarrassed to like this filth. It's disgusting and barbaric. Two people in a ring punching each other in the head to see who gives whom more brain damage? Is that what you guys consider entertainment? It's gross. How many people have to get permanently injured or die for someone to ban this filth. MMA is the rightful replacement for boxing. It's much safer (no deaths EVER) and it's the real "sweet science". There is nothing scientific about two roid heads with IQ of 80 (combined) bashing each other's brains out. MMA is the future. Don't fight it. Embrace it.
I like boxing far more than MMA (even though I like both) but honestly, both should be banned. With all we now know about concussion and brain damage, we simply can not kid ourselves anymore about the dangers and consequences of taking head shots pretty much everyday for 20+ years
That means the NFL has gotta go too... Neither of the three will be banned anytime soon. They all generate too much money. Picture Vegas losing out on boxing money... Never gonna happen.
Of course boxing is too dangerous so that taking part in it would be rational in any way. In that sense it should be banned However, as alluded before, several sports are much more dangerous than we have thought: NFL, hockey, rugby, soccer all cause shitloads of concussions. So where do we draw the line? Should tourist travelling go too, since busses and planes crash and ruin the environment, and travelling is by no means essential? The reason why I don't think we should ban boxing and in fact keeping it around makes more sense than having NFL is that it isn't SUPPOSED to be rational. People have always fought and wanted to watch fighting, even though they have always known it is dangerous and makes no sense. Somehow, boxing and fighting is in our biology and in the human culture. If we could get rid of it, we would have, a long time ago. Yet whenever boxing has been banned, it has continued anyway either underground or in different form. If boxing is the reason we can control ourselves from fighting elsewhere or committing random acts of violence, there is a place for it.
I love Mike, but he came the closest to fucking the sport with the bite fight. If the sport's reputation can recover from the bite fight, then boxing is here to stay. Boxing will outlast the NFL. Bank on it. American football is a house of cards.
Participation in pop Warner and youth football programs may be considerably down, but the NFL ain't goin nowhere in our lifetimes Ratings are the highest of any sport and the tv dollars/revenue only continues to increase
THe Chronic Encephalo shit isn't going away though. Football is basically losing bet's its going to have to pay later down the line, right when it can least afford them. Life is cyclical. I think we are re-entering a Gladitorial era. Guys are literally going to be fighting for their lives and livelihoods out there. Guys are going to train and go to play ball thinking "the house is paid for, I got £10m put away for the kids and wife..........and I got a life expectancy of 5 years".
Of course but what we're saying is it's still so massive and entrenched that it will take several generations to get a shallow enough talent pool to matter
I think the talent pool will be OK, but people just won't be happy about watching guys basically go out to die or get vegetablized over a few years so they can live the life yo.
I truly believe e-sports will take over in the next couple of decades. Rather than go to some stadion, people prefer to sit on their asses. The money is there too. And as video games are more and more like real world but the athletes or soldiers in them can do stuff that actual people never can, old fashioned sports can't compete. I see it in my job too. The guys who do regular sports now are ridiculed and hardly anyone follows any type of sports, yet everybody does e-sports. It is time for us oldies to go
And the absolute talent pool in a sport has barely anything to do with its popularity (unless it falls to a ridiculous low level, which is pretty much impossible), since athletes are not competing against other era. It's really hard to gage the current talent pool in a sport, unless it's a purely physical one (running, powerlifting)
The whole industry of football is built on the rock solid foundation of the high school game, which in a huge number of places is like the defining identity of individual towns. If participation dwindles enough over time, so too does viewership in those towns (if your son/brother/cousin/nephew/best pal isn't playing and you're living in that town, you're a lot less likely to be there watching it, stands to reason ... I like football a lot, I never went to a single game in 4 years of high school... though to be fair we were usually shit) ... now, in CT? Ok no reason for anyone to worry... but if that starts happening in Texas or Florida or Pennsylvania, California etc... that's a potentially huge problem because that's where college gets its players and it's where that perception of football as a cultural touchstone, the same thing that feeds the massive money laundering scheme that is College Football could begin to crumble and eventually the massive popularity of the NFL with it ... fewer participants, fewer interested parties watching those participants from that ground level would be very damaging ... I'm talking about this like a Glacier, mind... not a raging torrent
yeah I agree with you, but this has nothing to do with the talent pool, more with the social capital that is built around football. What I mean by that is that if the participation in HS stay high, the popularity of the sport will stay high, even if the one playing it are not very good. Anyway, I'm pretty sure we mean the same thing, only that we used different terms.
disagREED. Morbid Curiosiry is a Motherfucker. It’s Why the “Faces of Death” Flicks were Popular Back in the Day. It’s Why People Slow Down in Traffic to Get a Glimpse of an Accident. It’s Why 9/11 Footage NEVER Gets Old, Despite the Sadness of that Day. 90-95% of People Will Stop and WATCH if 2 Dudes are Fighting. NFL Fans CRAVE BlindSide Hits on QB’s and/or De-Cleating Hits on Other Players. It’s Human Nature and REED Doesn’t See That Ever Changing. REED
On that narrow point I agree but Irish is right that there will be people that won't watch in good conscience (there already are... I know a few guys that haven't watched it in literally years because of stuff like what happened to poor Mike Webster, Seau, and all the older guys like Mackey, etc) ... I myself feel guilty watching it at times the same way I'm sometimes reminded of the terrible toll of boxing... Benny Paret being killed on national TV caused boxing to lose some viewers, so did Duk Koo Kim... the shell that was Muhammad Ali post-boxing definitely made some people wary of it too ... those things matter... will there always be an audience? Sure... there's an audience for things far more horrifying (child pornographry; beheadings; suucides) but none of those things are on NBC for four hours every Sunday night... Irish is correct that the perception of football as too cruel to justify the entertainment could eventually do significant MAINSTREAM damage
There’s a TRADEOFF In Life Though. Even Former Athletes in Non-Combative, Less Grueling Sports Like Basketball or Baseball COMPROMISE Their Bodies Irreparably and Endure a LESS Than Comfortable Back Half of Life, in Many Cases. Bill Walton Couldn’t Run a Single Step Even if his Life Depended On It, Nowadays. Motherfucker Would Hurt Himself on a Low Speed Treadmill, Yet Ran Up and Down an NBA Court as Good as Any Who Ever Played. REED’s of the Belief Damaged and/or Deceased Boxers/NFL’ers Wouldn’t Change a Thing if They Could Do it All Over Again. Junior Seau Was BORN to Be a Professional Football Player. As Sad as his Demise was, REED Thinks Seau Would Think it was Worh it. Maybe REED’s Subliminally Rationalizing Why he Continues to Watch Combative and Contact Sports, but he TRULY Believes That. REED
Why should these sports be banned? Nobody’s being forced to do it and those who chose to are often paid very well. If you’re talking about banning the sport to protect people from themselves then you’d have to also ban everything from rock climbing, surfing, sky diving and every other sport where accidents can happen. Not everyone who participates in boxing or MMA show signs of brain damage.
Nobody here is even calling for a ban... just BOSS being an attention whore/cagefightingviolenthomobuttsexenthusiast shitting on boxing
Completely irrelevant since in these sports, an accident is exactly it : an accident. In boxing (and to a lesser extent MMA) it's the name of the game. You're aiming to render your opponent unconscious (aka as concussion = brain damage) and unlike these sports, no mater of precautions or technological changes (unless far in the future) will make it more than marginally safer. IMO, the NFL and other contact sports will survive because better helmets and equipements will be designed which will vastly reduce the risks of concussions, and people do not watch the NFL to see someone get hurts (they just like the hits). Boxing, on the other hand will go out of business if such a thing happens, who will want to watch a fight where no one gets hurt (and to be honest, just having helmets will kill the sport)??? That's the main reason why I do think it will be banned in most western countries before the end of the century (and also there will be a backlash against promoting violence, which is pretty much what the sport's does)