MMA Can Be Hazardous – Don’t Delude Yourself
Published by on February 27th, 2008 in Operation Cleanup

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By Charles Jay

A few days ago, a student at the University of Prince Edward (in Canada) who was undertaking a career in mixed martial arts collapsed and died after a training session. The youngster, Rene Ayangma, made his pro debut in New Brunswick in December and was scheduled to fight again next month in Halifax. The details in new reports were very sketchy. They did not point to one specific ailment or injury. And I guess we won’t know more until the coroner comes with his final report in a couple of weeks.

Sometimes these things just happen. But one of the things it brings to mind – for those of you who thumb your noses at the “unsafe” sport of boxing while trumpeting to me how much “safer” mixed martial arts is – just maybe take a step back and think about it before speaking. Boxing, in the gloved era, has been around for about 115 years. MMA, by comparison, is just getting started.

Yes, MMA would seem to be safer by virtue of the fact that its bout don’t last nearly as long. As someone who was involved with boxing for a number of years, I can tell you that while deaths in boxing may be associated with the absorption of blows, but they are blows that accumulate over a period of time in a fight, and maybe even further back than that.

In other words, it’s due to attrition. It is rare that a quick knockout would result in a death; it usually happens in a long, arduous bout, because there is also a dehydration factor to worry about, among other things. And I don’t want anyone competing in MMA to take this the wrong way, but most guys who find themselves about to get seriously hurt in mixed martial arts simply tap out (some say they’re SMART enough to tap out). The culture of boxing is such that if you’re a so-called “warrior” you do not quit, no matter how much impending danger there is. That’s why Roberto Duran will never live down “No Mas,” and frankly, why Vitali Klitschko will always hear criticism about quitting in his corner against Chris Byrd.

Meanwhile, nobody seems to talk about Royce Gracie walking out of the Octagon in UFC 3 for no explicable reason (yeah, I’ve read about his sudden “blindness” but have a hard time buying it), yet a boxer would probably never have any marketability again if he did something like that.

I’m going far afield. My point is, boxers have a tendency to go forward, though it is inadvisable to do so, and that’s one of the things that leads to serious injuries in the ring, along with the fact that some fighters engage in sparring far too much and thus sustain gratuitous head trauma.

By the way, I also believe what I have heard from trainers, regarding cases where fighters go down and out from head blows, which is that sometimes it’s not so much the head blow itself that causes the damage, but the head when it hits with a thud on the canvas. Recognizing what the “ground and pound” is all about, let’s not kid each other – if you or I were laying on the ground, and a guy was punching out head to the floor again and again and again, he would be looking at a very real possibility of serious injury.

And I don’t want to hear any happy horseshit to the contrary.

And believe me, that’s coming from someone who will go toe-to-toe any time, any place with the silly Senator John McCain whenever he wants to vilify MMA – the way it is now OR the way it was then.

Ayangma’s death, however, reminds me of another death – one in boxing that I am very well acquainted with.

Bradley Rone, a heavyweight from Las Vegas by way of Cincinnati, collapsed and died for no apparent reason at the conclusion of the first round of a fight in Cedar City, Utah in July of 2003. In the wake of this tragedy, the Utah commission was found to have been in violation of its own rules, one which should have suspended him after five straight losses (Rone had lost 26 consecutive times). More pertinent to our discussion, evidence suggested that Rone, on the way to the fight, had stopped at a GNC store for Ripped Fuel or something similar. He wasn’t examined carefully enough, if at all, by the ringside physician at the fight. Basically Rone had a heart attack.

Rene Ayangma’s father told reporters that his son was taking an energy drink. Which brings me to this thought – could he have been overdoing it with supplements he may have seen advertised on some UFC show because he saw that all the “stars” were taking it, or endorsing it? Did he take it even farther than that? And I wonder, since MMA is a relatively young sport, was Ayangma working out under the supervision of a real trainer or a glorified karate instructor?

Gyms can be a dangerous place, if no one knows what they’re doing. Someone has to be minding the store.