Which sport is more dangerous?

There is a perception that MMA is more brutal than boxing just because of that....perception. The fighting style includes kicks, submissions and hitting a fighter whilst on the ground with gloves that have hardly any padding. However, it has been proven by John Hopkins University that MMA is actually considerably safer than Boxing.


     In UFC's (MMA's main promotion company) beggining they were branded as a brutal, no holds barred tournaments with no weight classes and very few rules. (No biting or Eye Gouging; everything else goes) As a result many states would not legislate MMA except New Jersey and Nevada. Former Senator John McCain even campaigned to have MMA outlawed from cable TV saying that the events were "human cock fighting."


     The UFC was founded in 1993 and began the modern era of MMA. Since that time, there have been two deaths in MMA competition. Douglas Dedge died on March 18, 1998, from injuries sustained in a fight on an unregulated card in Kiev, Ukraine, two days earlier. And in 2007, Sam Vasquez died on Nov. 30, 2007, from injuries sustained in an Oct. 20 fight in Houston.  (Bledsoe, Edbert, Grabowski, Brill & Li, 2006)


     The Journal of Combative Sport has documented 71 deaths since 1993 in boxing. (Iole, 2009)

     The report from John Hopkins concluded that MMA has the same injury rate as Boxing but has a significantly lower knockout rate, which would suggest a lower amount brain injuries.

(Bledsoe, Edbert, Grabowski, Brill & Li, 2006)