Is there any kind of "blood rule" in professional sports?

[Sublight]

In addition to HIV, do the various boxing commissions also check for Hepatitis or other illness that can spread through blood?

[jackdavinci]

@Otto

Anecdotally it seems pretty clear that the various mixed martial arts leagues don’t have such a rule. MMA fighters routinely get cut and the fights aren’t stopped unless the cut is such that it impedes the ability of the fighter to fight.

Yeah I watched some UFC fight recently where one contestant must have got a head cut because he was drenched in blood but the fight wasn’t stopped.

[anson2995]

@Doctor Who

I’m pretty sure both professional basketball and football have similar rules, although I’m searching for cites now.

There are no rules that require an NFL player to come off the field if he is bleeding, and in fact it’s quite common to see blood becuase of the nature of the sport. Players frequently get scrapes and cuts on their hands and fingers that spill blood. I cover the NFL as a beat writer, and while I can’t recall an instance of a serious wound going untreated, I also have spent enough time on the sidelines to know that seeing blood on a jersey is a common experience. It happens in nearly every single game.

After Magic Johnson’s HIV diagnosis in the early 1990s, most sports were compelled to address the issue and come up with policies. The NFL consulted experts who concluded that the risk of transmitting HIV in athletic competition (or specifically, their field of play) was relatively low for a number of reasons. They did note the risk of spreading hepatitis and other blood-borne illnesses, and they concluded that the best way to prevent spreading infection was to test players for the disease, rather than trying to prevent the spilling of blood.

[Max_Torque]

Funny that this should come up, because I just learned recently that boxer Tommy Morrison is returning to fighting after testing negative for HIV. He tested positive back in 1996, but has contended that it was a false positive. Apparently he was right; either that, or he’s got some powerful hoodoo in his blood.

Anyway, Wikipedia says he has an MMA fight coming up on June 9th, so there will probably be some bleedin’ going on.

[missouri65]

@Max Torque

Funny that this should come up, because I just learned recently that boxer Tommy Morrison is returning to fighting after testing negative for HIV. He tested positive back in 1996, but has contended that it was a false positive. Apparently he was right; either that, or he’s got some powerful hoodoo in his blood.

Anyway, Wikipedia says he has an MMA fight coming up on June 9th, so there will probably be some bleedin’ going on.

Wow. Thank you for posting this. I opened the thread to mention Morrison, but I was not aware of this new development. I was something of a fan in 1996, and was saddened by the whole thing. I am glad to hear he is okay, although I doubt he will be able to recover much of a career after all this time.