Toughman Contest: Is it time to shut it down?

A 30-year old woman, wife/mother of two, passed away after a beating she took in the ring recently. The woman had no experiance at all, and was put into the bout with someone who actually knew what they were doing, after the original opponent was not able to fight for some reason. Here is an article about it…

…I had no idea so many were being killed from this. This woman is, I believe, the forth person to be killed because of the fights, in the past ten months. Something has to give, and it has to happen soon.

It’s already banned in many states, but we need something more to happen. Either shut this bullshit down, or at least pair the people up together, who are at the same skill level, or juts something. Here is a great article about all of this also, by Doug Fernandes…

…I’ve watched it before, I know people who have actually participated, but something needs to be done, and soon.

copyrighted material redacted - see below

Whatever, dumb ass woman wants to get in the ring and box, she gets what she gets. 0 sympothy from this corner. As to shutting it down? <shrug> I don’t think we need to worry about this stuff, people ought to be able to do these kinds of stupid things if they want. The civil courts may shut them down with excessive liability, but I don’t think we need to criminalize it. My $.02.

The difference between this and “real” boxing, aside from the prize offered is that the sport pairs up fighters who have trained specifically for boxing, as opposed to just plain old Everypeople who want to prove their mettle for whatever reason.

I don’t think anyone tries to sell the participants that the event is completely safe. Are they deceiving people who want to try their hand at it? Or do the participants know full well they could be killed?

My guess is that the latter is correct, and that people participate mainly because of the danger involved.

I can understand people wanting to shut down the event. However, unless I’ve been misinformed, the participants are not forced to participate and know full well what they’re getting into.

So it really becomes a matter of protecting people from themselves. Do we trust people to make the decision? And if they choose to participate anyway, are they okay with all potential outcomes?

9th person in 24 years? That doesn’t seem too excessive, especially when you consider that many of the people (at least the ones I’ve seen) aren’t in the best shape.

I’m of the opinion that anyone who wants to do something dumb should be allowed to, as long as I don’t have to pay for it.

Rarely do I favor protecting (presumably) sane adults from themselves. This case is no exception.

Moderator’s Notes:

Two things. First, do not post copyrighted material to this message board. I don’t quite know where you got those articles, but they had every appearance of a verbatim C&P from another website, most likely one owned by a newspaper. Posting copyrighted material here, in its entirety as you did, is forbidden. The owners of this message board, the Chicago Reader, are staunch defenders of copyright laws.

Second, this topic, I believe, belongs in IMHO. It ain’t quite a debate and it ain’t quite a rant, but it certainly doesn’t belong here. I’m moving it.

Maybe they shoudl simply rename the Toughman Contest to the Darwin Contest.

They should give away free Billy Ray Cyrus and Dixie Chicks albums to everybody who fights in these. Anything to clean the gene pool…