Ultimate fighting, how are there no deaths/major injuries?

Factual Questions
1

This past winter my Dad slipped on some ice and hit the back of his head. A few hours later he was stumbling and dizzy… vomiting a lot. Finally convinced the old man to go to the Emergency room and found out he had an inner cranial bleed, they transfered him by ambulance to another hospital and on the way he had a seizure. Long story short, several days in Neurological Intensive Care and several months later he is finally back to normal. He almost died from this.

Now when I watch something like Ultimate fighting I cant help but wonder, why no major injuries? Why ocular fractures, no broken jaws, no brain bleeds?

2

They are in really, really good shape for one thing and they built up to those fights over a long time. They also know how to take a hit and maybe take a dive if they are really getting hurt. Look at it this way, what do you think would happen if you are your father or any other unprepared person took 3 direct punches in the face from Mohammad Ali or Mike Tyson? Some people would be killed but even crappy fighters managed to step into the ring with them and take a whole lot more than that without serious (biting excluded) injury.

3

Unlike the early days of mixed martial arts fighting, the UFC is very aware of serious injuries and take great steps to prevent them. Although they don’t stop fights for cuts and there is a lot more blood than boxing, they jump in a stop fights very quickly if the ref thinks someone is going to get hurt. Seems to me they are much quicker to stop a fight than boxing refs. There was a recent article that I can’t find which says the UFC’s concusion policy should embarass the NFL and other sports.

4

Ice is a lot harder than anything in an Ultimate Fighting ring; the floor is padded and the fighters wear light gloves. The hardest things would be elbows, knees, or the other person’s head although headbutting is illegal is most MMA as far as I know. Strikes to the back of the head are generally illegal.

I think there may have been an orbital fracture at some point in one of the mixed-martial-arts leagues. The Pride fighting is Japan is a little more dangerous because they allow head kicks and stomps which I think could lead to something serious. I think injuries are more common in more small-time leauges, less regulated events. There are some videos on the Internet of some major injuries, such as a guy who got slammed on his neck and went into convulsions. He lived but they didn’t say what happened to him. That was in a small-time event with no weight classes, more like the very early days of UFC. There’s also a video (search for grappler back snap) of a brazilian jiu-jitsu match where a guy gets in a Boston-crab type position, and the guy sort of folds him in half. He’s not paralyzed, but he’s left screaming with a back injury.

I do wonder though, how damaging it might be to get punched or elbowed when your head is down against the mat. It might actually be better for the brain since your head doesn’t accelerate so much, but it also probably makes facial injury more likely.

5

I’d like to add that that I’m a little dubious about some of the UFC or other MMA claims that they’re so safe, safer than boxing beacuse nobody has died, or safer than this or that team sport. It seems like a very new, very small sport so that such statistics aren’t fair. There are how many UFC fighters, compared to how many boxers there are in the country, or compared to the hundreds of players in any team sport?

6

Are you sure about the cuts thing? I thought the ref would call if the injury was too serious or the blood too copious.

Most fights that get stopped are stopped because the guy cannot and is not defending himself anymore. I watch a lot of these fights with a few of my friends, and we’re often suspicious about the fight being stopped too soon until we see the replay from several different angles. The refs are quite good.

7

Just an personal observation with no hard facts behind it. I have personally seen a lot more blood in the UFC than in boxing. I’m talking superficial head lacerations that bleed a lot without serious injury. I have not seen any UFC fight stopped for that. I have seen plenty of boxing matches stopped for it.

8

The fights aren’t (usually) stopped for cuts, but they are stopped if the cut is bleeding into the eyes.

9

The whole trouble with experienced fighters is that a person can develop a degree of immunity to concussions. The syndrom of “punch drunk” doesn’t happen with one or two or several punches to the head. It happens with repeated blows after a long period of time. A person can develop a sense of immunity to a blow to the head. That desensativity can lead to significant damage later on.

All that being said, and knowing what I do about boxing, etc., I’m not all that convinced that what you are seeing in UFC (or similar) bouts is what is really happening. I tend to think that these bouts are much closer to professional wrestling than actual boxing. The entertainment factor is much larger than the combat factor.

10

In this specific case though the UFC has a specific rule adopted from boxing against “rabbit punching,” which is essentially no hitting onto the back of the head to the base of the neck. It’s a very effective way to injure someone (permanently) and I suppose the UFC had to agree to it in order to get Nevada gaming sanctioning.

Watch the Royce Gracie/Matt Hughes fight on youtube or myspace. Hughes gets a strong rear mount, inserts his hooks, breaks down Gracie with good clean back arch (I used to love doing that back in high school wrestling)…and proceeds to spend his time searching for a way to strike Gracie to the sides of the head as Gracie protects thsoe sides with his arms.

The UFC has picked up a lot of rules protecting the fighters since the very first tournaments. I have one of the first tournaments on DVD. Even though the skill level was miles below what we have today, it certainly looked more brutal with all the clean knockouts and blood flying everywhere.

11

Ah, I was right. Here’s the wiki entry on the fouls as listed by the Neveada State Athletic Commission (not the gaming commision, doh!)

As I recall the original UFCs only had two rules: no biting and no eye gouging. Even the only routes to victory sounded pretty brutal. I recall there being some match where one of the fighters certainly looked like he was trying to signal that he wanted to stop, but the rules stated that the fight would only end in knockout or submission from some actual technique. I think the corners had to throw in a towel for the poor guy. They didn’t even have time limits so you couldn’t try to wait it out for a judges’ decision.

12

The original UFC was purchased by a new owner who updated the rules and worked with different states to ensure the sport could still be licensed/ legal, as the near total lack of rules in the early days pretty much guaranteed it’s demise (no one would touch it. Not in my town. It was practically banned and forced off-shore).

There are alot more rules and the league has become very popular and doesn’t have legal trouble sith states (in securing fights). States permit it and athletic commisions are involed.

It is far from wrestling entertainment (WWE). The biggest issue in the UFC is steroids/HGH. To be a legit league, they have to test, and even champions have had titles stripped because of steroid use. None of this is surprising when you see the freakish bodies on some of these guys.

Because the sport is so brutal and causes long periods of down time during injuries with lots of travel and technical fight prep, it is always going to see its participants dabbling in performance enhancing drugs. This is the one reason one might want to compare it to WWE wrestling entertainment participants: Without steroids/HGH, few of these guys would be in any kind of athletic shape, let alone the chiseled specimens they manage to be.

13

In a 12 round boxing match you might take 100 or more punches to the head and face. I’ve never seen anything close to that number in a MMA bout. Three or four good punches there in a row, and the guy is probably knocked out or at least in a position for an easy submission. Also, the majority of many bouts feature more grappling and kicking than head blows.

14

Why there are so few broken jaws is the same reason as in boxing: closed mouths. An open mouth more likely to suffer fracture, like happened to Ali against Ken Norton in '73.

Your dad suffered a much worse injury than he would likely ever suffer in a mixed martial arts competition. The back of the skull is a very sensitive area, and suffering a blow to it is very dangerous. Punching to the back of the head (a “rabbit punch,” as WonJonSoup said) is very illegal, as is spiking the opponent to the canvas on his head or neck. Fighter safety is taken very, very seriously. There does tend to be more blood than in boxing, mostly due to elbows, which are sharp. The cuts tend to be superficial ones that don’t require stoppage.

There are fewer punches in MMA for a number of reasons, the number of rounds being one. Range is another. MMA fighters tend to fight much, much more outside than boxers, because there’s more incentive to stay away from an opponent. Glove weight in the UFC is only 4 ounces instead of the 8 ounce or 10 ounce gloves typically used in boxing, so any one punch can do more damage. Not only that, but unlike boxing, the ref doesn’t come separate the fighters when they get in a clinch. If you’re in a bad spot in an MMA clinch, you’re subject to “dirty boxing,” clinch punches and elbows that would be illegal in boxing, as well as knees, which can be devastating, and takedowns, which can put you in the position of being submitted or under a fight-stopping hail of strikes. This makes fighters very, very careful about getting into clinching range.

Ironically, all of this probably makes MMA safer than pro boxing. In boxing, a downed fighter is given a ten count to rise to his feet and is then checked by the ref to make sure he’s capable of continuing. A stunned but not downed fighter may be given a standing eight count by the ref to see if he’s capable of continuing. In MMA, a stunned and downed fighter is pounced on, usually resulting in stoppage right then and there. Not only that, a an unstunned but downed fighter can be submitted, ending a fight when the fighter is actually uninjured. This means longer fights for the boxers, more blows, and more possibilities of concussive injury.

I don’t know if it’s bourne out by medical science, but what you’re taught in the gym is that it’s not the one clean knockout punch that’s dangerous, it’s the blows that come after that punch. If you “get your bell rung,” training for you is over for the day. If a MMA fighter gets his bell rung, the fight’s most likely over for him. If a boxer gets his bell rung, he might keep fighting.

The conception that MMA is mostly entertainment like pro wrestling is unfortunate. Mostly, I think, it’s because of how it’s being marketed. It’s presented as spectacle rather than an athletic contest, to the degree that people are lumping it in with pro wrestling. Despite that, every single bit of the hype and spectacle dissappears when the door suts and the bell rings.