My memory may be faulty, but it seems like up until the 70’s or so it was common for a fair percentage of boxers and wrestlers to have cauliflower ears, but nowadays I never see any fighters with this. Is my memory accurate, and if so, does anyone know the reason for the change?
They do, or at least did until recently. I graduated high school as a wrestler in 1997, and we had plenty of guys with cauliflower ear, but not as many as a lot of schools because our coach insisted on us wearing our headgear during scrimmage (but not drill). This was done not to prevent cauliflower ear, but to ensure that you were accustomed to wearing the headgear during go-time. Most of us wore it during drill, as well, which was helpful because the headgear can be used strategically at times.
I suspect that, in the 70s, more guys went “commando” in regard to headgear (if it was even required - I don’t know since I was born in the seventies).
You still see some of those ears in the Mixed Martial Arts leagues, where they dont require headgear…
Google an image of Randy Couture. His left ear is messed up.
Just about to say the same thing, plenty of MMA fighters have cauliflower ear. I have seen video of Joe Rogan grappling and (presumably because he’s got a TV career and looks are important) he was wearing headgear.
I’m with guy who graduated in '97 and saw guys with it. I wrestled and graduated in 1998 and also knew plenty who got The Ear. And ringworm. Unfortunately I can’t compare the prevalence with the 70’s for…obvious…reasons.
Doctors can drain the blood from the ear, then apply a stiff bandage. Cite.
Unlike the olden days (40’s, 50’s an 60’s) the professional fighters don’t fight nearly as often. There are no more “bum of the month clubs” for upcoming contenders. Even Tyson was fighting every 3 weeks when he was padding his record.
In the gym, when sparring and training, the pro fighters wear headgear. It’s all much easier on the ears (and the brain).
Ugh… don’t remind me about ringworm. I rode 14 hours to Michigan for the AAU Grand Nationals (folkstyle and freestyle) with a doctor’s note in hand explaining that the ringworm on my hand (carefully bandaged to contain the infectious nastiness) wasn’t ringowrm. After running for hours in my plastics, an observant weigh-in dude noticed and sent me to the executioner, er, trainer, who disqualified me.
I’ve also read that, especially in pro wrestling, the mats were fertile breeding grounds for all kinds of nasties. Promoters weren’t going to spend a penny more than they had to on anything, and cleaning mats was just not in the budget. So blood stains and whatever other crap would just stay there.
Ringworm? Explain. I know what it is, but how did boxers and wrestlers get it?
Ringworm is spread by (in)direct contact. Boxers and wrestlers are in very very (very) close contact with their opponent. If one person gets it and trains/fights, then they have contaminated the mats they were training on, the fighter they were fighting against, and maybe even the changing room. Anyone else who fights them or their opponent, or uses the same mats/changing room now has a chance to also become infected.
Wrestlers, for the most part, in my experience. The ringworm fungus is, I’m told, very similar to the fungus that causes athlete’s foot. Anyone spending a lot of time in a locker room is going to be exposed, but there are other ways of getting it (heck, I got it on vacation in Peru about 2 years ago! And I thought my ringworm days ended when I retired my singlet!)
In high schools, a common cause is that they let gym classes use the wrestling mats, too. We were always fighting with our athletic department/phys. ed. department because they liked to use our wrestling room for girls gymnastics during gym classes. When we complained that this created a health issue because ringworm is tracked in on people’s street shoes (we wore our wrestling shoes only in that room), they countered that we were being territorial. So, every year, after the girls’ gym classes did their gymnastics/aerobics/whatever segment, we’d have an outbreak. This despite our coach’s strategic relationship with the custodians to have the mats bleached before our practice sessions.