Boxing: Against

Boxing Essay: Against

Boxing is one of the most controversial, currently legal sports in the western world. Some argue that it is a barbaric game, nothing but a negative influence on youth, promoting violence and causing injury to poor, exploited working class men. The arguments of the anti-boxing lobby that you will hear may include - it is expensive to take up; it is not entertaining; it encourages violence and that it can lead to deaths and injuries. These arguments proving it is simply a cruel, inhuman sport.
The first argument we shall look at is the dangers of boxing. There are tragedies where someone is killed or critically injured, plus there is a chronic problem that when someone is hit on the head they have a large degree of injury to the brain, the majority of boxing injuries are, unsurprisingly, a result from a blow to the head. Any blow to the head is harmful and this causes serious medical concern that continues to accumulate, this naturally showing that there is clearly no safe level of boxing . Medical staff can deal with a blood clot but the real answer must surely be to, altogether, banish this so called sport. Not only is this forcing hospitals to nurse the injured, being punched in the head can cause major brain trauma and tissue damage, this is a lifelong injury and cannot be healed. The brain is the most susceptible area to injury and other injuries include the nerves within the brain being torn, lesions, bleeding and sometimes a boxer can suffer from a blood clot forming on the brain as a result of taking a direct hit, this can easily lead to unnecessary deaths. Bones within the head and face can also be fractured. Over a sustained period, the cumulative damage of being hit in the head can cause long term effects resulting in what’s known as ‘punch drunk syndrome’ which a boxer can suffer with long after they’ve retired from the sport. This shows that even once the boxers stop this pointless fighting they will still suffer and, in a lot of cases, have new illnesses develop. Other common injuries include broken teeth and ribs, serious cuts and bruising and it can even cause internal bleeding in major internal organs. Damage to the eyes can result in detached retina and bleeding within the retina. As boxers age, they are also most likely to suffer from either Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s Disease. Both these diseases are extremely serious and cannot be treated.

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Next we can investigate that boxing is not at all entertaining. Who can honestly say that watching a sport that result in so many deaths is enjoyable? It is certainly not fun in anyway with the amount of accountable deaths. On that measure, horse racing, sky diving, mountaineering and scuba diving are said to be more dangerous. An assessment of their relative fatality rates conducted more than 20 years ago concluded that, on average, there was 11 deaths per 100,000 participants , 51 for mountaineering and more than 120 for sky diving and horse racing, but boxing was, of course, easily more than any of these. With that, at the present day the average rate of boxing deaths has overwhelmingly increased. If an audience can find watching a death sport entertaining, shouldn’t we be worrying about our society? Its basic intent is to produce bodily harm in the opponent after all.

Lastly, boxing is a very expensive sport to take up and be part of. The participant is required to wear protection, and in this they will be forced to buy it themselves, as boxing establishments have decided they will not be handing out protection for their participants. They also need to buy boxing gloves, pay a licensing fee, and on top of that, pay for each boxing class they go to. This all mounts up and turns into a large, unnecessary expense. Participants are told that if you do two classes a week for a month you will notice a difference in weight and tone, but this with a catch - as long as you follow a healthy eating plan and try to include one further cardio class in your schedule a week then you'll see this difference - this adding on further expenses of other classes, and buying more organic, healthy food than previously. Now we ask ourselves, is this really necessary? This only proves that the sport of boxing does not actually make you healthier as it relies on other sports and food sources. As boxing regulators say state this, we can only help but feel deceived and disappoint as that is clearly not the case.

Boxing will remain a notoriously known sport and its controversial issues will always be widely known. People will always argue that this sport is nothing but violent, it has no use in society, it only causes deaths and injuries and that it promotes violence. There are, of course, one or two reasons to back up the ideas of boxing, but these are ruled out by the negativity of reasons against this sport. Debates on this matter are sure to carry on in the future, and we can only hope that boxing committees and our societies see sense and ban boxing.

Lauren McGovern

Persuasive Essay - Boxing