Nasty

I love changing my mind when I'm wrong.

I've always enjoyed watching mma fights but have always assumed they were spectacularly dangerous. I also enjoy boxing, and considered it to be by far the safer of the two sports.

Strangely, mma fights continue to produce less major injuries than boxing. How can this be? It just doesn't make sense.

Finally, I decided to look into it. The big danger is from striking. Chokes produce momentary unconsciousness, and armbar might cause a broken bone but not a brain injury. Strikes can kill, or lead to dementia pugilistica later in life.

Statistics don't lie. I looked up some numbers on one of my favourite UFC champions, George St. Pierre. He is known as a well-rounded fighter with a lean towards striking. A Compustrike record produced at the end of 2010 it included data from his 13 previous fights.

On average, he landed one standing arm strike every 17 seconds and one standing leg strike every 27 seconds. When on the ground he landed some kind of hit every 6 seconds.

In a full 25 minute title fight, we can assume his opponent will be hit by 91 punches, 56 kicks, and 248 grounded whacks.

That's a lot of impact.

But if we're looking for brain injury, most of those kicks can be discounted. Sometimes a head kick works spectacularly but that's quite rare. Most of the hits are to the body or the legs.

Most of the 248 grounded strikes also can be discounted. Many are to the body. Of the head shots, most are unable to generate much power due to the striker's limited mobility. Again, there are spectacular exceptions.

The most brain damage comes from the standing arm strikes.

Now let's look at boxing stats. The record ever for punches landed in a fight is 620. This is held by Troy Dorsey in a 12 round match. That's one successfully landed strike every 3 1/2 seconds for 36 minutes.

That's a lot of damage over a long period of time.

Of course, this is exceptional, but it does show a trend. It shows where the danger lies.

I recently did a mma-watching marathon. Afterwards, I watched a bit of boxing. The boxers always stand quite close together and whump away. There is defense, and blocking, and movement, but it's minimal. Boxers routinely exchange blows. MMA guys usually don't.

MMA fighters often move out of range. They often clinch. They take each other to the ground.

But, put my opinions aside. Back to the facts. There have been no fatalities in mma. It is quite rare that a fighter leaves the ring on a stretcher. They just take fewer shots to the head.

But it sure looks deadly.