Michael David Smith at AOL Fanhouse has a post today highlighting an NBC story about a book called “Fighting for Acceptance: Mixed Martial Arts and Violence in American Society” that was written by a couple of actual college professors named David T. Mayeda and David Ching. Their conclusions won’t be much of a shock to readers of this website–MMA may have more blood, almost all from minor cuts and scrapes, but its far from being the most dangerous sport:

Another interesting topic hit by the authors is the safety issue. Is MMA still too dangerous?

The two writers delve into that issue with both hands and do a great job of comparing MMA to sports like boxing, football, rugby, and other sports where there is physical contact.

“Football is much more violent,� said Mayeda by telephone from Hawaii. “There’s a former female gymnast who is now in MMA and she says gymnastics is much more brutal.�

It’s a wonderful collection of quotes, interviews, insights and theories about the effects of MMA on the general public.

If you like MMA, then this book is a valuable source when defending the sport.

The reality is that its a waste of time to defend the sport against ‘critics’ since so few of them bother to even learn the basics. Windbags like Bill O’Reiley will gripe about anything to get ratings, and most of the other media tripe you hear ‘opposing’ MMA is so far out of left field as to not warrant a response. Here’s a good example–the debates in New York City about legalizing MMA. This is how Dave Meltzer of The Wrestling Observer summarized it, and trying to do a better job than this is like trying to paraphrase Hemingway by writing your own version of ‘The Sun Also Rises’. Check out the part that we emphasized if you want to know what you’re up against if you want to put your sanity at risk by ‘defending’ MMA against its ‘critics’.

But just before everyone was about to rubber stamp it through, Bob Reilly, a Democrat, gave an impassioned speech.
“We ban cockfighting and dogfighting. Should we allow humans to enter a cage to knee, kick and punch each other?”
Well, given that kickboxing has been legal in the state for years, they already do, only it’s in a ring, but let’s not let
common sense get in the way here. Reilly noted that UFC is currently banned in 20 states and why should New York be
different? Facts are it is banned in two states, New York and West Virginia. There are another 14 states that either don’t
have athletic commissions, so UFC won’t run in those states, or do have them but they don’t they had changed their mind
and wanted a second vote on 6/18. But once again, it was voted down. The bill, which was being pushed by UFC,
Madison Square Garden, and several other upstate New York arenas, will be reviewed again. The original vote was
almost a comedy, as legislators were under the impression it was anything goes fighting and that there was no referee,
with people voting against it saying it’s different from boxing because there is no point system, judging or referees.

Meltzer’s newsletter, The Wrestling Observer, is essential reading for any MMA fan. He’s been covering the sport longer than anyone and does such a good job at it its scary. If you’re a wrestling fan the rest is gravy, but the MMA stuff alone justifies the $10 a month that a subscription will cost you. We’ve got staffers here at SavSci that have read ‘The Observer’ for over 20 years now and remember their coverage of UFC 1 vividly…

THE WRESTLING OBSERVER–GO THERE AND SUBSCRIBE

Here’s MDS’s conclusion which, again, its hard to say any better than he does:

Many people have such a visceral reaction to the blood in MMA that they’re incapable of any real examination of the safety of the sport. But there’s no doubt that it’s less dangerous than football, and I’m not at all surprised to hear that gymnastics — which leaves thousands of girls with permanent back and joint injuries — is viewed as more brutal by someone who has participated in both.

What opponents of MMA really have a problem with isn’t that MMA is dangerous, it’s that it looks dangerous. It’s too bad so many people fail to make that distinction.

While we’re at it, it wouldn’t be a surprise if research also proved that cheerleading–which now emphasizes high risk stunts–is way more dangerous than MMA. Check out this little chestnut with some more emphasis added so you won’t miss the interesting parts:

In girls’ sports, more than half of the catastrophic injuries - those causing paralysis or death - are happening on the sidelines, in cheerleading accidents.

“People have no idea what the competitive cheerleading involves,” says sports medicine pediatrician Dr. Sally Harris.

Harris says cheerleading injuries are usually far more serious than those in “officially recognized sports” because this “activity” doesn’t always get the support it deserves.

“They may not get the level of coaching and training that you would see in women’s gymnastics for example,” says Harris.

In professional gyms, coaches are specialists.

In schools, the coach might be doing double duty as the math teacher.

“In terms of safety, it’s still the person in charge,” says Pascale. “It still goes down to that individual that is standing on that floor watching those cheerleaders.”

The story, which dates back a couple of years (2004), details the sad fact that at the time it was written two cheerleaders had already suffered injuries resulting in paralysis that year. That’s two cheerleaders on ONE COLLEGE SQUAD!

Dangers of Cheerleading @ CBS News

Here’s a more recent story about cheerleading from the New York Times:

Emergency room visits for cheerleading injuries nationwide have more than doubled since the early 1990s, far outpacing the growth in the number of cheerleaders, and the rate of life-threatening injuries has startled researchers. Of 104 catastrophic injuries sustained by female high school and college athletes from 1982 to 2005 — head and spinal trauma that occasionally led to death — more than half resulted from cheerleading, according to the National Center for Catastrophic Sports Injury Research. All sports combined did not surpass cheerleading.

You can count the instances of paralysis and death caused by MMA on your fingers and likely have some left over. Cheerleading is in triple digits in terms of death and paralysis, but if anyone suggested that cheerleading be “banned” or not allowed in NYC they’d be run out of town on a rail.

The point isn’t that cheerleading, football, gymnastics or whatever should be banned–the point is that as our esteemed colleague Michael David Smith notes its important to separate the visceral reaction to the blood in MMA from the reality of the sport’s risks. The fact is that some people just don’t enjoy watching fighting–that’s their right, of course, but they shouldn’t deny those of us who *do* enjoy it the pleasure based on some completely mythical interpretation of ‘risk’.

Bottom line–pretty much anything worth doing has some inherent risk. Journalists should focus more on accurately reporting the risks instead of sensationalistic scare stories. But that’s expecting a lot out of the mainstream media now isn’t it?

The NBC story is linked at AOL Fanhouse and out of respect to MDS we’ll make you go over there to find it…

‘Gymnastics is Much More Brutal than MMA’ @ AOL Fanhouse