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Old 12-09-2007, 11:58 PM   #1
Joseph Madden
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MMA loses a fighter...

35 year old Sam Vasquez died of injuries resulting from a bout. Sadly, I think this will only increase the popularity of cage fighting(lets be honest and call it what it is) and will most certainly cause more deaths in the future. We have come along way from the days of the gladiator, haven't we? Strangely, I don't see the wide spread coverage of "blood sports" in the news media as often as football, baseball etc. Maybe the sportswriters consider it too dirty.
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Old 12-10-2007, 12:53 AM   #2
xuzen
 
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Re: MMA loses a fighter...

Quote:
Joseph Madden wrote: View Post
35 year old Sam Vasquez died of injuries resulting from a bout. Sadly, I think this will only increase the popularity of cage fighting(lets be honest and call it what it is) and will most certainly cause more deaths in the future. We have come along way from the days of the gladiator, haven't we? Strangely, I don't see the wide spread coverage of "blood sports" in the news media as often as football, baseball etc. Maybe the sportswriters consider it too dirty.
I am sure, the cage fighters are subjected to mandatory baths at least once a day.... as per rule 15.8 section b subsection ix)
" All fighter must remain clean, shaved and devoid of any unmanly body hair. Facial hair, when fully cropped which will enhance aesthetic appeal to the opposite sex audience is highly recommended"

Boon

SHOMEN-ATE (TM), the solution to 90% of aikido and life's problems.
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Old 12-10-2007, 02:11 AM   #3
Joseph Madden
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Re: MMA loses a fighter...

Rule 15.8 section b subsection ix??? I think you've got your rules mixed up. Rule 15.8 section b subsection ix clearly states and I quote; "No fighter shall bathe for a period of 3 weeks, less his smell
be any less masculine and/or pungent, allowing for maximum effectiveness in the tournament"

OSU
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Old 12-10-2007, 02:12 AM   #4
ChrisHein
 
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Re: MMA loses a fighter...

Quote:
Joseph Madden wrote: View Post
35 year old Sam Vasquez died of injuries resulting from a bout. Sadly, I think this will only increase the popularity of cage fighting(lets be honest and call it what it is) and will most certainly cause more deaths in the future. We have come along way from the days of the gladiator, haven't we? Strangely, I don't see the wide spread coverage of "blood sports" in the news media as often as football, baseball etc. Maybe the sportswriters consider it too dirty.
I think MMA is safer then boxing or football.

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Old 12-10-2007, 02:23 AM   #5
Joseph Madden
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Re: MMA loses a fighter...

Actually you may be right Chris. The use of gloves in boxing actually increased the effectiveness of the punches and hence the devastation that occurred. With regards to football, there have been few deaths but certainly some terrible injuries as well as long term disabilities. Mind you, I have had the opportunity to meet a few Canadian MMA champions and the level of "slowing" that has occurred with regards to the head hits they've received tells me that the majority may have a very short "sport" life. Vasquez's age may have also been a factor in his untimely passing.
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Old 12-10-2007, 02:35 AM   #6
Demetrio Cereijo
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Re: MMA loses a fighter...

Quote:
Chris Hein wrote: View Post
I think MMA is safer then boxing or football.
Or aikido:

http://www.aikidojournal.com/article?articleID=8

See table:

http://www.aikidojournal.com/images/...s/injuries.gif
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Old 12-10-2007, 02:39 AM   #7
Aristeia
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Re: MMA loses a fighter...

This is clearly a tragic event.

It is also the very first death in a sanctioned MMA event. It's still safer than football, softball, rugby, motor racing - it's a long list (I'd even hazard a guess that Aikido is on the list). Those who attempt to use this unfortunate event as ammunition for a campaign against MMA are in my opinion ignorant ghouls.

Based on descriptions of the fight no one was quite sure what did the damage - don't be surprised to find out it was a pre existing condition.

MMA will continue to grow and continue to become more mainstream. And the death and serious injury rate will continue to rank it as one of the safest contact sports availible.

"When your only tool is a hammer every problem starts to look like a nail"
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Old 12-10-2007, 02:41 AM   #8
Aristeia
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Re: MMA loses a fighter...

Thanks for confirming my guess there Demetrio.

It's funny, I don't see as much coverage of Aikido in the news media as football and MMA. Is it because they realise it's such a brutal callous pass time?

"When your only tool is a hammer every problem starts to look like a nail"
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Old 12-10-2007, 02:43 AM   #9
Aristeia
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Re: MMA loses a fighter...

Quote:
Joseph Madden wrote: View Post
Actually you may be right Chris. The use of gloves in boxing actually increased the effectiveness of the punches and hence the devastation that occurred.
Standing 8 counts and the inablity to defend strikes by clinching/groundwork also has a significant impact
Quote:
With regards to football, there have been few deaths
Fewer than the 1 in MMA?
Quote:
. Mind you, I have had the opportunity to meet a few Canadian MMA champions and the level of "slowing" that has occurred with regards to the head hits they've received tells me that the majority may have a very short "sport" life.
Really? Which Canadian campions are you referring to?

"When your only tool is a hammer every problem starts to look like a nail"
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Old 12-10-2007, 03:04 AM   #10
Joseph Madden
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Re: MMA loses a fighter...

Jason MacDonald for one. Joe Doerkson for another. You cannot be
punched in the face and head that often, at the age of 30 to 35 without having some kind of impact on your brain. Then again, as my sensei once said "Eventually the inside of your head will look like tofu"
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Old 12-10-2007, 03:14 AM   #11
Joseph Madden
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Re: MMA loses a fighter...

I should point out that there have been a few deaths in unsanctioned fights in the past ten years or so, so I don't know if we can really say that aikido is more dangerous. The examples were only for a ten year period, although there may have been more undisclosed cases of aikido related deaths.
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Old 12-10-2007, 03:15 AM   #12
Aristeia
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Re: MMA loses a fighter...

and no doubt you talked to them for some time to make this statement and also had talked to them before they started training to form your basis of comparison?

"When your only tool is a hammer every problem starts to look like a nail"
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Old 12-10-2007, 03:18 AM   #13
Joseph Madden
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Re: MMA loses a fighter...

True, they may have been slow talkers to begin with. They weren't quite Quarry or Ali, but.....

Last edited by Joseph Madden : 12-10-2007 at 03:21 AM.
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Old 12-10-2007, 03:20 AM   #14
Aristeia
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Re: MMA loses a fighter...

Quote:
Joseph Madden wrote: View Post
I should point out that there have been a few deaths in unsanctioned fights in the past ten years or so, so I don't know if we can really say that aikido is more dangerous. The examples were only for a ten year period, although there may have been more undisclosed cases of aikido related deaths.
I'm pretty sure there has only been one additional death in unsanctioned fights- which seems pretty clear it was due to a pre-existing condition. Feel free to provide evidence to the contrary - but at the moment it still looks like aikido is a bigger killer.

"When your only tool is a hammer every problem starts to look like a nail"
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Old 12-10-2007, 03:25 AM   #15
Joseph Madden
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Re: MMA loses a fighter...

Alright, time to play devil's advocate. If you wanted your sport to be known world wide and have all those kids move from wrestling to MMA, would you want people to know how many fighters have died and/or been permanently injured as a result of a bout. Rules have been put in place for sanctioned fighting to protect the participants, but is it really on the up and up, the way boxing is...ha,ha.
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Old 12-10-2007, 03:29 AM   #16
Aristeia
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Re: MMA loses a fighter...

ok - time to pretend to follow the rules of evidence. Wild supposition and conspiracy theories are not evidence.

If you wanted to get families into the "martial art of peace" would you really want to advertise serious injuries and death? Can we assume by your logic that the aikido death toll is actually much higher?

The MMA community is still relatively plugged into each other via various online sources - when something goes wrong people in the community tend to know about it.

So lets be real here. What you *mean* to say is that at first and uneducated glance MMA looks very dangerous. So lets assume that if the evidence doesn't show that it's dangerous that people must be covering it up, neh?

"When your only tool is a hammer every problem starts to look like a nail"
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Old 12-10-2007, 03:50 AM   #17
Joseph Madden
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Re: MMA loses a fighter...

If we look at the career of Ali, for instance, we know for a fact that he had 20 years in the arena. We know, for a fact, that he had X amount of knockouts and X amount of loses. The average career of an MMA fighter will probably be less than 10 years (probably on average about 5 years). The fights are short and brutal. It is open handed. They take a certain amount of punches straight to the head and face. Do you really believe that the men in the ring at this period of time are not suffering life-altering injuries? Why not compare it to volleyball or ping pong, those two other dangerous sports? The average aikidoka has a lifetime at the dojo in most cases. Your comparing apples and oranges.
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Old 12-10-2007, 03:56 AM   #18
Aristeia
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Re: MMA loses a fighter...

And you clearly have no idea what you're talking about. The fights are short - that doesn't make them brutal. There is much less head trauma than something like boxing - due to the ability to clinch and the lack of standing 8s. Guys like Randy Couture show that you can go a long time in the sport and if you listen to the *vast* majority of top MMAers they are intelligent articulate individuals.

so what was your point again?

Incidentally when it comes to comparing with aikido - if you really want to compare apples with apples you shouldn't just be looking at an MMAers fighting career - because most don't stop training after they retire, they continue to coach and mentor and train - potentially for a lifetime just like Aikido.

It seems to me you are inventing evidence to support your belief rather than basing your belief on existing evidence.

Last edited by Aristeia : 12-10-2007 at 04:01 AM.

"When your only tool is a hammer every problem starts to look like a nail"
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Old 12-10-2007, 06:03 AM   #19
Kevin Leavitt
 
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Re: MMA loses a fighter...

It is too bad we cannot look at the statistics of the number of lives martial sports and boxing has saved!

The number of kids it has taken off the street, kept out of gangs, and given meaning and purpose to far outweighs the damage it has done or is doing.

Read some of the biographies of the guys that are into the sport. Almost all of them will admit that they were headed for trouble or jail at some point.

The sports are not recruiting prep school boys.

Oh then again, maybe we should stop these barbaric sports because they represent a social inequity and force poor inner city kids to fight!

It is always unfortunate that someone dies in any sport.

I think though that the good the sanctioned fighting brings to the table far outweighs the bad!

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Old 12-10-2007, 06:28 AM   #20
Joseph Madden
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Re: MMA loses a fighter...

Excellent points Kevin.

Michael,
With regards to aikido being the bigger killer, there is no evidence
in the cases I've read that shows that aikido was the killer. Every one of these cases where death or dysfunction occurred took place in the summertime. Knowing the pathology of head trauma as well as heat stroke, my belief is that some the of injuries cited where probably due to heat stroke from over exertion. There is also no evidence that aikido was the causal factor in their deaths. All of these young students could possibly have mitigating factors in their deaths as Sam Vasquez possibly had. Since subdural hematomas can often linger for periods of weeks or even years, aikido may have been a trigger for a bullet ready to be fired, but certainly not the exact cause of death. Both of these "arts", if we can use that term,
are violent. Arguing over which one is the more violent seems to be moot. They both involve blood, sweat, broken bones and occasionally death.
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Old 12-10-2007, 06:45 AM   #21
Ketsan
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Re: MMA loses a fighter...

Society is always more worried about people dying in sanctioned fights than it is of the greater number of people who die in street brawls and attacks. No doubt on the same night the fight was on someone got stabbed or shot and their death wont recieve one word of media coverage.
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Old 12-10-2007, 06:59 AM   #22
Pierre Kewcharoen
 
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Re: MMA loses a fighter...

More people have died from playing soccer than mma.
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Old 12-10-2007, 07:09 AM   #23
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Re: MMA loses a fighter...

Quote:
Joseph Madden wrote: View Post
The use of gloves in boxing actually increased the effectiveness of the punches and hence the devastation that occurred.
Are you saying getting hit with a bare fist is less damaging to the recipient then getting hit with a gloved fist?

If I took a hammer and hit you on the side of the head, then took the same hammer and put a boxing glove on it and hit you on the side of the head, which would do the most damage?

David

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Old 12-10-2007, 07:24 AM   #24
Pierre Kewcharoen
 
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Re: MMA loses a fighter...

Quote:
David Skaggs wrote: View Post
Are you saying getting hit with a bare fist is less damaging to the recipient then getting hit with a gloved fist?

If I took a hammer and hit you on the side of the head, then took the same hammer and put a boxing glove on it and hit you on the side of the head, which would do the most damage?

David
I think he meant that boxing is more dangerous because the sport forces the opponents to stand up, hence forcing the guy to keep taking punches to the head even after he got a concussion. They dont even let you grab the guy. In mma, you can at least protect yourself by grabbing and wrestle to the ground. Also mma allows alternate way of winning instead of trying to ko the guy, you can make him submit.
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Old 12-10-2007, 07:32 AM   #25
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Re: MMA loses a fighter...

Quote:
Pierre Kewcharoen wrote: View Post
I think he meant that boxing is more dangerous because the sport forces the opponents to stand up, hence forcing the guy to keep taking punches to the head even after he got a concussion. They dont even let you grab the guy. In mma, you can at least protect yourself by grabbing and wrestle to the ground. Also mma allows alternate way of winning instead of trying to ko the guy, you can make him submit.
That's not what he said.

Quote:
Joseph Madden wrote: View Post
Actually you may be right Chris. The use of gloves in boxing actually increased the effectiveness of the punches and hence the devastation that occurred.
David

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