I just watched a clip and the guys head is almost turned 180° while being choked out. How has noone had their neck accidently broken or died from a full strength kick to the temple?
These guys are in peak shape and ridiculously strong pound for pound…how do they not accidently kill their opponent more often? You see all the time people dying from far less intense contact on a football field or so forth from hits.
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Sometimes they do die
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatalities_in_mixed_martial_arts_contests
That said, certian types of moves are banned to help minimize risks and doctors are on hand to treat injuries.
People do die and get seriously injured in MMA every year. The number of people competing in MMA is just orders of magnitude smaller than most other professional non-combat sports.
Protections like no blows to the back of the head, banning certain chokes, etc acutely limit risk, but nothing limits the risk and consequences of taking blows to the head for a living later in life. These guys sell their soul for this IMO
Moves considered too dangerous or likely to cause permanent injury are banned. The referee is also there to stop fights if they feel a fighter’s safety is in jeopardy. There was a case where a fighter refused to release a choke until his opponent was unconscious even though the referee had stopped the fight. UFC terminated his contract for cause within the hour.
That said, combat sports are inherently dangerous, and you accept it when you sign up.
Thats what the ref is there for
I mean there are some rules, most of them are contested, but no throwing elbows or making a 90 degree angle with your arm (with your first up) and throwing your elbow down on someone’s head is also against the rules and an automatic DQ. Hands and feet have some fat and muscle blocking impact, elbow strikes are just nailing someone with your bone so that’s dangerous
But other than that, its not regular people like you or me going in the octogon. These guys not only practice hitting but getting hit. Micro fractures end up making bones stronger when they heal, these dudes know how to hold their jaws so their head doesn’t reverberate when they get hit, and most importantly they know how to position their head. A hit the temple is 10x worse than a hit an inch away from your temple.
But back to my first point, There would be a LOT more deaths if refs weren’t totally trained on when to call a fight off. Once a guy gets groggy and too messed up to properly defend his temples or face OR if the fighter is already showing minute signs of cranial trauma, the fight is called off right away
1: there are lots and lots of moves that are illegal due to their safety risk. Among them are head-kicks to a grounded opponent, strikes to the back of the head, certain takedowns where you drop someone head-first, strikes directly to the spinal column etc.
2: referees (at least in the major promotions) have a lot of training to ensure they know how and when to stop a fight. The main priority is to stop a fight when a fighter becomes defenseless.
3: mandatory medical exams to make sure the fighters are sufficiently healthy to fight.
Despite all this, there have been fatalities in MMA. Humans are surprisingly resilient to physical trauma. Fatalities are actually a lot more common in boxing. I don’t believe a major promotion has ever had a fighter die in the cage or directly as a result from an in-fight injury. The real danger is under-prepared referees and mismatched fights in lower promotions.
Combat sports are inherently dangerous. You can absolutely be killed doing them if your opponent is out of control or simply by accident. Only the rules and the ref are there to prevent purposely dangerous fighting.
People have been dying in combat sports since their inception.
The answer on how to minimize that risk is certain moves/strikes are banned and they have referees to step in and stop fights if someone is taking too much damage.
TLDR: they’re trained to fight, they’re better at it than most people at it. Because they’re so highly skilled, the risk is lower than if you and I went into the ring.
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People do die, in a lot of sports, for a lot of different reasons, including in fighting events.
The pro fighters are the best of the best, they aren’t trained to kill, they’re trained to fight in the UFC or other MMA official events. Rules like the back of the head punch keep the highest risk things at bay and keep fighters motivated to win in ways that don’t pose a risk level that is unmanageable.
When I say trained to fight, I don’t just mean inflict damage, I mean to inflict it in a safer way, they are also trained to take damage. If I was in a fight I’d much rather get knocked out by a pro fighter than leave it up to chance against someone at my level where one of us is more likely to make a fatal mistake and kill the other.
two football players running full speed at each other on a field is extremely high impact, all the weird angles, getting blindsided, more hits and injuries in a season etc
Not enough protections sometimes…look at what Brendan schaub has become.
Practice.
Training.
Referees.
Rules.
And some luck.
People do get hurt or killed.
I’ve been training combat sports for a couple decades. These guys are phenomenally conditioned in ways that help them take blows that untrained people couldn’t.
The only MMA fight I ever attended was stopped for an hour because a fighter had a serious head/neck injury and had to be taken to a hospital.
Never heard anything about his injuries, but it was clearly very serious
Proper defense. Fighters even when they get hit hard, they’re quick enough to recognize it coming and are often moving away from the strike so that takes away some of the power. A lot of fighters take hard shots but don’t go down and this is mostly how and is technically what having a great chin is…it’s not so much your ability to absorb hits but being able to see it coming and react. Fighters who are older and have poor reaction times tend to get dropped easier for this reason.
Not a lot. There are doctors that evaluate the fighters during the fight and can call a stoppage at any time.
Hell, the UFC is too cheap to even implement gloves that prevent eye pokes even though the gloves exist.
We do need to address one big misconception in your post
> You see all the time people dying from far less intense contact on a football field or so forth from hits.
This is just untrue. In the entire history of American football, there has only been 9 deaths directly related to game or practice matches. This is a very small number, considering we are looking at over 70 years of games.
Furthermore, of these 9 deaths, some of them would not have happened with today’s safety measures.
One death was because someone broke their neck during a game and there was no ambulance on-site because it was the 1960’s. It took 30 minutes for one to arrive, which resulted in his death.
Another in the 1960’s broke his leg during a game but refused surgery at first. Finally, had the surgery but died of infection and complications.
Another had an undiagnosed heart seizure before the game.
Another died of overheating in the 1960’s because the team didn’t have a doctor on staff.
Deaths in American football are incredibly rare.
Rules & Experience.
Experience: Participants train a LOT. Their know their limits, they can intuit their opponents limits, and either one can tap-out.
Rules: Exclude moves that quickly go to, or beyond, such limits.
Of course accidents happen, but that’s essentially it.