I was able to find a very interesting article this week concerning injuries in mixed martial arts. This study was done “between September 2001 and December 2004 in the state of Nevada” (Journal of Sports Science and Medicine 136).
Over three years this study followed “171 MMA matches involving 220 different fighters” (Journal of Sports Science and Medicine 136). This allowed them to get a good grip on the trends of injuries. What they came to find was that face lacerations were the most common injury over all taking 47.9%, followed by hand injuries, and finally nose injuries. These are all common injuries in any combative sport especially boxing. The surprising fact for me was that there were more MMA injuries than boxing injuries. I had always been under the impression that MMA was in fact safer than boxing, but MMA shows 28.6 injuries per 100 fights while boxing sits at 17.1 injuries per 100 fights. (Journal of Sports Science and Medicine 140)
What the authors came to find on the positive side is that during the study MMA showed no major injuries such as traumatic brain injury. These injuries however are more prevelant in sports such as boxing and kickboxing. With knockout rates much lower in MMA than in boxing, this makes sense.
In all “MMA events must continue to be properly supervised by trained referees and ringside physicians, and the rules implemented… must be strictly enforced” (Journal of Sports Science and Medicine 141). If these rules are followed in the years to come there should be little to no worry of significant injuries occurring in mixed martial arts.
That's pretty amazing that there were no traumatic brain injuries in any of the fights during the study--you would think there would be some major ones, especially during knockouts. Interesting post.
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