Boxing should not be considered as a sport
...barbaric spectacle. Comparisons with sports involving a degree of physical risk are misleading. In any sport, if you deliberately cause an injury to your opponent, you are usually disqualified; in boxing the sole purpose of the participants is to hurt each other. The arguments that other contact sports such as rugby are more dangerous are baseless, because in boxing it is the injuries that are the object of the activity. Cuts and bruises are the most common boxing injuries, and many boxers leave the ring needing stitches to the face and dental work. But, as boxing involves powerful people hitting each other repeatedly, often around the head, there are other risks - most serious of all being permanent severe brain damage. While other injuries repair relatively easily, brain tissue, once damaged, remains damaged. The symptoms of such brain damage - commonly known as being "punch drunk" - include slurred speech, slow reactions and even occasional blackouts. Imagine the boxer's nose and the repeated fractures of the nose and transpose that to what's going on inside the brain. The boxer can recover from the broken nose but no...