The Quiet Man

Probably the video most of you watched today knowing it would lead to someone's death was the Castile video; here's one from the world of sport. It's worth watching even knowing that one of the fighters is going to die because it shows the fair play and sportsmanship of the boxer who won. He wasn't there to hurt or kill his opponent: he is meticulously fair, stopping and walking away at many points in order to give his opponent time to recover. He fights exactly like a gentleman.



The fight lasts a little more than five minutes, short for a boxing match. "The sweet science" is no joke, in spite of its rules governing fair play, and the reputation of more permissive sports like Kung Fu and MMA. Even with padded gloves, even with careful adherence to the rules, it's a very serious matter.

4 comments:

douglas said...

Despite padded gloves? The gloves make it easier to continue to inflict damage- they protect your hands more than they protect your opponent's head. Also, boxing uses heavier gloves (and 15 ft of wrap and 9-11 ft of tape), and we all know what adding weight to your hands does to the power of your punches. There have been calls to reduce the padding in gloves to limit the damage one can inflict to an opponent's head.

Grim said...

Some make the same point about football pads: that they increase the likelihood of injuries, as it turns out. The science looks reasonable on that claim, but so far I haven't seen any serious moves to shift back to leather caps and bare knuckles.

douglas said...

Now having watched the video, it's interesting. First, before I even started the video, I took a guess as to which fighter would be the victim. I decided on Hague based mostly on the arrangement of and structure around the eyes. So I was right. Lucky perhaps, but I firmly believe that one day we'll have evidence that some brains/heads are more prone to concussion damage than others. Of course, going into a fight with multiple concussions in the last 22 months isn't helpful at all.

I noticed a lot of the commenters at Youtube saying they thought the ref blew it. I didn't think so. Knowing what happened before watching, I was basically looking for something to indicate it was time to step in, and I didn't see it- close a bunch of times, but he'd keep moving, keep his hands up, land a punch. I just didn't see a basis for stopping it. I would agree the 3-knockdown rule would have been a really good idea here.

Grim said...

I wouldn't second-guess the ref. Knowing as we do that the guy was dying, it's not hard to see the point at which the ref should have called it; but the ref didn't know that.

But I'm like you: when he went down the third time, I wanted it called. And you know, that wasn't the point when I think it was fatal. That came later.