Mixed Martial Arts Fighting

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WOW.Canadian Doctors Call For A Ban On MMA After Fighter Undergoes Emergency Brain Surgery Posted By: Charttopper Comments(0)
According to the CBC News, Physicians belonging to the British Columbia Medical Association in Canada, are calling for a provincial ban on the sport of mixed martial arts after an amateur fighter underwent emergency brain surgery following an event last weekend in Kamloops, British Columbia.

Normally there are always various groups calling for a ban on the sport, or simply blocking legislation that would allow the sport, such as in New York.

I felt this was significant enough to write about for several reasons, but I’ll provide some more background on what apparently last weekend.

Last weekend a “So You Wanna Fight?” event was held in Kamloops, allowing amateur fighters to compete in a one night tournament style event. The winner, a Mike Boyer, fought three times during the evening, and received $500 for his efforts.

The “So You Wanna Fight?” promotion had medical staff check each fighter out after each bout, but according to Boyer, staff focused less and less on his injuries after each victory. After the event, Boyer started getting a bad headache, with nausea and vomiting, and eventually blacked out. He was rushed to a nearby hospital and had to undergo emergency brain surgery to repair bleeding of the brain.

“The first fight they checked my eyes, just kind of sat there with me and then let me go,” he said. “And then the second one everyone was coming up congratulating me, so they didn’t even really look at me. They were just like, ‘Oh yeah, you’re fine… ‘”

“I just started getting a really bad headache, like it was out of the ordinary — a lot of pressure on my head, I started feeling really woozy and then it wouldn’t go away … it got worse and worse, and then I threw up.”

Boyer eventually blacked out, and was rushed to hospital by paramedics.

“I was told that I had severe bleeding on the brain and that they’d have to go in and drill to relieve the pressure. I was under for six hours,” Boyer said. “I have like 70 staples in the side of my head.”

Mixed martial arts in British Columbia is not regulated by a single organization like it is in the Province of Ontario, or like it is in Nevada with the Nevada State Athletic Commission. Cities, Tribal commissions (such as the River Cree Combative Sports Commission which oversaw past MFC events near Edmonton, Alberta), and other various organizations govern the sport in that Province.

Now to get to my rant.

It’s these poorly led events governed by these small commissions that give the sport of mixed martial arts a bad name.

As we’ve already seen recently with the whole Kim Couture incident with the Calgary Combative Sports Commission, having a properly run organization goes along way for credibility and fighter safety (to recap, Couture was choked unconscious at an AX Combat 1 event earlier this month, with the submission being held for a good ten count while the referee looked on. Afterwards the referee was not disciplined for his failure to protect Couture, and in fact Couture was not even medically cleared to fight at the event due to a previous medical suspension from the New Jersey State Athletic Commission, which the Calgary commission apparently ignored).

Also, concerning an issue I have with these small commissions, is the poor quality of judging provided for events these organizations oversee. Anyone who watched UFC 131: Dos Santos vs. Carwin will remember the entirely sh*t scoring by the commissions judges at the Vancouver event. Mark Munoz vs. Demian Maia (29–28, 29–28, 30–27) and Kenny Florian vs. Diego Nunes (29–28, 29–28, 30–27)? What judge scored each bout a 30-27 in favor of Munoz and Florian, after their opponents clearly took one round in each of those fights.

Allowing amateur’s to fight three times in one night (I haven’t found the exact information on the rules but I believe participants were fighting 2 rounds of three minutes for each bout) is ridiculous. Even UFC President Dana White did away with amateur fights on the Strikeforce Challengers cards after Zuffa’s purchase of the formal rival.

From what Mr. Boyer has spoken about his post fight medical examinations, it appears that the proper staff were not on hand and/or obviously not performing their job properly. Allowing any amateur to step inside the cage/ring without a pre-fight screening is dangerous enough, but not following matches up with proper medical screening can be fatal, especially in an amateur who may not know how to recognize an injury.

To further my point on how damaging small promotions like this can be for the sport of mixed martial arts, it appears as if the website for the “So You Wanna Fight?” promotion (http://www.soyouwannafight.com/), as well as their Facebook page, have both been taken down. It would seem that despite organizer and promoter Don Arnott’s recent comments defending his promotion, he has decided to hide rather than face his critics.

“In 20 years and over 3,000 matches, have you ever heard of negative thing after any event, where there’s been somebody hurt or it’s been bad? There hasn’t been. There’s been no bad publicity, there’s been no negativism on, it’s never happened.”

Now the B.C. Medical Association is calling for an outright ban on the sport, which really doesn’t effect most of us but it does effect the future plans of the Ultimate Fighting Championship, who have already held two events in the City of Vancouver in the past.

In the article the BCMA’s president, Dr. Nasir Jetha, does call for stronger legislation, which I can agree with following this poor example, but calls for an outright ban on the sport. This only showcases the need to improve public education of the sport of mixed martial arts in order to prevent these knee-jerk reactions from public figures.

Hopefully this incident provides more positive influences than negative ones.