Anti-boxing lobby

The Australian Medical Association (AMA) policy

The Australian Medical Association has for the past ten years had a policy position that professional boxing be banned and that amateur boxing be "discouraged". However their stated strategy was to destroy amateur boxing first as a means of achieving a professional ban. Other medical bodies such as the National Health and Medical Research Council and the Public Health Association had issued policies that are basicly carbon copies of the AMA resolution.

In November 1997 a revised policy was announced in Australian Medicine journal. The AMA now says it will lobby for changes in the rules to protect contestants. President Dr Keith Woollard was quoted as saying "we're keen to modify the sport until such time as it is banned". However the actual lobbying activities by the AMA since then have not changed - they are intent on destroying the sport.

The AMA policy begins with the sweeping statement that "all forms of boxing are public demonstrations of interpersonal violence which is unique among sporting activities". So, a rugby tackle isn't interpersonal violence?

The AMA policy quotes another body of self-appointed boxing experts (the National Health and Medical Research Council) in stating that "victory is obtained by inflicting on the opponent such a measure of physical injury that the opponent is unable to continue...". The silvertails who wrote that line have never been to any amateur boxing bouts; most amateur bouts are won on points, not by knockouts.

The anti-boxing lobby

The anti-boxing arguments are an example of a phenomenon which one philosophy writer has called " the hypocrisy of selective concern". The same commentator notes that one of the major causes of death in the USA is un-necessary surgery by doctors (40,000-80,000 avoidable deaths per annum!).

In reality, amateur boxing is less dangerous than many other amateur sports.

The AMA says boxing is dangerous. Whilst amateur boxing certainly entails risks, definitive research (and common sense) shows that amateur boxing is no riskier than many other popular sports including football, horse racing and skydiving.

There are occasional deaths in boxing (though there have been no deaths in Australia asscoiated with amateur boxing). But when a death occurs in boxing, the anti-boxing lobbies talk it up with phrases like "Yet another boxing death" and call for boxing to be banned; but when a death occurs in football or racing, there is no such talk of abolishing the sport. The reaction to sports deaths is extremely selective and loaded; so dead motor racing drivers are praised as fallen heroes, but dead boxers are called victims of a violent, unsafe and barbaric practice "which shouldn't be called a sport"!

Amateur boxing in Australia accounts for negligible injuries, and very few of them are serious. Other amateur sports (especially football) account for massive numbers of injuries (and the social cost thereof). In the state of New South Wales during the twelve-year period to 1996, 49 rugby players suffered permanent paralysis below the neck. (Rotem, T.R., Lawson, J.S., et al Severe Cervical Spinal Cord Injuries related to Rugby Union and League Football in New South Wales, 1984-1996 Medical Journal of Australia, 1998; 168).

To put the risks in perspective, here are some pertinent US figures on sports fatalities:

Fatality rate per 100,000 participants
Horse-racing	128
Sky-diving	123
Hang gliding	55
Mountaineering	51
Scuba diving	11
Motorcycle racing	7
College football	3
Boxing	1. 3

Cited in Cantu, Robert (Editor) Boxing and Medicine. Human Kinetics, Illinois, 1995 (pp xi-xiii)

The "intentional injury" argument

Faced with the fact that boxing is less dangerous than many other sports, the traditional fall-back argument is that the sport intentionally aims to cause concussion and brain injury by blows to the head. Other anti-boxing lobbies repeat this same falsehood.

And it is a falsehood. The aim of amateur boxing is to win points by more skillful punches; concussing your opponent is NOT the aim. You don't need to injure your opponent to win an amateur boxing match, and you don't get extra points for a knockout; read the scoring rules and see for yourself. Most amateur bouts are won on points, not by knockout.

The corollary claim is that most injuries in other sports (especially football) are accidental. Consider rugby; sure some rugby injuries are truly accidental (such as inadvertent collisions), but many of the more serious injuries are a direct outcome of the way the game is played. Tackles are deliberate and injuries (including concussions) are an inevitable consequence. To call the resulting injuries "accidental" whilst calling a boxing injury "deliberate" is irrational and dishonest.

Treating head injuries consistently

In the USA, football leads to 250,000 concussions annually and accounts for 95% of all catastrophic sports injuries*. You don't need to be Einstein to predict that a similar scenario applies in Australia; but has anybody heard the AMA calling for a ban on football?

*Cited in Cantu, Robert (Editor) Boxing and Medicine Human Kinetics, Illinois, 1995 (pp197-198)

Health is not the issue, it's the excuse

The so-called medical arguments against boxing are not based on objective health and safety issues at all, since some other sports are far more dangerous than boxing, yet attract no AMA criticism whatsoever.

Can you imagine the AMA targeting the Australian Rugby League about the safety risks in rugby? Not likely, since the good doctors know they'd be pilloried. But they see boxing as a "soft target" because it's a minority sport, without funding or significant sponsorship, and therefore easy to beat up.

The opening words of the AMA policy ("All forms of boxing are public demonstrations of interpersonal violence ...") expose the AMA's real objection to the sport - they are ideologically opposed to the sport.

The rhetoric about safety and injury is simply a smokescreen for an ideological or personal bias against boxing. Pressure an anti-boxing proponent about their lack of facts, and they'll soon descend to perjorative words like "barbaric" and "violent". It's this emotional reaction that drives their opposition, and their attempts to dress up these emotional responses in pseudo-medical terminology are dishonest and unethical.

It's a safe bet that most of those opposed to boxing have never been to an amateur match. How much easier it is to demonise something when you have never seen it, and never talked to the boxers or their families.

This page was last updated on 02 January 2006