CNN
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Simiso Buthelezi, Miracle Amaeze and Luis Quiñones are some of the talented boxers who have died this year as they pursued their sporting careers and chased dreams of world titles.
It’s an accepted risk of the profession. A database first compiled by anti-boxing activist Manuel Velazquez and updated in the Electronic Journal of Martial Arts and Sciences estimated 1,604 boxers died as a direct result of injuries sustained in the ring between 1890 and 2011 – an average of 13 deaths a year.
That’s a shocking statistic for a professional sport, but perhaps not altogether that surprising. As Stephanie Alessi-LaRosa, director of Hartford Healthcare’s sports neurology program, points out, it’s a boxer’s objective in a fight “to neurologically impair the opponent.”
The NFL and soccer are two notable sports grappling with the implications of concussion, but boxing even more so.
The acute concussions suffered by fighters when they are hit on the head are explained by Alessi-LaRosa as a “metabolic crisis” where a “functional disturbance of the brain” takes place.
The consequences of continuous hits to the head can be catastrophic.
Earlier this year, South African lightweight boxer Buthelezi appeared to turn away from his opponent and fight in the direction of an empty corner of the ring in the middle of a fight.
The referee stopped the fight immediately before Buthelezi was rushed to hospital. The South African boxer died days later.
Boxing has taken many strides to make the sport safer, such as reducing the total number of rounds and the introduction of sports neurologists, according to Alessi-LaRosa.
However, she also thinks more needs to be done, notably educating fighters and parents about the neurological consequences of being a boxer.
“I think if we can mandate – like how the NFL has – these neurotrauma consultants, or, if we can mandate somehow having a neurologist at every boxing – professional boxing at least – event, I think that would be a huge step,” says Alessi-LaRosa.
The health concerns stretch all the way to the top of boxing.
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