Can Boxing Ever Be Made “Safe?”

While boxing can inspire lofty words such as grace, speed, courage, and power, it is, at its most basic level, soft tissue damage, blunt force trauma, subcutaneous hemorrhage, and subdural hematoma. The logical outcome of two trained athletes exchanging precise, deliberate blows is injury—and that more fighters are not maimed from their exertions reflects their remarkable physical conditioning and skill. Even so, as the most hazardous sport in America, boxing corrodes the past, present, and future of its participants simultaneously. In an extended career, the physical punishment from sparring, training, and fighting inevitably leads to damage of one kind or another. Most fighters face a retirement marked by neurological deterioration (including, in the worst-case scenario, CTE) and markedly reduced circumstances. Some of the greatest fighters, despite lucrative ring earnings, wound up living the harrowing posthumous existence triggered by what was once known as pugilistic dementia. A (very) short list of these once-celebrated athletes includes icons such as Muhammad Ali, Joe Louis, Sugar Ray Robinson, and Mickey Walker. And these tragic after-effects exclude the specter of death and incapacitation that looms over every match.