I like the phrase “pointsball boygames.”
As I’ve said elsewhere, there is a reckoning coming for ALL contact sports and pro wrestling and everything related(maybe not the Globetrotters, but that’s about all I can think of that might escape) where we are going to have to ask ourselves “Is it worth it?” Yes, you can make millions of dollars potentially, but is any amount of money worth risking your brain? A lot of people are going to say no. The NFL is extra boned because they actively tried to block research about the effects of football. I personally would suggest you stop supporting them early and be ahead of the curve, but to each their own.
I think the head injury risk from regular old basketball is pretty low.
FIFTEEN BASKETS
Boxing and football probably won’t survive, but I have a feeling pro wrestling will be okay if they manage their talent okay.
I see pro wrestling much more as an opt-in-by-adults kind of activity, sort of like ski-ing or parkour or other action/extreme sports. There is danger, but those going in know the danger, and they chose to do it of their own free will, not because it’s the only way to get educated, or a route out of poverty.
It also has the benefit that winning or losing isn’t strictly correlated to physical effort in relation to the opponent. In football the players punish their opponents, and put themselves through the same punishment, as that’s the only way to get an advantage and win. With pro wrestling, the outcome is decided in advance and the physical exertion is in cooperation with the opponent. Being more violent isn’t in the interests of anyone involved.
Of course, like base jumping and wingsuit flying, there is competition among participants to be ever more extreme in their stunts for their videos and other sponsorship related events. But pro wrestling isn’t an independent or solo activity, so there are avenues for regulation or control that aren’t there for jumping off low buildings or flying close to rock formations.
Still looks pretty brutal at times though.
There absolutely is a form of professional wrestling that CAN largely protect the head, and the occasional concussion will occur but that’s just the risk of athletics. Baseball would be safe but for the occasional wild pitch that ends up hitting someone in the head, as they can pad the walls and very few players get hurt falling into dugouts or such because the players down there will probably catch them. Basketball always has the risk of a player falling wrong on a layup or such where they smash their head on the wooden floor. Soccer has similar risks, but a grass pitch instead of wood will inherently have more give and FIFA can bad headers outright if they want to.
I have a hard time vizualizing a really safe form of hockey. They can ban fighting and they can pad the barricades, but the puck is going to get hard from being on the ice, and it’s going to hurt you if it hits you in the head. Football needs drastic rule changes to become safe, or it will die. Boxing will go away, kickboxing will likely go away, and I think MMA might evolve into more grappling, perhaps something like the old catch wrestling Billy Robinson was trained in where there were pinfalls and submissions.
The thing about pro wrestling is that it’s also more or less a stunt show. Yes, some of the stunts look pretty brutal, and yes, the nature of them does beat up on the body a fair bit, and yes, injuries may happen as a result, but part of the skill of a good wrestler is to make the stunts look more brutal than they actually are.
As far as MMA, it’s not as brutal as boxing in many ways due to its rules. Your typical MMA fight is 3 five minute rounds, or 15 minutes total. A main event or championship fight is 5 five minute rounds, for 25 minutes total. A high level boxing match is 12 3 minute rounds or 36 minutes, total. Also, MMA doesn’t have things like standing 8 counts, 10 counts on knock downs, etc. The MMA ref is very, very quick to stop a fight compared to a boxing ref. Basically, as soon as you look defenseless, the fight is over. Finally, as Hitman mentioned, all the grappling in MMA does allow you to win a fight without having to pummel the crap out of your opponent.
I’m not sure how it will evolve, but I don’t think it’s as brutal as some of the other combat sports it tends to go up against.
Whether or not you are talking about CTE, the fact is that pro wrestlers as a group have a really shitty life expectancy. Those who do manage to stay alive still have some crazy bad health issues. Underwater welding might be safer.
A question: how do life outcomes for pro wrestlers compare to professional stuntmen?
It might partly be a matter of the latter being paid for for fewer stunts.
Yes, there are lots of dangerous jobs, but the frequency at which you partake in the danger is certainly a factor.
Then again, football only plays 16 games a year. It used to be less, but judging by the brains of old timers, that wasn’t much of an improvement.
The concerns about pro wrestler’s deteriorating health and lifespans have actually gotten much better in recent years. The WWE now has a better concussion protocol than the NFL has, and are much more wary about letting wrestlers get back into the ring early (or in some cases, at ALL) if they’ve had a serious concussion or show symptoms of what may be CTE.
Also, a large portion of what caused wrestlers to burn out their bodies so harshly in the past has more to do with how the culture used to be. It was very much like a rock and roll lifestyle, where the wrestlers would always go out drinking and doing drugs, pills, painkillers, etc. after their shows, and while naturally some of that is in response to the pain that they are in after beating themselves up all night, that culture has largely died down in recent years, especially in the WWE.
A lot of the wrestlers have seen what happens when you push yourself too hard for too long in the business, and what happens when you fall into substance abuse, and many of them have gotten smarter about diversifying their talents, getting acting jobs and endorsements and such so that they don’t have to rely on wrestling long after their body has told them it’s time to give it up.
tl;dr: Due to a combination of wrestlers getting smarter thanks to the hindsight of those who have come before, and the abject fear of lawsuits and bad PR that Vince McMahon has, I fully believe there is less risk being a pro wrestler (in WWE) these days vs. being a football player in the NFL.
The wrestlers we most often hear about being tragic and sad in their later years are wrestlers who wrestled for many, many years, often in the range of 15-20 years, but there’s just no way to know. Lou Thesz had a match in his 70s and was by all accounts, perfectly sharp until he passed away. Terry Funk innovated the modern hardcore style of wrestling and took many hard shots to the head, but remains lucid today, even if he is insane to have matches at 73 years old with all the wear and tear on his body. We are seeing wrestlers take better care of themselves now, and the individual promotions are doing right by their wrestlers.
In 1999, Bret Hart suffered a concussion, and then continued to wrestle, suffering more damage to his brain in the process, and he blames that for the stroke he suffered shortly thereafter. Today, if a wrestler suffers a concussion in any of the major promotions, he sits until he can pass some kind of test proving that his brain has sufficiently recovered. Bryan Danielson/Daniel Bryan has been on the shelf for the last few years because he cannot pass a test to Dr. Joseph Maroon’s satisfaction saying that he is healthy.
Also Ice Hockey.
Is the media in Australia writing about CTE in Rugby/Footy?
There are going investigations going on, but not on the scale that football ones seem to be. Rodeos in particular are being looked at. I just listened to a story about someone who was knocked out 30 times in a year (and doesn’t think it’s a big deal).
In the UK a former famous soccer has said his brain should be used for research after he dies.
Research is getting going.