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NBC Thinks Connected Gloves and "Bullet Time" Can Make Boxing Cool
New submitter Lashdots writes with this excerpt from a piece at Fast Company about what may be the future of boxing, at least from the perspective of television audiences. "Right now, millennials turn boxing on and they're like, 'Who's winning? I don't get this,'" said Anthony Bailey. The chief technology officer of NBC's Premier Boxing Champions was watching a pair of fighters spar—each wearing sensor-equipped boxing gloves—in preparation for this weekend's fight, the first to be broadcast on NBC's primetime slot (8:30 pm EST) in 30 years. "These guys are real athletes. It's not just two guys going out in the ring trying to beat the crap out of each other. It's two guys that actually have strategy. They're actually thinking."
In a makeshift television studio here last month, Bailey, a team of engineers, and some of boxing's heaviest hitters were working to make that thinking a little more visible—in HD, with video-game-like graphics and Matrix-like camera angles. It's one part of an ambitious multimillion-dollar effort by NBC and some of boxing's biggest names to gain an edge against popular competitors like mixed martial arts, and to draw in younger, more casual audiences who may never have thought about watching before.
In a makeshift television studio here last month, Bailey, a team of engineers, and some of boxing's heaviest hitters were working to make that thinking a little more visible—in HD, with video-game-like graphics and Matrix-like camera angles. It's one part of an ambitious multimillion-dollar effort by NBC and some of boxing's biggest names to gain an edge against popular competitors like mixed martial arts, and to draw in younger, more casual audiences who may never have thought about watching before.
Boxing has long been associated with a form of CTE called 'Dementia Pugilistica' (literally Boxer's Dementia), which manifests as Parkinsonism (and Dementia).
The etiology of 'Normal' Parkinsons and Dementia Pugilistica are almost certainly different, but at many stages they look similar enough that it's probably fair to say that boxing does essentially cause Parkinsons.
I must say that your statements are pure BS. Fighting in MMA causes just as much if not more brain injury, as (pure) boxing.
Right now, almost every veteran MMA fighter suffers from symptoms of brain injury. Here's a partial list:
Jens Pulver
Gabriel Gonzaga
Mirko Filipovic
Frank Trigg
Chuck Liddell
Mark Munoz
Antonio Silva
Wanderlei Silva
Alistair Overeem
Phil Baroni
Gary Goodridge
Andrei Arlovski
Josh Koscheck
Cheick Kongo
and the list goes on. And it doesn't even include the journeymen that get punched in the head for a $300 payout on regional circuits, as a matter of fact for their whole careers.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
Of course there is, when there's a thousand football players for every MMA fighter. You can find football programs at most colleges and high schools in the U.S. - can you name a school that has one for MMA?
Sort of. It's called wrestling and yes, lots of schools have wrestling programs. A huge percentage (probably the majority) of MMA fighters these days got much of their early training in wrestling and wrestling is a vital skill in MMA. Serious long term injuries are actually rather rare in wrestling and even MMA despite the very physical nature of the sports. I've been a wrestler and coach of wrestling for over 30 years and I can show you the injury statistics for that sport. I've seen similar statistics for MMA. It's far safer than you might guess as a casual observer. Certainly far safer than football on both an absolute and per-capita basis. That's not to imply there are no dangers or that serious injuries cannot result, just that it's much safer than you might think.
The reason there are surprising few long term injuries in MMA (and wrestling) is two-fold. 1) the rules are designed such that techniques likely to result in severe injury are illegal. 2) There is one official for two contestants and he is standing just a few feet away and is empowered to stop the match if an injury seems likely. That makes a HUGE difference. The sports are physical and sure there are plenty of bumps and bruises but stuff like broken limbs or torn ligaments simply don't happen often because the match gets stopped most of the time before that becomes possible. In football that isn't the case. In football the rules are designed such that certain injuries (particularly knee injuries and concussions) are ludicrously routine. Go into any sports medicine clinic and I can almost guarantee the majority of the patients there will be football players with serious knee injuries.