According to the Las Vegas Sun Dana White got a little too excited during the last UFC:
“This night almost gave me a heart attack,” White said. “I really went into the back, walked right out of the octagon into my back room, sat down and thought they were going to have to bring a defibrillator back there. I was seriously messed up after the show. I was blown away.”
His excitement was caused apparently by 3 fights in particular during this night: Lesnar’s “comeback” in the main event, Stephan Bonnar’s win against Krzysztof Soszynski by pummeling him into a TKO victory in the second round after taking a serious beating and Chris Leben and Yoshihiro Akiyama’s battle of the punch drunks. All of these fights featured prolonged exchanges in which fighters would be hitting each other’s heads without taking much evasive action. As exciting it must have been for Dana and his bottomline as sobering must have been to watch from a different perspective: If it was a record for Dana is was also a record for any neurologist counting punches and kicks to each fighter’s brains.
A classic study carried out with 69 active football players and 37 former members of the Norwegian national football team determined that 30% of the former players complained of permanent problems such as headache, dizziness, irritability, neck pain, and impaired memory. In addition, 35% of the active players and 32% of the former players displayed abnormal EEGs, compared with about 12% of matched control individuals.
When the former players were subjected to cerebral computed tomography (CT) and a neuropsychological examination, a full one-third of the athletes were found to have central cerebral atrophy (wasting of the central region of the brain), and 81% displayed at least some signs of neuropsychological impairment. Many of these problems were believed to be linked to concussions suffered by the players during their football careers.
Since there are no studies regarding longterm brain damage in MMA, this Football study is all we have. There is no reason to believe that a direct kick or punch against the skull will be any less damaging than playing Football and the examples of Leben or Bonar leading with their heads taking shoot after shoot or Lesnar going fetal and using his head as a means to tire out his opponent are pretty graphic. Most people don’t realize that our brains are as soft as butter while the inner skull is lined with sharp ridges and edges. Only because these fighter’s brains are missing the ability to flip the switch does not mean that their brains got battered around any less.
To think that no brain injury occurred that night would be ignorant and I hope that West Coast BJJ & MMA students training towards competing in MMA do NOT take these fights as examples of how to become a champion. These fighters will have to live with the consequences for selling their brain health for a fight purse and may regret this deeply in the future when they discover that a day without dizziness and headaches is a good day and how nice it would be to recognize your own children and grandchildren.
For more information on these topics please visit: http://subtlebraininjury.com/nolossconsciousness.php
Don Whitefield
West Coast BJJ & MMA 