[wil421]

Years go UFC advocates would state it was much safer than boxing because you’d get knocked out easier and wouldn’t go round after round getting repeatedly knocked in the head. Not sure if the argument was valid but time will tell.

[Igelau]

> you’d get knocked out easier

A knockout in MMA includes a much wider category of ways to lose, e.g. tapping out from an arm-bar and conceding to your opponent counts as a knockout.

Also, boxing has the big gloves that let you all but punch someone's head off, and "below the belt" is set way too high, effectively eliminating body punches from the sport.

[nradov]

UFC/MMA fights often involve a lot of grappling and kicks to the lower body, which aren't allowed in boxing. All else being equal a boxing match tends to contain a lot more head strikes. But obviously neither sport is particularly "safe".

[dyingkneepad]

The early Vale Tudo/MMA/UFC legends are just now starting to get at the age they can show the symptoms. I guess the next decade will be interesting in terms of showing the results.

You already have people like Wanderlei Silva openly talking about their symptoms, and it's clearly this guy has got something (he admits so!). On the other hand, the type of crazy stuff Wand did is not what people do these days. Wand believed being knocked out would make you more resistant to knockouts! If you have a few spare years to learn Portuguese I highly recommend watching the many interviews he has on Youtube where he talks about this.

[blunte]

What did they say about being kicked in the head multiple times?

Being hit by a car is not so bad as being hit by a bus. You still want neither.

[mastazi]

The difference between boxing and MMA is not just punches vs kicks.

For example, the two rulesets are different with regards to how a fight ends. In MMA there is no count if you get knocked down, you either show that you can defend yourself immediately after being dropped, or the referee will end the fight declaring a TKO. In boxing this doesn't normally happen, after a knock down the referee starts counting so you have a few seconds to "recover", and often you have to be knocked down more than once before the referee declares a TKO.

There is also a difference with regards to punches specifically, due to 4oz gloves being used in MMA (they allow grappling but they have less padding than the gloves used in boxing). Is it more damaging being punched once with little padding, or a few times with more padding? I've seen arguments one way or the other and since I'm not a doctor I don't know which ones are correct.

Anecdotally, Olympic boxing removed head protection gear a few years ago because they conducted a study where they observed that not wearing headgear, counter intuitively, resulted in fewer injuries[1].

I know nothing about medical topics but I'm curious and would like to read more studies about brain damage in combat sports.

[1] https://www.wired.com/2016/08/olympic-boxers-arent-wearing-h...

[spywaregorilla]

I suspect being kicked in the head once is going to do a lot more damage than being punched 20 times personally.

[yonaguska]

It's also a lot less likely that you'll get kicked in the head though. Successfully getting a head kick off on someone is hard, especially when they are allowed to tackle and grapple.

Doubly so since you can't do various strikes against someone's head once they have three points of contact with the ground. No knees or kicks to the head when down like the early UFC days.

[mastazi]

My intuition is that many less powerful strikes are worse for your health than one very powerful one. But I'm not a doctor and that's just a wild guess. I would like to see some studies about this.

[pessimizer]

I think the ratio of kicks to the head in the mean MMA bout and punches to the head in the mean boxing match is a lot more than 1:20; probably closer to 1:500.

[diehunde]

There were similar arguments in boxing regarding the use of headgear[1].

[1] https://www.wired.com/2016/08/olympic-boxers-arent-wearing-h...

[pessimizer]

And in cigarette smoking regarding the use of filters.