Jeanette Zacarias Zapata, 18 years old, died shortly after being knocked out in a professional fight. Patrick Day, aged 27, died after being knockout, he was the fourth death in 2019 from injuries in the boxing ring. It is estimated that between 1890 and 2011, 1,604 boxers have died from injures sustained in the boxing ring, that works out at an average of 13 deaths a year from injuries sustained in a violent assault in the boxing ring.
How can it be legal to train hard so as to be able to hit your opponent as hard as possible as often as you can in the hope of making them unconscious? How can this be called a “sport”, when the aim is to incapacitate your opponent as fast as you possible can? Invariably it is kids from poor backgrounds that see it as one way to get rich. It would be impossible to ban this barbaric activity, the only way to see it die would be to starve it of money, tax it out of existence, so that it is not worth all the hard training. If you indulged in this activity without putting the words amateur or professional in front of it, and without turning into a money making enterprise, you would be charged with assault or murder.
This capitalist system where money is your key to quality of life, desperate people will do desperate things. The opportunity to get rich quick can lure people into very dangerous situations and boxing is one very dangerous activity, but it is the promoters and the sports media that make all the really big bucks, but they don’t get punched to death.
