Boxing and brain damage/lowered IQ?

[LZD]

It is very easy to prepare for amateur bouts without doing much heavy sparring. Do lots of light technical. At our level we well benefit the most from that.

Amateur bouts are short-it's highly unlikely you will fight someone who can hit as hard and land as often as an elite.

Elite fighters continuously train against amazing hitters. They need to go hard to prepare themselves. Then they fight 10-12 round against an elite skilled fighter. Don't forget, elite fighters are usually exceptionally good at taking punishment-they're not finished easily and so take more damage.

I think the risk is pretty low. In my last fight I only took one solid shot to the jaw, for example.

Edit: grammar not indicative of cognitive ability-posting from my phone here.

 

[apizur**]

Thanks for this. As an experienced boxer what is your opinion on the rest of this issue?

I've had a left hook cause temporary blindness in my left eye, I've had headaches from impact, lowered consciousness. I couldn't even tell you how many punches I've eaten total.... a thousand??

I still score 130s on IQ tests (the little online ones, I always did since I was a wee boy). My English is better than probably 80% of people you'll run into. I recently took a job that requires technical and critical thinking; I excel at it. All this over 14 years of getting punched in the head.

They have shown more and more studies that the damage you do now will continue to get worse over time. I'm not sure if they factor in things that help your brain like puzzles and playing musical instruments... but that's the physiology of it. It seems like heavy, heavy hits over repeated occasions causes the worst of the damage. Like doing X back to back fri,sat,sun for 5 weekends in a row. I imagine this is why they force athletic suspension after stoppages in professional bouts.

Long story short, listen to your body. If you're showing physical signs of accumulated head trauma... slow your roll until the "punch drunk" effect wears off. My vision returned completely to normal, btw.

 

[00 Buck]

I've never been knocked out, but have taken some punishment back in the day that was kinda pointless and stupid looking back...

The sharp jarring and stinging when hit isn't too bad, but that brain damage over time is freakin' scary to me.

Of course, different people will respond differently. There are plenty of retired boxers who are still healthy.

Depends on how much you like the sport.