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As a former amateur & professional boxer, former pro kickboxer & a black belt in both kickboxing & Kajukenbo Kempo, I've been around martial arts & combat sports since just shortly after my 13th birthday. I got my start in Isshin Ryu Karate which had a lot of hard contact in sparring but no headshots were allowed. Which toughened me up physically & mentally & more than prepared me for my switch to Tae Kwon Do at 15. Where there was, even more, sparring in class but it was all pitty-pat stuff & I was frequently admonished for being too aggressive & using excessive contact. Even some of the adults didn't like to spar with me. I stuck with TKD for about two years until I failed my red belt test for forgetting an advanced pumsae in the middle of my test which embarrassed me & made me realize that I no longer wanted to be wasting my time on TKD or other TMA. So, I found a local boxing gym & it changed my life.
I learned the fundamentals quickly & was put into hard sparring pretty quickly but by then I was 17 & I although I had to get rid of a lot of bad habits first I had my first amateur fight after only two months in the gym. I won but it was a war & if I'd had my druthers I'd have waited another month or two before fighting but that's how it was done back then. The thought was that you only got better by fighting as often as possible whether it was sparring in the gym or fighting in the arena.
So, after close to 50 amateur fights I was ready to turn pro because I wasn't your classic amateur boxer looking to outpoint my opponent. I was a walk-in banger & a brawler which meant that I wasn't going to win any major amateur tournaments so since I fought like a pro I turned pro. And it was while doing so that I switched my training to a different gym. One with a lot more pros in it & it was a hybrid boxing/kickboxing gym so while preparing for my pro boxing bouts I also cross-trained in kickboxing & within a year I earned my black belt.
I also learned different methods of training as well. That conditioned just as well as hard sparring did but put fewer miles on the odometer. Whereas as an amateur I might do four to six rounds of hard sparring a day at my new gym with my new trainers I'd spar sometimes eight or ten rounds every other day but it would all be bodywork only. Then the following week we'd add just jabs to it. No power shots except to the body. Until it was closer to fight time then we'd full-on spar but for only four rounds at a time. Which went against the grain of accepted practice at the time but it worked well for me.
Of course, later on in my career, I negated a lot of that when I was hired as a sparring partner for champions & top contenders who sparred full-on much more often & at much more intense levels but it was my job so I had to do what I had to do. But IMO that's where most of the damage that I absorbed occurred was during those training camps.
But I'd do it all over again if I could with the exception that I might have fought a bit more defensively at times rather than getting into exchanges as often as I did.
So, with all this experience what would I tell @Irresponsible Dad regarding his son?
Pretty much what many of the others have suggested thus far. To go easy on the amount of hard sparring that he does at this age. There's no reason for him to be taking any unnecessary shots. So, if you see that he'd stunned or hurt stop the sparring/fight & let him recover from it & learn from it. There's always a next time. Especially at his age.
Plus I'd switch things up to grappling for a while so he doesn't get burned out on striking. Balance things out.
I'd definitely give him some amateur boxing experience if he plans to pursue MMA at a high level but I wouldn't put him in the ring until he 15 or 16 years old.
great advice! Thank you so much. He will read this for sure. Good luck brother!