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Comment by ryanwaggoner | Hacker News Reader

I've heard the same thing is true of boxing vs. MMA fights; because boxers wear heavily padded gloves, they end up throwing and receiving many (less powerful) blows in a fight because it doesn't hurt your hand to hit someone in those gloves. But MMA fighters wear minimal hand protection, which results in fewer (more powerful) blows. Surprisingly, it turns out that this may be healthier in the long run.

This also reminds me of the whole "modern running shoe" vs. barefoot approach. Interesting what our bodies are optimized for.

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".. boxers wear heavily padded gloves, they end up throwing and receiving many (less powerful) blows in a fight because it doesn't hurt your hand to hit someone in those gloves."

No. While it is true that their hands are injured less, the gloves allow them to deliver _more_ _powerful_ blows. The use of gloves brought brain injury to boxing in a big way.

In the days preceding use of gloves, knockouts and concussions were less frequent, fights lasted much longer and required considerable endurance as well as fighting skill.

The padding of gloves in itself does not make blows to the head harder, it makes them less painful for the competitor delivering them, and that leads to harder blows. Hit someone hard on the head with a bare fist, and chances are that you break your hand. Because of that, before gloves came into use, boxers would go for body blows, rather than blows to the head.

Bare-knuckle boxing is also a far bloodier affair than Marquess of Queensberry rules, even though it is much safer when it comes to brain injuries. I can imagine mainstream contemporary crowds being too squeamish to watch a real bare-knuckle match.

I think there are a lot or reasons that MMA is probably safer. These include

- Flash KO's, leading to fast stoppages in MMA as opposed to standing counts in Boxing

- Less emphasis on head strikes and more emphasis on wrestling/control/submissions in MMA. Even cuts can stop the fight.

- Less rounds in MMA

- Different culture. More 'college boy' wrestling than 'street kid' boxing.

If you had boxing rules with MMA gloves you'd probably have more cuts but still a lot of brain damage.

They didn't have any gloves in the earliest incarnations of MMA, and fighters would almost never hit each other in the head. The thin MMA gloves they have now do very little to protect the recipient of a blow, but a great deal to protect the knuckles of the striker from the effects of punching someone in the head. The crowds want to see a little bit of that blood.

mma gloves are there to protect the puncher's knuckles and not the punchee's face

The real killer is sparring, you don't go as hard but you do it a lot more than you fight. MMA fighters usually spar with boxing gloves, but since striking is only one part of MMA they can't afford to spend as much time training it as boxers.

All your repliers seem to disagree, but I believe you're right. When I started doing MMA I read a number of academic papers, which I believe are the source of what you're saying above. (Sadly I don't have citations, it was years ago).

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