There has been much outcry over the recent popularity of so called "reality fighting" such as UFC (the Ultimate fighting Championship), KOTC (Kings of the Cage), Extreme Fighting, Shoot, Pride and Pancrase.

Typical comments from a perspective of ignorance include;

"bloodletting for our amusement"
"brutal and bloodthirsty streetfighting with no rules"
"legalised brawling encouraging violence"

The reality is that modern "extreme" or "reality" fighting is a contact sport with rules to protect competitors and is basically a blend of boxing, kickboxing, wrestling, judo and other martial arts which have been around for a long time, so why the outcry all of a sudden?

Many cynics believe that, as usual, it all comes down to money! In recent years boxing, once one of the most lucrative and popular spectator sports, has been suffering dwindling audiences and poor pay-for-view results. The last thing boxing needed was a serious competitor like the UFC for instance. In fact many boxing pundits lambasted the UFC in the early days convincing many that it was too dangerous and brutal to be licensed - they succeeded in having UFC competitions banned in many US states on this premise.

The reality however is somewhat different, when UFC and other "reality" fighting events are compared to boxing (or any other contact or physical sport like rugby, American Football, horseriding, skiing etc) the results speak for themselves.

Not only has there NEVER been a fatality associated with "reality fighting" there has also never even been a serious crippling or permanent injury to the fighters. It was a serious travesty when the boxing community succeeded originally in having UFC banned on the gounds of safety when you look at the number of deaths and permanent injury to many boxers!

It has been said recently that the reason there has not been a fatal injury (yet) in "reality fighting" competitions, is because of the relatively few competitors when compared to boxers, however this was recently tragically disproved with the first death of a female boxer with a total only 2,200 female boxers registered.

The cumulative blunt trauma injuries caused by repeated punching to the head with competitors wearing heavily padded gloves is without doubt the biggest cause of fatal and permanent injuries to boxers - this simply does not happen in "reality" events as competitors wear either no gloves or very lightly padded gloves which will not allow fighters to punch to the head round after round without hand injury.