How Dangerous Is MMA?

A Johns Hopkins study from the March 2008 British Journal of Sports Medicine looked at the 635 sanctioned MMA fights in Nevada from March 2002 to September 2007 and found that while 23.6 percent of fighters sustained some kind of injury, the majority of them consisted of facial lacerations. Cuts can turn fights into drip paintings, but they're rarely serious (a few stitches and you're on the mend, champ). A majority of MMA fights (35.4 percent) ended by submission, whereas only 3.3 percent were decided by knockout. That's less than one third the KO rate in boxing, as measured by another recent study.

"Overall, [MMA] appears to be relatively safe," says Edbert Hsu, one of the doctors behind the study. "But more research is warranted."

Indeed it is. MMA may be more salubrious than all the bloodshed suggests, but that doesn't mean a sport this violent doesn't still contain real peril. "I'd be surprised if we don't see one death every three or four years as we expand the total number of events," says David Watson, one of the Nevada Athletic Commission's top ringside docs.

In the last decade, in fact, the sport has seen three deaths — two in poorly regulated shows outside the country and one in 2007 in Texas. The two fighters who died overseas may have had pre-existing medical conditions they failed to disclose. The Texas fighter died of "complications from blunt trauma to the head with subdural hemorrhage," according to the local medical examiner's office.

Fighters at the greatest risk are those who have sustained a head injury in training. If there's already bleeding inside the skull, even a slight bump can knock a fighter into the great beyond. Sometimes the only indication of a hematoma is a headache. And fighters eager to get in the cage may not reveal symptoms to doctors in their pre-fight screening.

This kind of talk may prevent parents from letting little Johnny near the nice cauliflower-eared man in the neighborhood gym, but one death every three years isn't a bad safety record for most sports. Johnny stands a better chance of dying young if he opts for pro cycling as a career.