Filip Bondy has an article in the New York Daily News calling for NYC to ban boxing. It’s a funny venue for such a fierce op-ed because it would never have been published while that paper’s legendary boxing writer Bill Gallo was alive. For all his good qualities, Gallo was an apologist for boxing while railing angrily against against MMA. seemingly because his career was invested in the former and not the latter. MMA is just as bad as boxing but no worse, really. I think anyone honest would be for allowing both or banning both.

While I don’t personally support either, I’m really not for prohibiting anything consenting adults want to do. But I don’t believe children should be permitted to box, which would obviously further doom a sport in steep decline. From Bondy:

“Boxing has seen its time, and thank goodness that primitive era is done. In a more enlightened age now, we are concerned with concussions and other head injuries in sports. It is therefore absurd to sanction a competition in which the chief aim is to knock the opponent into unconsciousness. Yes, car racing is dangerous, but intent matters. Yes, a few rare fighters make a fortune from boxing, but they pay a huge price. The vast majority of professional boxers are just poor, desperate minorities getting their heads ripped apart internally, synapse by synapse.

It is hypocritical for the state to allow these events to continue while banning MMA, which at least offers the possibility of victory by submission, a more humane finish. Whenever a boxer gives up, like Sonny Liston or Roberto Duran, he is mercilessly mocked for the rest of his career.

I have no doubt that in my grandson’s lifetime, professional boxing will be banished in most parts of America, as it has been, on and off, in several other countries.”