With violence shown regularly on TV, protective parents have a right to be concerned. With all the finger pointing though, it might be helpful to clear up some common misunderstandings about the sport of kickboxing. It is easy to see a combatant that has just been knocked out then to look across the ring at the winner of the match and place blame but there are subtle differences between what has happened during the match and what would happen if this were an act of violence.

What is violence?

First is the fact that for violence to take place one's basic rights must be violated. If you are walking down the street with your head down and someone on roller blades knocks you flat on your back, you are the victim of violence because you have the right to walk and look at your shoes if you like. If by chance you decide to play roller hockey, you will have to accept that skating with your head down will result in heavy checking which is customary for the rules of the game. No matter how much getting checked hurts, you are not being violated. On the other hand, if an opposing player spits on you (not painful at all) you are the victim of violence.

So in order for violence to take place in the kickboxing ring, we need a victim to have his/ her rights violated. Getting punched and kicked, no matter how painful it is, is not enough to do this. Therefore, as intense and risky as the sport of kickboxing is, it simply isn't violent as long as the rules are being followed.

What is aggression?

The second thing to consider is that many look at kickboxing matches and mistake it for aggressive behavior. These viewers are not completely at fault for this misunderstanding since they usually only have their experience to refer to. This experience for the most part doesn't come from gyms and arenas but from the great misinformers, Hollywood and fake-wrestling.

Hollywood movies that are centered around the fight game are simply telling a story. It doesn't matter how inaccurate they are. What is important is that the viewer sees a character struggle, have a great fight scene in the climax (usually for revenge) and then get the girl. How about an example? Rocky comes out of retirement, trains in Siberia (without a sparring partner but that doesn't matter in fiction), fights the big mean Russian who is on steroids (in revenge for the death of Apollo) and in the end his wife and son love him. The average viewer will probably have the sense to know that real fights aren't quite as brutal as the one they just witnessed but with enough examples some may mistakenly associate the kickboxer's motive for being in the ring with something they saw in so many movies, revenge. This could not be further from the truth. Most fighters simply view their opponents as obstacles not enemies.

Comparing fake-wrestling to the fight game is a new experience in confusion. It's like a walk on the twilight zone. For many years they told the public that their buffoonery was real but we all knew the truth. Sure there were believers out there until Vince McMahnon of the WWF went before an athletic commission and argued that he shouldn't have to pay their taxes because his show wasn't a real sport. So in the name of entertainment the fake-wrestling organizations have repeatedly shown the darkest possible side of ring entertainment. The TV ratings soar as parents allow their kids to watch this. After all, it's fake.

Well it's not all fake. That blood streaming from the performer's forehead is from a self induced injury. What he did was knick himself with a razor blade which is usually taped to the thumb. His partner/opponent will slam his head into a (fill-in-the-blank) and then start showboating, trademark hand signals to the crowd that sort of thing. During this time, the fallen actor/fighter will give himself a small cut on the forehead. With so many capillaries in the head, the small cut will produce enough blood to excite the spectators. The next time you pass a magazine stand, flip through a rasslin' magazine and check out all the scar tissue on the wrestlers' foreheads. It's pretty gross.

The real misinformation the wrestling viewer will witness repeatedly is that all fights require anger. Hollywood is also guilty of this. In movies they will, for instance, show a pack of wolves snarling while hunting. Wolves don't snarl when they hunt. They actually look happy. It's built into their canine programming that chasing deer, cars or kids on bicycles is really fun. Modern humans rarely kill the meat they eat so the only way for Hollywood to get viewers to identify with the scene is to make it look like a murder. As for ring sports, it just seems that they fit almost perfectly to basic structure of story telling: protagonist meets antagonist in climactic final battle. All we need is a little emotion that the viewer can identify with, anger.

Anger is a necessary survival emotion much like fear. When faced with the unexpected we need immediate energy and lots of it. One wouldn't think of jogging to the car to get away from a tiger. Nope. You gotta run your brains out. Your hormonal balance will actually shift to help you get a better surge of energy. Of course the pendulum must swing the opposite direction later to make up for the imbalance. So after the surge of adrenaline that got you safely to your car you may feel very tired. What's a little fatigue compared to keeping your life. You can recover while looking at those great pictures of the tiger cubs.

In the kickboxing ring, however, a wave of fatigue at any time during the match could be disastrous. The fighter must be able to fight for the full allotted time. In some toughman competitions, novices try to whip themselves into a rage but it usually only gives them about 30 seconds of fight after which they are in extreme danger. So not only do kickboxers have no reason to get angry (obstacle not enemy) they actually have a reason not to get angry (clear thought, lasting energy).

How dangerous is kickboxing?

Lastly, one should mention the potential danger of stepping into the ring. There are many sports that are potentially dangerous. If things go wrong, serious injuries can happen. Think of skydiving or F-1 racing. Naysayers will mention the time they saw a serious injury. That's natural. We all base our opinions on our own experiences, but one shouldn't base an opinion on a single example. That's like a statistician getting a survey of one. If you see a sport where a serious injury happens in every match then you might be able to conclude that the sport is inherently dangerous. One vivid memory doesn't outweigh all the other kickboxing matches you've seen. The next time you pick up a paper, take a look at the injury list for pro football or pro hockey. Broken this, torn that, sprained this and aggravated that. Kickboxing may not be as safe as table tennis but it is far from the most dangerous sport.

As for dementia pugilistica or brain damage from boxing, it is unfair to say every fighter is in danger. Many fighters have successful careers and maintain all their marbles well into retirement. However, fighters with over extended careers are in great danger. Jerry Quarry, for instance, with a career that spanned from 1965 to 1992, paid an unimaginable price for his numerous comebacks: his mind. Sadly, Evander Holyfield looks to be taking the same path. There also seems to be a correlation between brain damage and fighters with a high number of losses on their records. This makes sense. The fighter who loses is the one getting hit in the head more. Safety therefore means knowing when to hang up the gloves for good. In short, the dangers of kickboxing or any sport should neither be ignored nor exaggerated.

It should also be mentioned that the above examples come from boxing not kickboxing. With hands as the only weapon, the head and torso as the only targets and up to 36 minutes of fighting; it is natural that the head of the boxer would get hit more than that of the kickboxer. Even fans of the K-1, which boasts an 80% KO rate, know that many of those knockouts are from kicks to the thighs or body and that the fights are a maximum of 15 minutes long.

Quick Summary

ü       Violence requires a victim's basic rights to be violated.

ü       Anger (like fear) creates an undesirable hormonal imbalance that competitors would like to avoid. True aggression is therefore absent from the contest.

ü       Fighters view their opponents as obstacles to overcome, not enemies to thrash.

ü       Many sports cause injuries. Some more than others. Kickboxing is certainly not the most dangerous in terms of the health of the athletes. Moreover, kickboxers do not intentionally seek to injure themselves (like fake-wrestlers).

ü       Fake-wrestling and Hollywood are not sources of information on the fight game.