Suchergebnisse

The objective was to compare two neurophysiological variables in active amateur boxers with non-boxing sportsmen. 41 boxers and 27 controls were given psychometric tests: 34 boxers and 34 controls underwent technetium-99m hexamethylpropyleneamineoxime single photon emission computerised tomography (Tc-99m HMPAO SPECT) cerebral perfusion scans. The controls performed better at most aspects of the psychometric tests. Boxers who had fought fewer bouts had a tendency to perform better at psychometric tests than those boxers who had fought more bouts. Tc-99m HMPAO SPECT cerebral perfusion scanning showed that controls had less aberrations in cerebral perfusion than the boxers. In conclusion, significant differences were shown in two neurophysiological variables between young amateur sportsmen who box and those who do not. The long term effects of these findings remain unknown.

Abstract
Background
In post-industrial countries, ethnic minorities suffer poorer health and premature deaths. The present study examined ethnic differences in life expectancy and related features among elite heavyweight boxers.

Methods
Dates of birth and death, anthropometry, and championship years were gathered from media archives for champions and challengers (never been a champion) between years 1889 and 2019. Cox regression adjusted for age at contest, nationality, BMI, champion/challenger status, and number of contests was used to assess survival.

Results
All 237 boxers, 83 champions (37.3% whites) and 154 challengers (61.0% whites), who contested for heavyweight championships were identified. By 2019, 110 (75 whites, 34 non-whites) were known to have died. Non-white boxers died at an earlier age than whites boxers (mean ± SD = 59.8 ± 14.2 years versus 67.3 ± 16.4 years, p = 0.018) and had shorter survival: HR = 2.13 (95% CI = 1.4–3.3). Among non-white boxers, deaths were higher from neurological disorders: OR = 8.2 (95% CI = 1.3–13.5) and accidents: OR = 15.1 (95% CI = 2.3–98.2), while death from natural causes was lower: OR = 0.2 (95% CI = 0.03–0.8). After boxing careers, fewer non-white boxers had non-manual jobs (34.4% versus 71.8%) than manual (34.4% versus 19.7%) or were unemployed (28.1% versus 2.8%). Reported substance abuse was similar across ethnicity (8.0% versus 8.8%) but conviction rates were higher among non-white boxers (17.6%) than white (1.3%).

Conclusions
Compared with white boxers, non-white boxers tend to die younger with excess neurological and accidental deaths, and they have lower social positions in later life. Sporting authorities should reappraise the wisdom of permitting head injuries in sport and monitor and support the health and wellbeing of sports men and women after retirement.

Over the last 50 years the participation rates of women and girls in sport have soared, challenging sport as a male preserve. Participation rates of female athletes in most low to middle-income countries have lagged behind their higher income counterparts, but this too appears to be changing even in male-dominated sports such as boxing. Female boxers transgress gender norms, and threaten conceptions of masculinity and femininity that position women and girls as vulnerable, and male physical superiority as a justification for male dominance. Data drawn from the archives of the Association Internationale de Boxe (AIBA) and other sources document the increasing representation of women from lower income countries in the sport of boxing. Informed by the narratives of women from a cross-section of countries, I argue that increasing numbers of women boxers disrupt normative gender scripts in often highly patriarchal communities, and contests gendered hierarchies in sport.

This article draws on 35 months of ethnographic fieldwork and apprenticeship in a boxing gym located in Chicago's black ghetto to explicate how prizefighters apperceive and express the fact of being live commodities of flesh and blood, and how they practically reconcile themselves to ruthless exploitation in ways that enable them to maintain a sense of personal integrity and moral purpose. The boxer's experience of corporeal exploitation is expressed in three kindred idioms, those of prostitution, slavery and animal husbandry. The first likens the fighter-manager combo to the prostitute-pimp duo; the second depicts the ring as a plantation and promoters as latter-day slave masters; the third intimates that boxers are used in the manner of livestock. All three tropes simultaneously enounce and denounce the immoral marketing of disquiescent bodies. But this acute consciousness is neutralized by the doxic belief in the normalcy of exploitation, in the `agency' of corporeal entrepreneurship, and in the possibility of individual exceptionalism. This practical belief, inscribed in the bodily dispositions of the fighter, helps produce the collective misrecognition whereby boxers collude in their own commercialization.

This research describes aspects of the life story of a professional junior middle-weight boxer. We conducted this inquiry in an urban boxing gym in the United States. Five extensive interviews were collected and analyzed through a life story interview method; the findings we present through dialogic representation. This work is a partnership between an academic and a sports journalist, a mother and son duo who wanted to explore one boxer's life story: the sometimes glamorous, sometimes mundane reality of life inside the ring. The research began with a familial connection: The first author's father (who is also the second author's grandfather) was a boxer in the U.S. Navy. As an amateur champion welterweight, Bob "The Brick Wall" Ketelle had a 17-0-1 record (17 wins, 0 losses, 1 draw) with 10 knockouts. This familial introduction formed an interest in the sport of boxing and gave rise to learning more about one boxer's life. The boxing trope has long been the subject of film and literature, most notably documented in American movies such as Raging Bull (1980) and Rocky (1976). We all know the story: the young unknown boxer with a heart of gold, fighting his way to the top, going from a nobody to a champion in a few short fights. But how does this cliché match up with reality? Through our research we have attempted to go behind the trope, to present some of the life experiences of one professional boxer to better understand how boxing tales from film and literature relate to life lived in an urban boxing gym. (author's abstract)

In professional boxing, rags-to-riches-to-rags stories are as commonplace as elaborate ring entrances. In the wake of the Professional Boxing Safety Act of 1996, the U.S. Congress mandated that the Secretary of Labor undertake a study on the feasibility of establishing a pension plan for professional boxers. The results of the study have yet to be utilized for the development of such a plan. Employing data on those boxing in Nevada, 2008-2010, a model pension plan is developed herein, which may be used as a prototype for other states or a national boxers' pension plan.