No-headgear rule in Olympic boxing raises alarm bells
Many in boxing community fear safety is being compromised in bid to boost ratings
When Arthur Biyarslanov steps into the Olympic boxing ring in Rio, Canadians will be able to see the effort on his face when he throws a hard punch and the pain if he receives one.
This summer will be the first time male Olympic boxers will fight without the padded headgear that has been mandatory since the 1984 Games.
Those at the top of the boxing hierarchy say it is an important move to reduce concussions.
But many others in the boxing community fear the safety of athletes is being put at risk by an international sport body determined to boost ratings and blur the line between professional and amateur boxers for financial gain.
The no headgear rule, which originally applied only to top athletes wanting to represent Canada abroad, has already filtered down to domestic bouts for most males aged 19 to 40, regardless of skill or ambition, and next up are women and youth boxers starting in 2018.
“It’s absolutely ludicrous,” says Peter Wylie, a Toronto boxing coach with 40 years of experience.
“If you attempted to remove helmets from hockey players there would be such an uproar.”
But amateur boxing falls well below the public radar and, within the sport, the national and international governing bodies rule from on high.
So for dissenters, “it’s like screaming in a hurricane,” Wylie says.
Canada, unlike the United States, has fully embraced the rule changes imposed by the International Boxing Association (AIBA) and Boxing Canada president Pat Fiacco says boxers are safer for it.
“When you look at what we’ve seen over the past couple of years — the reduction of concussions — I don’t know who would want to argue that we should put the headgear back on and increase the concussions,” Fiacco says.
“If you look at the scientific research that was done not only by AIBA but also with the IOC (International Olympic Committee) in the study they obviously felt it was the right thing to do,” he says. “There was tremendous research done.”
That’s what Phil Dickinson hoped was the case. As a coach and owner of a Montreal boxing club and an academic finishing a PhD in neuroscience, he’s well placed to understand the sport and the science. He asked to see the research that backed up AIBA’s claims that removing headgear would make boxers safer.
“It looked impressive,” Dickinson says of the email packed with statistics and references to scientific studies he received from AIBA’s medical commission.
“But when I read the articles it was cherry picking and what I realized is there wasn’t anything that really substantiated their view.”
The claim that removing headgear reduced concussions by over 40 per cent was based on video analysis of world championship bouts, according to AIBA medical commission information provided to the Star by Boxing Canada. But this is not a scientific way to assess a brain injury, especially since symptoms can turn up after the boxer has left the ring.
That’s what happened to Canada’s Samir El-Mais who was diagnosed with a concussion at last summer’s Pan Am Games. He won his bout without headgear and celebrated in the ring but was dizzy and vomiting in the locker room shortly after.
There do not seem to be any independent studies that actually demonstrate it is safer for boxers to fight without headgear and there are several that conclude it is not.
Certainly, headgear isn’t a fail-safe prevention for concussion in boxing any more than a helmet is in other sports.
“I’ve had a concussion wearing boxing headgear,” Dickinson says. “You’re not going to get rid of it all, you’re reducing the danger to the most people you can with the tools that you have.”
There are two elephants in the room of the no headgear camp.
If boxers are at greater risk of concussion when wearing headgear, why do all boxers — including the professionals — continue to wear it in training, which is where they sustain the greatest volume of hits?
And if wearing headgear is unsafe, why is the governing body planning to wait years to better protect women and youth boxers?
Fiacco and AIBA’s president Wu Ching-Kuo have both argued that removing headgear has changed how boxers fight and made them more careful with their heads.
“They’re not standing there and taking punches because of this false security the headgear is giving them,” Fiacco says.
Some Canadian boxers have said they prefer to compete without headgear because they feel lighter and can see better, but they laugh at the notion that with it on they were willing to take hits.
“No one wants to get hit,” says Biyarslanov, who has qualified for Rio in the light welterweight division.
“Every time you get hit (you’re losing) so you try to avoid the punches as much as you can.”
As for why women get to keep their headgear for now, Fiacco says they don’t expect to see similar benefits because “the punches aren’t as hard.”
That, naturally, annoys Canada’s Mandy Bujold but it doesn’t mean she wants to lose her headgear.
The Rio-bound flyweight has suggested she’d quit the sport before taking it off.
“They went to headgear for a reason and now all of a sudden we’re going backwards,” she says. “It makes no sense at all.” She doesn’t think there’s been enough research done to know whether headgear protects her from brain trauma but she knows it protects her from cuts.
AIBA’s own study shows cuts have skyrocketed since headgear came off and some of Bujold’s teammates have been denied the chance to even fight for a medal because of a cut.
Safety in amateur boxing has long been about more than just the padded headgear, which covers the forehead and sides of the face.
Heavier gloves designed to cushion impact, fewer rounds, standing eight-counts and referees carefully watching for outclassed boxers and injuries have all made the amateur side of boxing safer than the professional one.
“Boxing is not for the faint of heart,” says Dr. David Venturi, an Ontario physician with 20 years of ringside experience in boxing and other combat sports.
“But with the regulations that we had in place before the no-headgear rule, I believe it was the safest sport in the world. Now, I’m not so sure. I’m seeing injuries that I’ve never seen (in amateur boxing) and more serious ones, ears and eyes.”
The only way to justify putting boxers at an increased risk for obvious injures like cuts is if it protects them from the less visible and far scarier injury of brain trauma.
People in top positions in Canada and Ontario’s boxing hierarchy have assumed the research backing up the rule change is solid. They admit they aren’t experts, but say people up the line at AIBA know what they’re talking about. But AIBA is not an internationally recognized health organization; it’s a sport body with a stated mission “to govern the sport of boxing worldwide in all its forms,” and has a vested interest.
It has made numerous moves to draw amateur and professional boxing closer together with rule changes, two new for-profit professional series, and on June 1 it will vote on allowing professionals into the Olympics.
“They forced (no headgear) to be in place in time for this year’s Olympics,” Kenneth Piche, chief executive of Boxing Quebec says. “They didn’t have time to do the proper studies so they invented some and took some pieces here and there and they were able to convince the IOC of their pretense that it is safer.”
He wants the headgear issue debated at Boxing Canada’s AGM in Regina this Saturday.
“Our No. 1 priority is the safety of amateur athletes and now we think we’re not fulfilling our obligation.”
Coach Wylie agrees and is bracing for a future NFL-style lawsuit over boxing injuries.
“When it gets to a court of law, what will the defence be?” he says. “Why did you take a safety feature off these athletes knowing full well the scientific studies said you shouldn’t do it and that you put these people in more danger?”