Research

The most extensive and scientifically-controlled study to test that claim was conducted in Ireland between 1992 and 2001 by Dr Mark Porter, a former sports physician (now orthopaedic surgeon) who was for some time based at the Australian Institute of Sport. In his study, 20 randomly-selected active experienced amateur boxers were given neurological tests over a nine-year time period, as were 20 randomly-selected control subjects who trained at the same 6 gymnasiums but had never boxed or sparred.
 

At the start of the study, each boxer was at least 16 years old, had competed in a minimum of 40 amateur bouts, was actively competing or in training for competition, and had no known history of cerebral injury, learning difficulties, excessive alcohol intake, drug abuse, exposure to organic solvents, or history of major illness or psychiatric problem.
 

The controls, matched to the boxers for age, were males who were not allowed to take part in any full contact combat sport (e.g. karate, kick-boxing, judo), but were allowed to take part in other contact sports (e.g. any of the codes of football). The study controlled for age and socio-economic status. There was no significant difference in education level between the boxers and control subjects.
 

Subjects underwent a series of neuropsychological tests in 1992 which were repeated after 18 months, 4 years, 7 years and 9 years. The tests were performed by a sports physician with clinical training in neuropsychology, who did not know which persons were boxers and which were not (this is known as 'blinding' the researcher, and is designed to avoid bias).
 

The data and test results were statistically processed by computer using regression analysis. Not only was there no evidence of decreased test performance by the amateur boxers over the period of nine years, there was instead significantly better performance by the boxing group, compared to the age-matched controls.
 

In particular, the number of bouts, percent wins, or sparring frequency did not affect the boxers' neurological performance. Hence, the study found no support for the claim that amateur boxing is associated with chronic brain damage.
 

Refreshingly, Dr Porter's study strides ahead of most other research on boxing because it employed the best scientific methodology available. The sample size (20) is not as large as we might wish, but then much of the previous 'research' used a sample size of one! Dr Porter's research was published in December 2003 - details as follows: Porter, M.D.: A 9-Year Controlled Prospective Neuropsychologic Assessment of Amateur Boxing: Clinical Journal of Sport Medicine 2003; 13(6):339-352
 

The bulk of so-called research on boxing is ideological diatribe by people with an anti-boxing bias based on emotion rather than medical evidence. People tend to believe what the medical associations say, because the medical authorities are assumed to be un-biased good folk who have our health and safety at heart. The fact is, medical associations have a long history of waging political "holy wars" against minority groups. My article Medicine's history of political persecution details the sad record of western medical authorities in promoting racism, discrimination and persecution in the guise of "health concern".