{"id":38622,"date":"2019-08-26T22:56:35","date_gmt":"2019-08-26T22:56:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=38622"},"modified":"2019-08-26T22:56:35","modified_gmt":"2019-08-26T22:56:35","slug":"boxing-once-fun-to-watch-now-its-unwatchable","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=38622","title":{"rendered":"Boxing: once fun to watch, now it’s unwatchable"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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There once was a time when I would glue myself to the TV set when professional boxing was on the air.<\/p>\n

That was a long time ago. Quite obviously, I was much younger. I didn’t appreciate fully a brutal aspect of the sport I loved to watch: the men who fought inflicted terrible damage to the other guy’s brain; and they received equal amounts of terrible damage from the other guy’s fists.<\/p>\n

That was then.<\/p>\n

So many of the athletes I used to watch — some of whom I admired, truth be told — now are gone. They fell victim to pugilistic dementia, which is another way say they had their brains scrambled.<\/p>\n

Fighters aren’t suffering such punishment more frequently<\/em> these days. I am just older now, perhaps a bit wiser (which often is merely a benefit of growing old) and also I am less bloodthirsty than I was as a kid.<\/p>\n

I’ll spare you the gripes I have about boxing’s governing bodies and how the sport has morphed into a sort of “participation trophy” of sports. That is, there are more “world champions” at every weight class than I can count. There once was a time when the heavyweight champion of the world was the baddest man on Earth; Muhammad Ali didn’t have to brag about being “bad” \u2026 he just was.<\/p>\n

But I no longer can stomach the sight of two grown men beating other’s brains’ out.<\/p>\n

I no longer watch videos of some of my favorite pro fighters from back in the day. I can barely watch fights of The Greatest — Muhammad Ali — knowing what became of him as he grew older. Yes, he died of Parkinson’s disease and reportedly did not lose any cognitive ability, but I do believe his fatal ailment was accelerated by the punishment he took at the end of his career.<\/p>\n

Boxing once was a thrill to watch. These days, it gives me the creeps.<\/p>\n\n

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There once was a time when I would glue myself to the TV set when professional boxing was on the air. That was a long time ago. Quite obviously, I was much younger. I didn’t appreciate fully a brutal aspect of the sport I loved to watch: the men who fought inflicted terrible damage to … Continue reading Boxing: once fun to watch, now it’s unwatchable<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[6282,7228,3158,8889],"class_list":["post-38622","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports-news","tag-boxing","tag-dementia","tag-muhammad-ali","tag-pugilistic-dementia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38622","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=38622"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38622\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38625,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38622\/revisions\/38625"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=38622"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=38622"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=38622"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}