A video of two eight-year-old boys grappling at a mixed martial arts event in England has the mainstream media, medical associations and the general population up in arms.
“Two boys wearing no head gear or padding, wrestling and kicking each other” is how this Sky News reporter decided to introduce the video. For shame, how could anyone condone this? Children as young as eight years old fighting in a cage like dogs. What is the world coming to?
This writer is certainly not one to condone full contact mixed martial arts contests between young children, that is definitely something best left for the adults who have the mental capacities to make an informed decision. However, if one actually sits back, watches the video and listens to the promoter they’d see that this story is really much ado about nothing.
No pads or head gear they say? You’d figure that would be the very least of the requirements for kids to participate in one of the harshest contact sports on the planet right? One problem though, these kids aren’t kicking or punching each other or using any kind of striking for that matter. All people are watching here is two children competing in a glorified grappling match.
Are people up in arms about the eight-year-olds who are competing in amateur wrestling, Judo or Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu? Most certainly not, so why does throwing a cage around the wrestling mat all of a sudden make it a travesty?
Simply put, people are uninformed.
Of course it’s alright if lay people see this video, misinterpret what they are seeing and assume the worst, but for the mainstream media and the British Medical Association (BMA) to make the same mistake is a display of poor judgement and a lack of professional responsibility.
“It’s shocking. Children this young shouldn’t be cage fighting. This kind of contest is usually reserved for experienced adults who have a background in boxing and martial arts,” A spokesperson for the BMA said. “These kids haven’t fully developed physically and would need at least four years’ training before entering into this. If they have been trained properly and are fully supervised there could be a reason for it, but I can’t see it. At the very least they should be wearing head guards, groin guards, hand mitts, and shin and instep protectors.”
Of course, if the children were punching and kicking each other then all that protection would be warranted and cause for concern would be understandable, but do children practicing amateur wrestling or Judo wear all these pads and protection the BMA is talking about? The answer is that they don’t.
Head gear and padding is usually required in sports where the risks of receiving blows to the head are significant. As in amateur wrestling and in Judo, the risk of receiving significant blows to the head in the competition people saw in this video is low because there are no punches or kicks being thrown—plain and simple.
Hopefully the media and medical associations screaming “bloody murder” on this one take some time to really look at this video with a critical eye so that next time a video like this surfaces they will think twice before making up stories where there are none.
Find a video of young children punching and kicking each other in the face in an organized sporting event and this writer will be the first to object, but it is something that will most likely never happen because contrary to what seems to be popular belief, the people involved in combat sports have strong moral fibre too.
Leon Horne is a writer for Bleacher Report, Follow @Leon_Horne
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