Sean Strickland believes boxing is way more damaging to one’s brain than mixed martial arts.
As someone who’s both given and taken a lot of damage both in the gym and inside the Octagon, the former UFC middleweight world champion considers himself a bit of an expert on the subject. Recently, ‘Tarzan’ took to social media to offer his take on the great debate regarding which of the two sports is more damaging in the long term.
“Boxers and MMA fighters always argue which sport takes more brain damage lol,” Strickland wrote on X. “Two autistic people competing to be less autistic lol! But as a man who trains at a high level in both, boxing takes way way way way way way more brain damage.”
The consensus appears to agree with Strickland, many of them pointing toward the fact that boxers target the head of their opponent for as many as 36 minutes per fight while MMA sees fighters often deploy jiu-jitsu and wrestle-heavy attacks during 15 to 25-minute affairs.
Dana White Claims Power Slap is Safer Than Boxing
During an interview earlier this year, UFC CEO Dana White attempted to state his case that boxing was far more dangerous than his latest pet project, Power Slap.
“If you look at boxing, right, these guys train and spar for months leading up to a fight, then they go in there, and they fight 12 rounds,” White said in an interview with Time. “You’ve seen the UFC fights, knock-down, drag-’em-out wars. These guys go in and take three slaps or less… We spend the money. As long as you know you have two healthy athletes going in to compete, the proper medical attention is there that night, and they get the proper medical attention after, you take a huge portion of the risk out” (h/t Sportskeeda).
Interestingly, White revealed in that same interview that he discovered black spots on his brain during a recent study, the result of his younger years as a boxer.
“I used to box when I was younger. I went in, and I did one of those brain studies. I have black spots all over my brain from what I did. I wouldn’t take back one punch. Not one. The position that I’m in right here, right now, today, I wouldn’t take one punch back because I loved it that much.”
