Is Ultimate Fighting Safer Than Boxing?

For those of you that have not followed the popular fight-sport of ultimate fighting, here is a brief summation. Essentially, ultimate fighters are allowed to either use striking forms of combat (kicking, punching) or grappling forms of combat (choke holds, limb breaking/injuring holds) to get their opponent to either give up or go unconscious.

Sounds safe, right?

Well, let’s put it in context. Ultimate fighting is a type of mixed martial arts (MMA) that combines various fighting styles into one cohesive approach. Ultimate fighting comes in two dominate forums: the Ultimate Fighting Championships (UFC) in the United States or the Pride fights in Japan.

The original premise behind ultimate fighting was to compare fighting styles. In the ultimate fighting format karate, judo, boxing, wrestling and other fight experts could compare their skills to others. Would karate beat judo? In ultimate fighting you could find out.

Up to the point of the inception of the UFC and ultimate fighting as a whole, boxing was the predominant popular fighting sport. With a decline in top promotional names in the boxing arena of late, the popularity of ultimate fighting has been on the rise.

But is boxing or ultimate fighting safer? There are several reasons that ultimate fighting may indeed be safer regarding severity of injuries than boxing. There are also some very clear statistical analyses that indicate that ultimate fighting is indeed safer than boxing. What follows is a list of these points.

1. There have been a much higher rate of deaths in boxing than in ultimate fighting. According to statistics, boxing averages roughly 11 deaths per year (see “boxing deaths” in other resources section). In an unsanctioned ultimate fighting bout outside of the US there has been one recorded death that was related to ultimate fighting. This has been the only fatality ever recorded regarding ultimate fighting.

2. Even American football has more deaths per year than ultimate fighting (see “football deaths” in extra resources).