Boxing as a sport should be banned in fact any so called sport that involves hitting another person

In ideal world I would agree, but in this world, banning something just sends it underground. That process tends to remove whatever safeguards were in place before it was banned.

Sport or war.

I'll take the sport. Fewer unconnected civilian injures.

First of the sport is called MMA, mixed martial arts.

You can win by submitting your opponent not just knocking them out.

Probably the safest type of combat sport and requires a huge amount of technical skill at pro level.

Don't watch it if you don't like it.

'Boxing is the sport to which all other sports aspire'.

• George Foreman

So that'll tell you what HE knows about hurling, but anyway...

Ignoring the dull misandry AND misogyny of 'macho... trying to prove masculinity'; the puny distaste for things that just happen to require more testicular fortitude than you have; the daft delusion that combat sports need the oxygen of advertising.

How about, if you don't like boxing and other combat sports, then just move on ? How about a nice cup of tea ?

Look after your own affairs, and let others mind theirs.

Quite a poor analogy there. Rape is by definition the destruction of the consent of one human being by another. Boxing and MMA in contrast involve two consenting adults who have not just chosen to be in that arena on that night before the cameras - but have engaged in years of training beforehand in order to fulfill and work towards their own personal choice to do just that.

Your comparison therefore is not just "extreme" as you put it - but outright ridiculous.

The human compulsion to ban things one personally does not like is beyond my comprehension to be honest as I do not share it. What consenting adults choose to do - or choose to watch other consenting adults do - is exactly that. A choice. Everyone else can and probably should choose to not partake and not watch those who do. And everyone can continue on happily each in the bubble of their own choices for how they live their own lives.

A few people on here still haven't learnt how to turn off their TV. If they don't like something why don't they just do something else? Why do these people think they can make decisions for other adults they don't even know? Training for boxing or MMA is a brilliant way to get into great shape. Most of the world's banning brigade are people who lack common sense.

Things are not 'blood thirsty' or 'neanderthal' just because you don't have the stomach for them, and per se, pusillanimity is not civilised.

Had the misfortune to be in the National Boxing Stadium a few years back, the crew that was at it was far more intimidating and violent than those in the ring. Never again.

THe whole thing in the 26 counties seems to be controlled by travellers , the boxers & families from the 6 counties seemed to be the only people not intimidated out of the sport at this stage & not afraid to stand up to them .

MMA, Boxing etc has two consenting adults talking part so your intellectually disabled comparison with rape is childish.

Right, and I suppose driving at over 200mph is not dangerous? It's actually called trying to win a competition, nobody is forcing them to enter.

Well given the links with criminality, it looks like it's slowly being cancelled already.

Boxing is a great sport. Great for fitness and discipline. Learning some form of combat sports and self defence should be compulsory in kids imho.

Wait until we’re **** again first though.

Yeah, can we not all just be nice to each other?

It's the perfect rebuttal. People who dont like a sport should mind their own business and just avoid it rather than saying something stupid like ban it. Nobody is forcing you to watch, do you also feel like people force you to watch violent films?

You can have your opinion, doesn’t bother me. I actually find boxing can sometimes be boring, particularly when the result is decided on points. I'm comfortable with violence as I'm watching adults who know the risks.

It's interesting you think that punching the head off someone in football is a career-ending move. It didn't always even get people a red card, as Johnny Giles could tell you.

But football then was a man's game. Football today of course, provides us far too many cringy reminders why boxing is, in the best sense of the word, the noble art.

Overpaid soccer wooly-woofters falling like flies and rolling around on the ground in pretend agony. It is embarrassingly degenerate cheating, and unmanly.

Boxing, in its essential nature, has absolutely nothing to do with the paraphernalia of organised crime, or underprivileged backgrounds, or whatever other half-baked excuse you want to offer.

Rather, in the words of Theodore Roosevelt who took up boxing for the very reason a lot of other people have not got the balls to do...

'It is not the critic who counts;... The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood;... so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.'