I'm disturbed.......

Look - I'm not really a sports fanatic - but I do appreciate the value of sports in the life of a developing and growing kid.

A friend of mine showed me this video (he wants to get his kid involved) - and I'd have to say --- it disturbed me.

The video comes from United States Fight League Pankration

I can't really tell you why I'm so disturbed - but it seems patently violent.

(coming from a guy that has taught his kids how to shoot since they were about 8 years old)

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Maybe some of you can help me understand why the heck this is okay.

It says I was blocked because of copywrite issues

I wasn't aware this kind of thing was legal for kids under 18. I have no problem with kids learning martial arts, but MMA style fighting without head gear is seriously stupid imo. It's just going to take one kid getting brain damage from a round house kick to have this kind of thing shut down like dog fighting.

Golden Gloves is high school but they do have head gear. How about Karate Kid? High school.

The kids in the video seem too young to be involved in full contact, full speed fights without headgear to me. Young kids should be instructed in self defense and maybe involved in half speed sparing supervised by an instructor who can step in at anytime and stop the action and/or make an instructional point. Young kids need to spend their early years learning how to defend themselves and discovering when it's ok to act aggressively against others, the default answer has to be only when there are no other answers. Let the aggressors jack their jaws and make all the threats they want, let them land the first punch too. When "go" time comes act quickly and decisively but only do what has to be done in self defense, don't cause additional harm simply because you can.

What should the acceptable threshold age be for full contact MMA boughts? 18? Maybe 21? IMO anyone that shows up in a ring for a public bought should be prepared for what ever happens between the two combatants, win or lose. I'm not against MMA fighting but I'd prefer that those participating are well practiced and have skills they developed over many years of training and dedicated effort. There's MMA fighting and there's all out brawling, if I want to see a brawl I know plenty of places to go watch idiots try to pummel each other.

On the balance, I got into more than one scrap in the school yard throughout my primary education and a couple of good ones as a junior enlisted man in the Navy. That's nothing to be proud of and the Lord knows I paid for my indiscretions in a wide variety of ways, detention, reduction in rank, payment of penalties and damages. Part of me wants to defend what I did as a generational issue or to play it off as a "...you had to be there..." issue. At the end of the day almost every confrontation I have ever been in could have been avoided had I just walked away from it.

Perhaps I am not the most well versed in this area but my grandchildren have been involved in MMA when they were more advanced and they wore headgear and were closely supervised. Perhaps these are much more advanced. If they are, as young as they are it is most appalling to see them w/o headgear. Perhaps it has changed since I knew it.