The freestyle events involving anything with an engine are scary as fuck. Is there really any room for progression past what's been done?
Don't get me wrong, that this is the first death in X-Games history shows a damn good safety record, and people die in all motorsports, if not all sports period, but you dont fear for the athletes lives in the same visceral way.
It's getting hard to square enjoying xgames, boxing, and even football knowing the toll it can take.
I watched Gotti-Ward 1 live on HBO, and close to a hundred times since, but it certainly feels different knowing that the fight could have been stopped several times, seeing Gatti take incredible punishment, only to know in the back of my mind his speech rapidly deteriorated into a mumbling slur, and he killed himself in a hotel in Brazil not long after he retired. Where do I fit in as a fan that cheered the damage that turned his brain into jello?
There was even a short documentary after one of their 3 fights where Ward complains of double vision a month after the fight.
I mean I love a sport that has a form of brain damage named after it, "dementia pugilista", I've seen Ali and Frazier turned into shells of the humans they once were, and can probably point out the punches that did the damage, what does that make me?
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