Sports Then and Now

Injuries are an unfortunate and often unavoidable side effect of physically demanding sports.

While many are not harmful long term, they can take an athlete out for many games at a time, and the worst injuries are often the cause of a young career ending early. If you are planning on competing in these sports, or even just enjoy them casually for exercise, you should be aware of these injury possibilities. 

Boxing

Everyone has heard of the infamous boxer’s fracture. This is caused by the small bones in your hand breaking from the repetitious training involved in the sport. Oftentimes these fractures are minor and non-threatening, but many promising boxers have had their careers ended early as a result of extreme fractures. On this note, many people are unaware that boxing gloves are actually not for the protection of your opponent’s head, but rather to preserve the small bones of the hand. Other common injuries include detached retinas, broken noses or orbital bones, and the long term brain damage that may occur. Ouch! 

American Football 

It should be no surprise that injuries in American football are not only common, but expected and planned for. The athletes of other sports may become injured on occasion, but in the NFL it is sadly a regular affair. This is why teams have a great deal of depth in every position, with star players regularly taking breaks to let their secondaries have a chance on the field. 

Also unlike other sports, there is a wide range of injuries that occur in American football. This is a sport that even something as seemingly minor as a thumb sprain can take an all-star player out of commission for weeks. According to several studies, the most common injuries in the sport revolve around the knees, ankles, shoulder, and head. These all make sense when you consider the aggressive full-contact playstyle. 

Wrestling is a highly popular American show. It’s a huge industry which involves special TV and radio programs, magazines, websites. At the center of the US wrestling world is WWF (World Wrestling Federation), the giant monopoly. There are also numerous small independent organizations, schools, fan clubs. Every week tens of millions people around the globe watch wrestling TV shows.

The most successful businessman and founder of WWE is Vince McMahon. He made a fortune on the method of pay-per-view which in the early 1980s, only gained a bit in popularity when showing football matches and boxing matches. The audience was associated with a television provider, and to view sport matches you needed to buy a one-time subscription. The right to view Wrestlemania only a few thousand people have bought in 1985. But by the time of Wrestlemania-III after two years the number of subscribers has increased to 400 thousand. This, one show brought to the company of McMahon more than $ 10 million.

The next two Wrestlemania in 1988 and 1989 were held at the same arena – in the Hall of Atlantic City meetings, close to the famous casino Trump Plaza.

To promote the event organizers said that the venue of the competition is the gambling establishment itself. But that was only a trick to attract more people.

The history of this show dates back to mass entertainments of 19th century. Wrestling we know today was formed in 1970s. Since that time it had ups and downs, but in the second half of the 90s wrestling experienced enormous popularity growth. Read the rest of this entry →