Protect fighters or suffer tragedy

The debate can resume.

Should we glorify sports in which the only goal is to inflict serious injury on your opponent?

Just days after the announcement that UFC champ Conor McGregor will fight undefeated (but two years retired) boxer Floyd Mayweather in yet another Las Vegas money-spinning extravaganza, the two different disciplines collided far away in Edmonton, Alberta.

That bout featured a couple of relative unknowns.

Heavyweight Adam Braidwood (7-1) took on 33-year-old mixed martial arts journeyman Tim Hague (1-2 as a boxer).

Quite how promoters allowed this match to proceed is certainly a fair question: Braidwood isn’t exactly a rising star – he originally tried a pro football career – but he’s more than capable as a Saturday night club fighter.

Hague, on the other hand, had lost three bouts (all in the first round) over the past 10 months in both sports. He’d been knocked unconscious by a kick to the head during an MMA loss in Russia.

THIS TIME, Hague did make it to the second round – and died because of it.

Braidwood knocked him down three times in the first, and Hague seemed to most observers to be out on his feet.

“The stakes weren’t high enough for that bout to continue,” said Corey Erdman, a longtime boxing journalist who saw the fight.

Yet it did.

Hague began stumbling around after a couple of innocent-looking punches, then Braidwood promptly knocked him down twice more before the referee had seen enough.

The finale was a right-left combination that caused Hague’s head to bounce violently off the canvas.

No doubt the crowd in Edmonton roared in excitement at the beating Braidwood was dishing out.

It wasn’t so thrilling the next day, however, when doctors tried but failed to save Hague’s life after massive brain damage.

I’m not making any argument that hasn’t come up before, but still...

Fans get excited with wicked hits in football and those tumbling, fiery crashes in auto races. That’s a little unfortunate, but at least in those sports, there are plenty of other skills and the winner isn’t decided by the least amount of destruction.

BOXING and mixed martial arts fights, however, are totally about causing damage to your opponent.

Leaving someone unconscious is your obvious goal. If that man or woman cannot get off the floor, you win.

Millions love the rush, but as human beings we need to be careful about how we allow it.

True enough, the combatants are there by choice. And for some, it’s a road out of poverty.

I get that.

Plus, boxing actually can be beautiful. It was called the “Sweet Science,” after all.

But we probably should heed the words of Eric Magraken, a lawyer and MMA enthusiast who manages the web site CombatSportsLaw.com.

“There’s a statutory reason athletic commissions exist,” Magraken said. “They’re created to set up rules and regulations to protect fighters from themselves. Sometimes these men and women are too tough for their own good.”

INDEED, fighters like the doomed Tim Hague have a warrior mentality.

After learning of Hague’s death, the distraught Braidwood said: “After each knockdown, the ref asked Tim if he wanted to continue, and he said yes.”

There’s a lesson here: Trainers, judges, referees, doctors and commissioners need to keep these people from killing themselves.

Fans always have ridiculed fighters who elect to quit bouts in which they are hopelessly overmatched.

That’s wrong.

Consider two brave words from the great champion Roberto Duran, who once finally did turn away and surrender against a man he’d previously beaten, Sugar Ray Leonard — even though Duran’s record at the time was 72-1.

Duran is now 66, has raised six children, enjoys godlike status in his native Panama and has made several movie appearances – which makes that decision in 1980 seem pretty shrewd.

Those two words...

“No mas!”

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Steve Cameron is a special assignment reporter for The Press. Reach Steve: scameron@cdapress.com.