• boxing
• safety
• concussion
• head injuries

“It must be satisfactory to all true lovers of the Art, as a national and progressive institution, to feel that the past few years have witnessed changes—mostly in the right direction—in the science of Boxing.” This was written by Allanson-Winn in 1897.¹ Since then, more than 1200 articles have been published on medical and ethical aspects of boxing, usually not differentiating between amateur and professional. Most of the studies have methodological problems: few cases were analysed; there was a lack of adequate controls; in many studies the boxers were about 60 years old and were boxing before safety rules and careful medical supervision had been introduced; the authors could not distinguish between the late impact of the blows and the effects of the ageing process or other factors, such as alcohol consumption, that produce similar clinical and morphological changes in the brain.

During the last two decades, amateur and professional boxing have become completely separate. The main differences are as follows.

• Amateur boxing uses the same set of rules world wide, whereas professional boxing has different sets of rules.

• In amateur boxing the main objective is to score points, and the …