Matt Hughes Losing His Shit: Sports and CTE

[Fat Cat]

“Audra claims she refused to give Matt his truck keys, saying, "I told him he can't have them because he shouldn't drive due to his DAI (brain injury)."

She alleges Matt then snapped ... choked her -- and asked her for the code to his gun vault.

When Audra refused again ... she says Matt choked her again, smashed her head against the shower wall and screamed, "This is what choking is!"

Audra says nearly a year later on July 21, 2018 ... Matt told her, "I'm going to f*cking shoot you," because she took his phone, claiming, "he was communicating with multiple women."

Audra also says just a few months later, on Dec. 12, 2018 ... Matt hit her in front of her son, their daughter and her step-dad after she accused him of texting other women.

Audra filed for a restraining order the following day ... and a judge has since ordered the fighter to stay at least 500-feet away from Audra and their children.

There's more ... Matt's twin brother, Mark Hughes -- ?a retired MMA fighter who competed at UFC 28 in 2000 -- has also filed for a restraining order against the 45-year-old, alleging Matt roughed up his son and tried to destroy his tractor.

Mark says the two had a disagreement over which brother actually OWNS the tractor ... and when Matt saw Mark's 15-year-old son driving it sometime later on Sept. 23, 2018 -- he lost it on the kid.

Mark alleges Matt grabbed his son, shook him and told him that's his "f*cking tractor."

Mark also says a week later on Sept. 30, 2018 ... he believes Matt doused the tractor and its surrounding area in gasoline -- and suspects he was trying to destroy it.

Mark filed for a restraining order the next day ... which a judge granted -- ordering Matt to stay away from his brother and his family.”

More here: https://www.mmaweekly.com/matt-hughes-a ... ing-orders

Now, Matt Hughes has always been a crazy guy, and not in a good way. He was also involved in a very suspicious accident where his truck was struck by a train that looked to many like a suicide attempt. He was left with a traumatic brain injury, one that could only have exacerbated damage from a life in MMA and wrestling. Anyway, asshole or not, it's a personal tragedy which illustrates a broader context of brain injuries in sports.

Most of the folks on this board are a bit older and do lower impact forms of exercise, but this is what's potentially waiting for people who have engaged in a lifetime of full contact activities. Football, boxing, these are activities where we all understand that the brain is sustaining trauma, but there are many more which don't have that reputation but which science suggests may be just as dangerous. Here's a summary of a descriptive epidemiology study of concussions in high school sports:

https://www.medstarsportsmedicine.org/r ... ncussions/

Boys' sports accounted for 53% of athlete-exposures and 75% of all concussions. Football accounted for more than half of all concussions, and it had the highest incidence rate (0.60). Girls' soccer had the most concussions among the girls' sports and the second-highest incidence rate of all 12 sports (0.35). Concussion rate increased 4.2-fold (95% confidence interval, 3.4-5.2) over the 11 years (15.5% annual increase). In similar boys' and girls' sports (baseball/softball, basketball, and soccer), girls had roughly twice the concussion risk of boys. Concussion rate increased over time in all 12 sports.

Interesting things:

- While boys accounted for the numerical majority, girls have double the rate of concussion per participant in sports which both sexes participate in.

- As children age, the risk increases, presumably because they become stronger and the hits come harder.

- While football was the single largest contributor among boys, soccer was number one for girls, and number two for boys.

According to another study: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concussions_in_sport

The single most dangerous sport was women's hockey (0.91 concussions per 1,000 participants) which was nearly twice the rate of men's football. In our rush for extreme sports, for excellence, for sex-parity in sport, etc. we are running the risk of a lot more Matt Hughes situations. Think, for example, about women's MMA and it's chilling. Something to think about for yourselves and your children.

[Bram]

This is an anecdote I may have dropped before....I worked with a gentleman who was the top criminal psychologist or psychiatrist in California and he said his team found basically a direct correlation between a history of traumatic brain injury and violent criminals. They found by administering a simple beta blocker it eliminated an extreme number, like 50%, of violent outbursts from these individuals. But due to the laws, you can't medicate inmates.

Pretty surprised to see that women have double the concussion rate in similar sports. I've always thought of girls soccer as being a knee injury issue, but not a head trauma one. Nice write up!

[Grandpa's Spells]

Pretty surprised to see that women have double the concussion rate in similar sports. I've always thought of girls soccer as being a knee injury issue, but not a head trauma one. Nice write up!

Weaker necks.

Interesting on Hughes, and this theory has also come up the last few years with OJ Simpson.

[Fat Cat]

Bram, very interesting and I don't think there's any doubt that as we learn more and more about the brain with the advances in imaging we have made that quite a bit of what we have classified as "voluntary" behavior has to do with damage to the structures of the brain.

Consider the thread I made just the other week about the correlation between gingivitis and Alzheimer's disease. We used to see the brain as largely something isolated from the other processes of the body, but more and more that's going out the door. It's just another very fragile organ of our squishy little bodies.

SPELLS, yup I've heard that too with regard to OJ Simpson, Aaron Hernandez, and of course the poster boy for them all, Chris Benoit.

[Fat Cat]

Pretty surprised to see that women have double the concussion rate in similar sports. I've always thought of girls soccer as being a knee injury issue, but not a head trauma one. Nice write up!

Weaker necks.

Interesting on Hughes, and this theory has also come up the last few years with OJ Simpson.

This is another example of the stupidity of Title IX and the rush to women's sports. Of course women SHOULD engage in sports, and of course we want them to have equal ACCESS to sports, but that in no way means that women should be in a rush to do all the sports men do. Hell, men shouldn't even do many of the sports men do, at least from the standpoint of brain health.

[Mickey O'neil]

Very intriguing and scary.