Contestant Dies After Toughman Contest

[TheRuss]

To the best of my knowledge, second-impact syndrome does not explain the skull fracture.

[TheMightyMcClaw]

Fucking Toughman contests are infamous for this sort of stuff. I had a cousin who used to fight in them, and he told me of their appalling record for fatalities.
I'd be more surprised to hear about a Toughman where no one died at this point.

[Archetype]

Heres another article that kinda sorta better explains why it happened...

http://www.newsok.com/prior-injury-l...homa-city-news

The fight doctor at Saturday night’s Original Toughman Contest thinks Nathan Johnson died of second-impact syndrome, in which an earlier head injury exacerbates a subsequent head injury, sometimes fatally.

...he’d breezed through extensive prefight physical and cardiovascular checkups on Friday and Saturday. Postfight examinations both days also turned up nothing.

"As it turns out, though, Saturday morning he did complain (to his parents) of a bit of a headache and a shooting star sensation in his right eye,” Lovelace said.

"He didn’t tell us about it. I think he was afraid that he’d be disqualified.”

Lovelace suspects Johnson was hurt in Friday’s fight, setting the stage for Saturday’s fatal injury.

[hungryjoe]

Second impact syndrome.

This is what I heard locally, but it is at this point not confirmed.

Don't know when the results of the state investigation are expected to be completed.

[Archetype]

At first glance of the rule setup, I can see why people would be baffled at how deaths like this could occur, but looking at this video makes it more apparent how something like this could happen.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHL91HbKszg

So what you get is a brawl where two big guys with little/no boxing experience are throwing/flailing their hardest punches at each others heads with their chins up and arms hanging down in a tournament where they have to do the same thing again and again within 24 hours or less.

Even with padding and big gloves, this is a setup for disaster.

[Holy Moment]

But he wasn't really training, was he?

He could have been training. To my knowledge, a fighter is ineligible for Toughman if he's had more than a certain number of sanctioned fights, but that doesn't necessarily mean he isn't training or won't seek out training. I assume, though, that a lot of boxing coaches won't support someone competing in Toughman.

Edit: Ken Shamrock claims to have fought someone with over fifty amateur fights in a Toughman competition once, although God knows how accurate that is.

[Emevas]

He could have been training. To my knowledge, a fighter is ineligible for Toughman if he's had more than a certain number of sanctioned fights, but that doesn't necessarily mean he isn't training or won't seek out training. I assume, though, that a lot of boxing coaches won't support someone competing in Toughman.

Edit: Ken Shamrock claims to have fought someone with over fifty amateur fights in a Toughman competition once, although God knows how accurate that is.

Maybe it's because I'm sick, but are you saying that Ken fought someone in a Toughman contest who had over 50 amateur fights before entering, or are you saying Ken fought someone who had fought 50 matches in Toughman?

[Holy Moment]

Maybe it's because I'm sick, but are you saying that Ken fought someone in a Toughman contest who had over 50 amateur fights before entering, or are you saying Ken fought someone who had fought 50 matches in Toughman?

In his second book, Shamrock claims to have beaten someone with over 50 amateur fights in the finals of a Statesville Toughman tournament. According to Shamrock, the fighter was a "ringer" that the promoters put into the tournament to keep everyone else from getting the full cash prize.