Ontario Boxing Association: Mystery Solved

   ENTRY 409



OBA: DOWN FOR THE COUNT AND NOT LIKELY TO GET UP


BREAKING NEWS: The Ontario Boxing Association is still alive, but possibly for not much longer.

I found out through research that the organization still exists, but they are not allowed to sanction any competitive events.
This is due to a law that was passed in 2015 by the Ministry of Tourism-Culture-and Sport.
Game ON is the name of this policy and within it they re-assessed combat sports in the province of Ontario.
In order to keep combat sports safe, it was deemed that only one non-profit organization can represent any combat sport within Ontario. 
11 combat sports are represented by 10 organizations. 
For boxing the organization is Boxing Ontario. Therefore, any other organization who tries to organize a competitive boxing event will be doing so illegally and could face criminal charges.

Amateur MMA is still illegal in Ontario since there is no organization to run it. 


Here is an excerpt from the article that I found on the Ministry's web site:

Changes for Amateur Combative Sports

Ontario supports the safe participation in amateur combative sports.

In 2015 the Ministry of Tourism, Culture and Sport released Game ON – The Ontario Government’s Sport Plan in which it committed to clarify the legal status of amateur combative sport.

Through an Order in Council, the Government of Ontario has designated 11 amateur sports in which contests are now legal if held with the permission of a government-recognized Provincial Sport Organization (PSO).

A PSO is a not-for-profit organization recognized by the Ministry as the governing body of a particular amateur sport in Ontario. The primary function of a PSO is the development of athletes, coaches and officials. A PSO must be recognized in accordance with the provincial Sport Recognition Policy. Currently there are 10 government-recognized PSOs in Ontario for combative sports.

Contests in sports that are not sanctioned by a provincially-recognized PSO are deemed illegal.

Designated Amateur Combative Sport	Ministry Recognized Provincial Sport Organization
Boxing	Boxing Ontario
Grappling	Ontario Grappling Association
Jiu-Jitsu	Ontario Jiu-Jitsu Association
Judo	Judo Ontario
Karate	Ontario Karate Federation
Kickboxing	Kickboxing Ontario
Muaythai	Muaythai Ontario
Pankration	Ontario Grappling Association
Taekwondo	Ontario Taekwondo Association
Wrestling^	Ontario Amateur Wrestling Association
Wushu	Wushu Ontario

Read the full article here.

So people, there it is.
The OBA mystery has been solved.

I have to say I am not surprised that the Ministry gave the boot to the OBA.
They are not very professional and also ran unsafe events.
They were also breaking a lot of rules such as performing medical tests on their athletes without permission.
One such test that I hate talking about because it is a stupid and pointless test is the Baseline Concussion Test. This test has been proven over and over to be inaccurate for many reasons.

I have mentioned about this before, but I would like to elaborate on it.


REASONS WHY BASELINE CONCUSSION TESTING IS INACCURATE

This is a test that is supposed to be able to detect if you have ever had a concussion. That in itself is inaccurate since it is very hard to detect a concussion unless it has happened within 24 hours.
Generally, this test is less than 20% accurate most of the time.
There are so many external factors that can cause an inaccuracy on the test.
Being tired and/or being sick can both skew the results. A change in emotion can also an inaccurate result. Such as being nervous or depressed.
Also, look at when the test was being conducted. About two hours before entering the ring. 
That is a stupid time to be doing such a test.
At that time a person's brain is going into Protection Mode. The brain knows that the body is soon going to be involved in combat. Since it is the brain's job to protect the body from damage, it begins to assess what it should do to protect the body. That is also known as "Fight or Flight" and in some cases "Self-Preservation".
This is a high-priority for the brain, so frivolous tasks such as processing the questions asked during a baseline concussion test are ignored by the brain's processing system.

Think of your brain as a computer with a 4 TB hard drive, but only 16 MB of RAM.

The hard drive is your storage, or long-term memory. The RAM is what your brain is currently processing or short-term memory.

The human brain has an amazing capacity for long-term memory, but is very limited to what it can do at any one time.
Therefore, it must prioritize what needs to be processed immediately and what needs to be stored for later.

A "Self-Preservation" is a high priority, obviously.
Short-term memory is not important while preparing for combat, but does become important during combat. At that time, your brain will switch priories to allow you to think "fast" in order to protect yourself as part of the Self-Preservation process.

However, there is something else I recently found out.
Intelligence can also affect how your brain processes and prioritizes.

If you have trouble remembering names and appointments, or questions asked as part of baseline concussion test, it is likely that you have a triple-digit IQ.

The reason is that a high-IQ brain likes to always think about things that it thinks are important. Therefore, unless you manually prioritize something as important, your brain will likely ignore it because it has more important things to do.

An example is remembering people's names. 
Have you ever met someone and then meet them again a few days later and for the life of you can't remember their name? Then after meeting that person four times, the name just automatically pops into your head?
That is your intelligent brain prioritizing tasks.
When you meet someone once, you brain does not think it is important to remember that name right away because there is a chance you may never see that person again. Your brain sticks the name onto the hard drive to access later, but as a low priority process.
That is when you remember the person's name after they have left...Damn!
What happens after you see that face a few times, the brain realizes that this face must be important, so it increases the priority of processing that name. From that point on, you always remember that name since your brain sees the face and knows to pull the name from long-term memory for immediate processing.

The thing to take away from this is that it is not a bad thing to have a poor short-term memory, or to do 'poorly' on a baseline concussion test. It just means that you are too smart for frivolous thinking and your brain has better things to do with its time.


SPARRING GIVES YOU BRAIN DAMAGE

I would like to finish off with a bit of humor.

One of my coaches mentioned the other day that at one time he had a person in his gym that didn't want to spar because "sparring gives you brain damage".
Coach was not happy about that.
He said that if that was true, we would all have brain damage.
You know, he is right.
I have been sparring for six years and my IQ hasn't dropped. If anything it has made me stronger and more fit.

Boxing is good for you despite the bad apples.

Find out for yourself and give it a try.
The next entry will be my "Guide To Boxing In Toronto". It will give you a chance to study and explore options for boxing in the GTHA.

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--Paul 'The Brick' Brec, 2017 Golden Gloves Silver Medalist