Opinion: A Bigger Health Risk than CTE?

Photo credit: Stephen Martinez

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Look around at any MMA website or forum, and one would think that the only health risk to the sport was chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE. While it's a relatively new term, the idea that repeated blows to the head cause brain damage is a simple and obvious one, and has gone by different names since the 1920s, when it was called “punch drunk syndrome.”

And yet, while it's a definite concern in MMA, I find the constant cries of “CTE!” any time a…