The Doggy Bag: The Lemonade Edition

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Last year saw many notable injuries in MMA, but 2012 has been insane so far. I started wondering, “What if this is just what the ‘new’ UFC looks like?’ Champions and big stars only fight one or two times a year now, but MMA has more ways to get hurt. There is such intense training between high-level fighters, with long training camps and big-fight buildups, that maybe this will be the rule instead of the exception. Maybe the most important trait of great MMA fighters in the future is not their wrestling or cardio but their ability to avoid injuries. -- Jacob from Stockholm

Brian Knapp, features editor: All major professional sports have issues keeping their superstars healthy, and it should come as no surprise that mixed martial arts has difficulty in that area. If anything, MMA will have to deal with it on a much wider scale, much like the NFL and the NHL, where violence is a central part of the sport. High-velocity impacts have their consequences.

Despite our advances in modern medicine, there is no real solution to this problem. With the stakes being what they are professionally and financially, fighters will continue to push the envelope in training and they will continue to injure themselves. No one can blame them for doing so, and no one can fault them for withdrawing from events if they believe they are injured badly enough. They have too much riding on it, and their livelihoods are far more important than whether or not we have an avenue through which to be entertained on a Friday or Saturday night.

The more pressing concern, I believe, is the schedule the Ultimate Fighting Championship now runs. With more than 30 events per year -- nearly three a month -- it does not give matchmakers much flexibility when it comes to finding suitable replacements for fighters who are injured, particularly at the highest levels. We witnessed that most recently when the notoriously brittle Vitor Belfort went down with a hand injury, forcing him to exit his UFC 147 headliner against Wanderlei Silva. Yes, former middleweight champion Rich Franklin stepped in on short notice and cemented his place as the ultimate company man, but Silva-Franklin 2 just does not have the same ring to it.

I wish I had an answer for you, Jacob. If I did, I would be a rich man. However, the UFC has no plans to slow down in terms of scheduling, and every human body is designed differently; some can simply withstand more abuse than others. Unfortunately, durability is not something one can develop. Bones break. Brains rattle. Muscles, tendons and ligaments tear. Perhaps someday science will devise a remedy. Until then, MMA, like all other sports, has to play the hand it has been dealt.