How did Violence start in sports?

Answer 1

Violence has had a very long history in sports.

In fact, most early sports were very violent, the most extreme example being gladiatorial combat in ancient Rome, which was watched by large crowds.

In Imperial Japan, samurai were allowed to kill almost anybody they wanted to, though in practice codes of honour prevented them killing many people they were legally allowed to. In the West, though, with the advent of Christianity, violent sports were severely condemned and even popular recreational activities were seldom dangerous. Boxing, often thought of as the most violent and dangerous of all sports, was illegal in most European nations until the late nineteenth century - though it was practiced.

Only with the advent of liberal, often socialist academic culture on the one hand and the growth of a heavily unionised "logger" culture on the other did violence in sports really re-emerge as it existed in combat sports of ancient times. Gridiron in US colleges and ice hockey in Canada and later Scandinavia were the leaders of this newly violent sports culture. In many ways, as dangerous sports gridiron and ice hockey have remained in the vanguard, from the eighteen deaths in college gridiron in 1905 to Steve Tuttle slitting the throat of Buffalo Sabres' goalminder Clint Malarchuk in 1989.

However, probably as a result of protective equipment being widely accepted in the 1970s (as well as different incentives from changed playing conditions), violence in sports grew during that decade and the 1980s, as seen in the continuous short-pitched bowling of Clive Lloyd's West Indian sides in the formerly pastoral sport of cricket and the extreme violence of Mike Tyson in biting Evander Holyfield's ears.