Incidence of Health Problems in Australian Mixed Martial Arts and Muay Thai Competitors

The medical question

Which injuries and illnesses do fighters report after competition, and where does medical care need stronger evidence?

The Fight Medicine Research Institute uses this evidence to frame questions about injury and illness in the weeks after a bout, time away from training and follow-up care. The health problems counted, the exposure definition, the response rate and the follow-up period determine which questions it can inform.

Summary

Seven days after competing, athletes reported at least one health problem in 39% of 238 questionnaire responses, and the worst problems lasted a median of 17 days among those followed up.

What the work reports

• Competitors at 26 mixed martial arts and Muay Thai events in Western Australia between August 2022 and November 2023 were sent an online questionnaire about health problems five to seven days after competing, and those who reported a problem were followed weekly until their worst problem resolved.
• 175 of 459 potential participants (38%) gave 238 responses, and 92 responses reported a total of 411 health problems (315 injuries and 96 illnesses). This gave 20.1 health problems per 100 minutes of exposure in mixed martial arts (95% CI 16.5 to 24.4) and 25.0 in Muay Thai (95% CI 22.3 to 28.0), and the worst problems affected athletes for a median of 20 days in mixed martial arts and 16 days in Muay Thai.
• The authors conclude that health problems after competition were frequent, that most of the worst ones resolved within three weeks, and that illness made up almost a quarter of the problems reported.

Limits to keep in mind

• Only 175 of 459 potential participants (38%) took part, and the authors say those who did not may differ from those who did.
• All health problems were reported by the athletes themselves and were not checked against medical records.
• 27 respondents dropped out before their worst problem resolved, which the authors say may lead to an underestimate of its impact.
• The findings cover competition and not training, the article has no data on competitive level or protective equipment, and the authors could not confirm that every problem was correctly classed as injury or illness.

Source issues recorded

• The Results give participation as 175 of 459 potential participants (38%). The limitations section gives the response rate as 39%. This record uses the Results figure.
• Crossref and Europe PMC place the article in volume 11, issue 1. The article itself prints only the volume and the article number (11:60).

Publication status and notices

Published in Sports Medicine - Open, a peer-reviewed journal. Original research article in Sports Medicine - Open.

Form of this work: Version of record. The version of record is the final article as issued by its publisher.

No correction or retraction notice was found in Crossref or Europe PMC when this record was checked.

Fight Medicine Research Institute contribution

Fight Medicine Research Institute selected and catalogued this study, prepared an original research summary and a narrative review, verified its bibliographic details, and maintains the associated citation record. It holds an unmodified copy of the published article under the article’s licence.

PDF files

Article details

Relationship

External research catalogued by the Fight Medicine Research Institute. The original authors, journal and DOI are unchanged.

Published online

28 May 2025

Repository date

28 May 2025 (Europe PMC first-publication date)

Date used here

28 May 2025 (Crossref publisher deposit, online publication date)

Rights

CC BY 4.0. Open access under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0), as stated by the publisher. The summary on this page is Fight Medicine Research Institute’s own wording. An unmodified copy of the published article is held on this website under this licence. Licence terms.

Source check

12 November 2026, against PubMed Central full text, Crossref and Europe PMC. Checked under the direction of Casey C. Sears, Founder. An LLM was utilized as a research tool with direct human oversight.

Appraisal

The check covered bibliographic details, links, licence and notices. It is not a formal critical appraisal of the full paper.

Clinical review

None. This record is a research summary, not clinical education.

Funding and conflicts

The article states that the work was funded by a research grant from the Western Australia Combat Sports Commission, which also supports the first author’s PhD scholarship, and by an Australian Government Research Training Program Scholarship, and that the funders had no role in the study. The authors declare no competing interests directly relevant to the article, and the Methods note that two authors have close ties to the combat sports community.

Catalog

FH-041, added 12 November 2026

Cite the original work

These files cite the work by its own authors, journal and DOI. Fight Medicine Research Institute appears only in a note, as curator of this catalog page.

Colin S Doherty, Oliver R Barley, Lauren V Fortington. Incidence of Health Problems in Australian Mixed Martial Arts and Muay Thai Competitors: A 14-Month Study of 26 Combat Sports Events. Sports Medicine - Open. 2025;11(1):60. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40798-025-00880-3

Copy citationRISBibTeXCSL JSONEndNote

Related on this website

• Fighter Health: Injury surveillance in boxing, MMA and bare-knuckle fighting