Sex Differences in Injury, Stoppage and Concussion Rates in Amateur and Olympic-Style Boxing

The medical question

Do injury, stoppage and concussion rates differ between women and men in amateur boxing?

The Fight Medicine Research Institute uses this evidence to frame questions about how injuries, stoppages and concussions are recorded for women and men, and about rules on protective equipment. The review’s small evidence base determines which questions it can inform.

Summary

A systematic review and meta-analysis asking whether injury, stoppage and concussion rates differ between women and men in amateur and Olympic-style boxing.

What the work reports

• The review searched PubMed/MEDLINE and Consensus on 29 September 2026 and found four eligible studies, all International Olympic Committee injury-surveillance cohorts. Sex-specific boxing data were available from the published text of two.
• At London 2012, where women and men both wore headguards, 7 of 36 women (19.4%) and 18 of 247 men (7.3%) had a medical-attention injury (risk ratio 2.67, 95% CI 1.20 to 5.94). At Tokyo 2020, where men boxed without headguards and women with them, the reported risk ratio was 0.43 (0.24 to 0.75).
• The review reports that the pooled estimate was not interpretable and that no eligible study reported stoppages, diagnosed concussion, lacerations, fractures or neurocognitive change by sex. It rates the certainty of the evidence as very low.

Limits to keep in mind

• Sex-specific boxing data came from two cohorts only, and the review rates the certainty of the evidence as very low.
• The source states that screening and data extraction were done by a single reviewer with verification, and that the review was not registered.
• The publisher’s page gives conflicting statements about peer review. They are recorded under Source issues recorded.

Source issues recorded

• The publisher’s page labels this work “Peer reviewed” and a “Version of Record”, and its record says it was peer reviewed by multiple independent reviewers. The same page also says “This preprint has not been peer reviewed” and calls the PDF “the complete 14-page preprint”. Fight Medicine Research Institute has not established which statement is correct.

Publication status and notices

Peer reviewed, as stated by the publisher; the same page also calls the work a preprint. The publisher’s record and its Crossref deposit label the work a Version of Record, and the record states that it was peer reviewed by multiple independent reviewers whose identities are confidential. The same page also states “This preprint has not been peer reviewed.” Fight Medicine Research Institute reports both statements and has not examined the review process.

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 when this record was checked.

Fight Medicine Research Institute contribution

Fight Medicine Research Institute catalogued this work, prepared an original summary, verified its bibliographic details against the publisher’s record and Crossref, and maintains the associated citation record. The work was written and published outside the Fight Medicine Research Institute. Its deposited author affiliation is the Alabama Athletic Commission.

PDF files

Article details

Relationship

Related-party work catalogued by the Fight Medicine Research Institute. The original authors, publisher and DOI are unchanged.

Landing page

The DOI resolves to the publisher’s page for this work: https://combatsports.searspublishing.net/articles/csx-004/

Published online

29 September 2026

Date used here

29 September 2026 (Publisher’s record and its Crossref deposit)

Rights

All rights reserved. The publisher holds the copyright. Fight Medicine Research Institute links to the work and does not reproduce its text, abstract, tables or figures. Publisher’s rights statement.

Source check

12 November 2026, against Publisher’s record and Crossref. 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 source declares that the author is a commissioner of the Alabama Athletic Commission and chairs three of its committees, operates the company that publishes the work, and has no financial competing interests. It states that no funding was received and that an LLM or AI model assisted in producing the article.

Catalog

CSX-004, added 12 November 2026

Cite the original work

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

Casey C. Sears. Sex Differences in Injury, Stoppage and Concussion Rates in Amateur and Olympic-Style Boxing: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis. Combat Sports Regulation and Science, Report No. CSX-004. Version 1.0. 14 pages. https://doi.org/10.67999/csx.004

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Related on this website

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