ESPN.com tried to provide an answer when they assembled a panel of eight 'experts' - sports scientists, academicians, journalists and an athlete - to determine the most and least demanding sports. Each panelist ranked sixty sports on ten different categories/skills that go into athleticism:
ENDURANCE
STRENGTH
POWER
SPEED
AGILITY
FLEXIBILITY
NERVE
DURABILITY
HAND-EYE COORDINATION
ANALYTIC APTITUDE
The responses of the panelists were then totaled and averaged to arrive at a degree-of-difficulty number for each sport on a 1-to-100 scale. At the end of applying all that math and science to a question which can never be truly 'solved', guess what sport was deemed to be the toughest of all? You guessed it ... BOXING! Hard to argue with that conclusion as none of the other 59 sports on the list involve an opponent whose primary objective is to knock you unconscious . . .
Comments
Knew it all along and without using any math or science. Experience is the chief source of knowledge????
I don’t disagree with boxing being the toughest sport of all. However, some other rankings are downright crap! There’s no way that football is tougher than rugby, or basketball more than soccer, or volleyball more than racquetball/squash–and these are just a few examples!!!
I agree with boxing being toughest. I thought rugby and bull/horse rodeo riding were too low in ratings.
Boxing is definitely a tough sport, but no doubt Mixed Martial Arts(ultimate fighting) is tougher in every category.
Boxing rules!
I disagree that boxing is the toughest sport. I think that rodeo (bareback riding in particular) is the toughest. Cowboys in bareback riding, endure the most abuse on their bodies and takes a lot of strength, agility, speed, nerve, and heart to do. I think that its not ranked very high on the list because not that many people are educated about rodeo.
your panel of experts got a couple of things right, Boxing at #1 and fishing at #50 but the ignorance is undeniable, football and baseball rated above rugby leauge or rugby union? try a real contact sport that real men play without pads or helmets or taking a break every 15 seconds, try australian rules football for endurance, speed ,agility , strenghts ,flexabilty. Rodeo riding would have to be the sport that would take huge amounts of nerve strenght and a little bit of insanity, you guy are talkin toughest sports right? Baseball you might bat 3-4 times a game and if ya lucky you might throw it 5-6 times a game, the rest of the time you standing in one spot or getting spliters in your backside (good hand eye needed with a bit of strength and speed mabey)
you can fight a 200 pound with pads on your hand but try riding a bull that tries to kill you for 8 seconds. look, you can be the baddest guy on the block but if you never rode a bull you can’t talk. let’s see you try it and let me know what you think after that
No way rodeo is harder than boxing. 8 seconds? Really? Try 12 3minute rounds. And in alot of cases the opponent has literaly killed his the other guy so the comment on a bull with no brains trying to kill u in 5 seconds just makes no sense
Anyone who suggests that mma is harder than boxing is someone who-most likely-has drunk the mma cool aid and jumped on the mma bandwagon.
All mma is, is a professional arena for collegiate wrestlers, and jiu jitsu (scared of real fighting) because until the ufc and other organizations of that ilk, one did not exist.