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Opinion: A Bigger Health Risk than CTE?

Photo credit: Stephen Martinez

Editor’s note: The views and opinions expressed below are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Sherdog.com, its affiliates and sponsors or its parent company, Evolve Media.

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Look around at any MMA website or forum, and one would think that the only health risk to the sport was chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE. While it's a relatively new term, the idea that repeated blows to the head cause brain damage is a simple and obvious one, and has gone by different names since the 1920s, when it was called “punch drunk syndrome.