Concussions. You know where this is going. Another NFL player just shot himself in the heart, so that the NFL could analyze his brain and all the trauma and protein breakdown that concussions caused. This guy was smart, something like an Academic All-American, and his life fell apart, marriage, job, everything, because of the breakdown of proteins in his brain.

Good story: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/20...

Somebody just wrote me about sparring, about going home at night with a headache, not being able to sleep. That is a concussion. Take at least two weeks off. The experts are starting to think that it's not necessarily the concussion but the repeated trauma that is really damaging. Everybody I know who played high school football has at least one game where they don't remember half the game, and kept playing, and "had a great half!"

Definitely in sparring, you get dropped, you want to get up and fight through it. Get back in there, I'm not a pussy.

All I am going to say is, unless you think you can be champ, don't go pro. Unless you think you have a legitimate shot at being Champion of the World, do not turn pro. It's not worth it. Sparring is wonderful and critically important, but it's also important to know when to stop or lay off for a few months. Professional boxers don't spar every day. They spar in preparation for a fight, and usually a fixed number of rounds, 40 rounds, 50 rounds, whatever, over an 8 week camp. MMA guys will spar hard for 10, 12 rounds twice a week for years, and that's just way too much.

Spar sparingly, I guess…