Women's Boxing Added to 2012 Olympic Programme

The International Olympic Committee has announced the addition of women's boxing to the roster for London 2012. Boxing was the final Olympic sport that was not open to female athletes.
I am a little bit torn regarding how I feel about the news. On the one hand, I believe in equality between the sexes, so if men's boxing is included then I believe that women's should be too. This is presumably the reason that led to the IOC's decision; once they were satisfied that women's boxing had reached a reasonable standard of professionalism they no longer had any reason to exclude it.
On the other hand, I am not completey comfortable with the presence of boxing of either gender in any sporting competition, due to the inherent violence of boxing. There are, of course, other violent sports. The various martial arts are obvious examples, and rugby and other contact sports too. But boxing stands alone (I believe, please correct me if I am wrong) in actually rewarding physical damage to one's opponent. The aim of the sport is to knock your opponent unconscious, which in a non-sporting context would be considered serious assault. According to Dr Bill Glasson, president of the Australian Medical Association: "Boxing is not a sport; it is organised violence [...] "The object of boxing is to cause maximum physical harm to your opponent." In my opinion, the inclusion of boxing in the Olympics at all should be questioned, given the stated goal of the Olympic Movement: "to contribute to building a peaceful and better world."

But does boxing really have to be so violent? As I mentioned earlier, boxing is not the only intrinsically violent sport. But other fighting sports have adapted rules for competitive purposes (as opposed to violent purposes). Fencing is a pretty good example of a sport that originated as a means to harm one's opponent, and has evolved into a very non-violent activity. The martial arts, also, are less about causing injury and more about scoring points than their street versions. Boxing already has a points component to it, if a knockout doesn't occur then the winner is decided by points. Could boxing be modified and modernised in a similar way to other fighting sports, without ruining the sport in the process? I imagine that boxing purists would argue that the violence is an intrinsic aspect of the sport (any boxing fans out there please comment!). But I think that a more points-based system could work for boxing. I propose a system along the following lines:

• Get rid of knockouts. Obviously a knockout would still end the match, but it should not be an automatic win for the boxer left standing. 
• Give competitors good head protection so that knockouts are less likely to occur.
  
• Change the scoring system so that hits to the body are weighted higher than hits to the head.

Technology could assist in the transition. Instrumented clothing could provide an unbiased score count that could help to avoid some of the problems with the existing system, and reduce the occurence of controversial outcomes such as Pacquiao v. Marquezin last year, for example. This fight led one sports writer to comment: "The ultimate irony of boxing, the manliest* and most decisive of sports, is that when no knockout is recorded it ends with the subjective assessment of three arbitrarily chosen delegates. But that’s the concession we make with civilization, because the only other alternative is a fight to the death." Instrumented clothing would be nicer way around the "arbitrarily" chosen judges than a fight to the death, in my opinion! Perhaps it could even lead to a faster, more skillful version of the sport, as boxers would not be limited to a maximum of one hit per second (the maximum rate at which judges can attribute points).

As I mentioned, I doubt that the proposal would be popular amongst boxing enthusiasts, but in my opinion changes along these lines are necessary if the sport is to continue into the future.

*This is a bit of an unfortunate choice of word, given the topic of today's post!