Rewind: Dr. Charles Bernick

The adage has long been that mixed martial arts is safer than boxing. The oft-repeated idea is that when boxers are knocked down, they're given 10 seconds to stand back up and take more concussive blows. In MMA, in many cases, the fight is over shortly after a fighter hits the deck.

But the science is not bearing this out. As the long-term effects of concussions increasingly become a front-burner issue in sports, there has been a steady stream of new findings in brain health science that are particularly relevant to combat athletes. There's much more mystery than we thought behind why some fighters develop degenerative brain disease and some don't, and why it seems to drive some athletes to the brink of self-destruction.

Dr. Charles Bernick is heading up the Professional Fighters Brain Health Study at the Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health in Las Vegas. The study is looking at the brains of hundreds of fighters to identify when and how contact becomes a problem for fighters.

Bernick joins Jack Encarnacao tonight for a Sunday Sitdown chat on the Sherdog Radio Network "Rewind" to discuss the study, shed light on long-held assumptions about the affect of concussive blows on fighters, and why there is nothing safe about combat sports.

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