AJ urged to use special mouthguard against concussion

TEAM GB’s chief medical officer, Mike Loosemore has urged Anthony Joshua to tackle his concussion issues by using a new mouthguard. Much has been made of the concussion Joshua suffered in his defeat to Andy Ruiz Jr last June, with his coach, Rob McCracken facing criticism after he admitted he knew his heavyweight was concussed in the fight.

A new mouthguard developed by Sports & Wellbeing Analytics has a chip inserted which will be able to track the amount of blows to a fighter’s head. With Joshua set to take on Ruiz Jr again in December, Loosemore is hopeful the former unified champion will agree to use the mouthguard in his sparring ahead of the rematch. A new mouthguard can track the blows to a fighter’s head.

  ‘From a personal point of view, I’d like to get Anthony involved in using this,’ Loosemore told the Daily Mail. ‘The product is what we’ve been looking for, really. We’ve been looking for something where we can measure the real impact on the head. ‘I could see it being used in boxers’ sparring. If they take some heavy shots, you could call the sparring off for the day or you could rest them up for a couple of days or a week, or until they’ve made a recovery.

  Anthony Joshua’s attempts to slim down for rematch ‘It would give us a better idea of the concussive blows the boxer was taking during sparring because at the moment we have really no idea.

‘We haven’t had those discussions with Anthony yet so I can’t say whether he’d be interested or not but I’d like to get him involved.’ Joshua bases his training in Sheffield with his long-time coach, McCracken and the rest of the Team GB Boxing team, which includes Loosemore. Safety in boxing has again come to the forefront of the sport after four tragic deaths since July.

  Last week, American Patrick Day became the latest fighter to lose his life from injuries sustained in the ring after the deaths of Russian Maxim Dadashev, Argentina’s Hugo Santillan and Bulgaria’s Boris Stanchov.

  Loosemore believes the new mouthguard might even be used during fights to monitor how a boxer’s health is  in real time in the ring. ‘You may be able to get to the point where you can say, “He’s had a certain impact, therefore it’s time to stop the fight”,’ Loosemore said. ‘It could change the dynamics of the way the fight was measured because you’d be able to tell if someone was taking a lot of heavy impacts or if they’d taken a very hard impact.