Six-time national boxing champ Kenny Lally is taking some time to recover after his bronze-medal performance at the Pan-Am Games.
Lally took home quite a few cuts and scrapes, as boxers competed without headgear for the first time since the 1980’s.
Officials decided to do away with headgear to reduce concussions and increase athlete peripheral vision, but Lally isn’t totally buying into the reasoning.
“I’ve heard a lot of stuff about how it’s safer without the headgear, and that’s a bunch of crap,. There’s no way it is,” says Lally, “You get rapid punches around the head, you’re more susceptible to cuts… They say it makes fighters fight smarter- which we do- but when you get hit, you take a lot more damage.”
The international bantamweight boxer did not that he wouldn’t go back to fighting with the headgear.
“I like it without the headgear. You feel more free and it’s better for the fans, but at the same time, my first 104 fights were with the headgear on, and the transition is a little bit tough.”
The 26-year-old has also withdrawn from this weekend’s Continental Boxing Championships in Venezuela, but says injuries aren’t a driving factor in the decision.
“It wasn’t so much the injuries, I was just burnt out. I had been training for six months for the Pan-Am, and when I tried to go back to the gym, I was just hitting the bag and the fire wasn’t there.”
Lally will still try to crack Canada’s Olympic roster for next year’s Summer Games in Rio.
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