I am aware they cover up and are trained, but some of those fighters have taken clean, straight shots and lived to tell the tale
In: Biology
You are greatly overestimating the lethality of a punch to the head, even by incredibly strong individuals.
Theoretically if prime of his career Mike Tyson were to train to produce life ending punches rather than match winning ones, this could be a different conversation. Hypothetically if he were to run and throw his entire body-weight behind a single undefended shot to someones temple, then you would probably have a much higher chance of killing someone with a single hit.
The kind of blows you are discussing are certainly dangerous and damage causing, but the risk of death in the short term from a blow of that caliber isn’t likely. Training and desensitivity are huge parts of why boxers can take punishing blows to the head and stay on their feet and fighting when many of us would be on the ground. Actually dying from a punch to the head is normally the result of rupturing vessels in the blood brain barrier. In normal healthy people the force required to burst those blood vessels is above what a human punch produces. Dying to a single punch to the head is more commonly a result of a very unlucky combination of an abnormally weak collection of blood vessels and an unfortunately precise blow hitting them in the right way to cause a rupture.
Boxers actually can suffer from weakened blood vessels as long careers of physical punishment can result in weakened arterial walls and leave them more prone to dangerous aneurysms. An experienced boxer would almost certainly take a most blows to the head and stay upright and coherent more so than someone inexperienced in getting punched. Boxers are also at higher risk than normal of having the kind of complications that can lead to fatal head injuries though, so when it comes to surviving powerful punches, being a boxer isn’t necessarily a benefit.
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