Gus Kenworthy Quotes

I want to leave this sport with a little bit of my brains left.

I know if I don't look after myself, I will be talking to you in a couple of years' time mumbling my words and slurring. It won't be because I am drunk: it will be the fighting, taking blow after blow to the brain. That scares me. I don't worry about being killed in the ring; it's losing my mind that I fear.

I forget a lot of things sometimes. I'm not one to sit here and complain. While I did not know the severity of what continuous head traumas could do to an individual and the mind and so forth, I'm not going to sit here and complain.

For some reason, I have a thick skull.

I, for one, refuse to box without headgear as an amateur. With the rising awareness of concussions and head injury, it is becoming more evident that we need to protect our brains as much as possible. There hasn't been enough research to conclude that it is safer to box without the use of headgear.

I'm not in the business to get hit and take concussions.

I think the one thing I can say is not to play through concussions. I think that's unwise.

I do not like getting hit. I can take a hit, but I don't want to damage my brain if I don't have to.

The more studies that come out that talk about concussions and so forth, it makes me wonder. I wonder, more importantly than the stroke, the impact that concussions have had on my life, particularly as I get older.

There are the medical dangers of football in general caused by head trauma over repetitive hits.

Athletes, coaches and parents today are increasingly aware of the danger of concussion, and this awareness influences decisions about buying new and reconditioned football helmets.

Sometimes a great wound or concussion of the head, especially which happens by falling headlong from an high place, brings a prejudice and weakness to the animal faculty, dulling the understanding.

It's a part of football, you get concussed, you gotta keep on playing. You can't get afraid to go across the middle any more than you were at the beginning.

For me, concussion response is pure common sense. We can all probably handle a few mild concussions. I have had at least three, and despite my detractors' opinions, I am mentally and physically fine.

I want to exit from this sport with my head intact.

It makes common sense that children, whose brains are rapidly developing, should not be hitting their heads hundreds of times per season.

Sometimes I wake up and I think, where did my memory go? But at the same time, I signed up for it. Football has been like that for a long time, for ages.

When you have a concussion, one of the symptoms that is common is anxiety. Imagine having the normal amount of anxieties that everybody shares - about life and meeting people in social spaces, whatever. Imagine that being multiplied by 10, 20. And so your worry over people's perceptions of you multiplies.

In boxing, you've got CTE from head trauma constantly.

If chronic bashing of the head could destroy a boxer's brain, couldn't it also destroy a football player's brain? Surely someone in the history of football had thought to look for dementia pugilistica. Unlike boxers, football players wear helmets, but a helmet can't fully protect the head from damaging impact.

I had a headache for four days after the first Haye fight. I didn't tell anyone, I just went to bed and thought it would go. But for four days it remained. Then I got my brain scan before the second fight, and I was worried when I went for it.

I would bet you that even though people think I absorbed an inordinate number of head injuries, I'd say relative to the number of guys who have played this game, I would say that my head injuries were relatively small.

One of the wonderful things about wrestling, to me, is that you can protect people who have had head injuries.

I can go and fight, take one punch, and have a concussion and start having issues with it, or I can wrestle my entire career and never have a concussion. It's just a hazard of the business.

The thing you don't realise is that every time you head the ball, your brain shakes. Every single time. Have you ever headed a ball badly and seen stars for a couple of seconds? That's your brain shaking. Let's be honest: that can't be healthy, can it?