Nothing in life is straightforward, however straight you run. The concept of freedom and personal choice should be the exception, but there is always a line where it isn’t anymore.
If I bought a Ferrari and decided to drive it straight into a tree, that’s freedom of choice right? And it’s also freedom of choice if I decide to call that motor sport, right?
Well, no. The freedom to choose is just one side of a coin. Because that freedom exists with corresponding responsibilities and expectations. For actions have consequences.
While I indeed might be free – especially on private property – to drive that Ferrari into a tree, it’s society that would be left to literally pick up the pieces of what would remain of me.
It’s within this context that one must assess the social media juggernaut that is Run It Straight.
Is “running it” a sport? Hardly, if skill and technique count for anything. The lineage of the activity seems to be the marriage of tackle bullrush* and jousting without lances. (*For those under 40, bullrush was a simple game played across every playground in Sydney every day in the 1970-80s where you had to evade your opponents to make it to the other side of the playground.)
Andrew Alauni (black shirt) competes at a Run It Straight event.Credit: @Runitstraight24 / Instagram
The activity appears uncomplicated enough: two competitors stand 40 or so metres apart, facing one another; one person holds a football (though it’s unclear why); a green light flashes, and the opponents sprint at each other until they collide. Like crash-test dummies inside a Ferrari smashing into a tree.
The core objective seems to be geared around inflicting as much pain, physical damage and brain-rattling harm on your opponent as possible. Apparently, the winner is the last man standing, through knockout or sheer physical dominance – basically, how badly you can smash someone. Neither skill nor finesse has relevance.
And yet social media is lit up as, too, are the antennae of ambulance-chasing lawyers. Run It Straight competitions take place as organised and ticketed events, which have also inspired impromptu gatherings in the streets of Sydney and even on the hill at Brookvale Oval.
The concept of freedom and personal choice shouldn’t be the exception, and governments can’t always legislate against every variant of idiocy, but “running it straight” is dangerous. Car manufacturers use crash test dummies, as opposed to real people, for a reason.
Some poor kid in New Zealand has died already, apparently during an impromptu event that wasn’t organised by anyone, and therefore had no rules and no safety measures at all.
I come at all this from the context that I am the chairman of the Combat Sports Authority of NSW. The authority is bestowed with the statutory power, and responsibility, to regulate sports including boxing, kickboxing and mixed martial arts, insofar as those sports occur within the state. Put simply, the legal responsibility to make unsafe sports as safe as they can be.
That’s a heavy burden. Boxing can be very dangerous. There will be an incalculable number of amateur and professional bouts around the world during 2025 and there will be fighters somewhere, sometime this year, who will not come home after a bout. Run It Straight is no safer.
John Graham Chambers wrote the Marquess of Queensberry Rules for boxing in the late 1860s and they remain the basis for the sport today. Though the Queensbury Rules didn’t conceive of boxing, they organised and codified the sport.
If Chambers and the Marquess of Queensberry lived on modern times, boxing as a codified sport wouldn’t exist. If before yesterday, nobody had ever conceived of a sport consisting of two opponents strapping on gloves and climbing inside the ring to slug it out, it wouldn’t get off the ground as a legitimate pursuit. Because society in 2025 wouldn’t countenance that nascent sport’s existence. And yet here we are in 2025, and Run It Straight is a thing …
But boxing does exist despite sections of society wishing it didn’t. And that’s the prism through which Run It Straight must be analysed. Despite the social media firestorm, variants of the activity have taken place for many years, especially in Pasifika communities. But that doesn’t mean freedom and anarchy should reign.
Should boxing be banned because it’s too dangerous? Absolutely NOT. That’d be outright ridiculous, just like banning almost anything proves to be. Look what happened when the NSW Government attempted to ban greyhound racing a decade ago. For many of its participants boxing contributes much to ensuring a positive focus and useful direction in life, in circumstances where they have otherwise been dealt sevens and twos.
Maybe Run It Straight does, too. But that doesn’t mean it should exist unregulated. Are organised duels next?
While trite to highlight, the archetypal boxer knows of the risks associated with partaking in the sweet science and voluntarily assumes them. So does the Run It Straight-er. The difference, though, is that boxing is regulated; it has systems, checks and guardrails.
Great responsibility rests upon the shoulders of boxing’s regulators, to ensure the health and safety of combatants. The best example is this: in any circumstances where a combatant in NSW loses a bout, either by knockout or TKO, they’re automatically suspended for the next 30 days. No exceptions. That’s been the rule in NSW for years, in circumstances where not every TKO results in a diagnosed concussion for the combatant.
Should the same fighter go on to lose their next bout by either of those same methods, they’re suspended for another 60 days. Should they then suffer defeat in their next comeback match the same way, another 90 days outside the ropes is mandatory, in addition to requirements that they submit to medical and diagnostic testing.
Conversely, Run It Straight is a catastrophic car crash waiting to happen. Organisations like Run It Straight Championships and Run It Straight 24, each of which run planned, ticketed and promoted, prizemoney-based competitions, have no discernible rules.
There’s also no medical pre-contest screenings; no concussion protocols; no doctors in the same postcode and no identifiable risk management strategies.
No ambulances waiting nearby; no evacuation plans to get someone to the emergency department swiftly, and no insurance because in all likelihood the risks are so magnificent they’re uninsurable unless you have access to that shipping container full of cash.
Instead, there’s just the social media law-of-the-jungle mentality melded with the brutality of Mad Max’s Thunderdome. And that’s not enough.
