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I recently was thinking a lot about this when I switched sparring partners to someone who is much larger and more experienced with me and got my bell rung a couple times. So naturally I took a look through Slyvie's youtube among others and found this discussion to be useful. I think the thing that concerns me more than getting large blows is the repetitive "minor" blows you really rack up in sparring. Ive been experimenting with trying to keep a more playful attitude during sparring and communicating when a blow may be to hard, etc. This is difficult when you also want to be tough, but I like to think about this as strengthening my communication and self worth muscles. Also discussed in that clip is research on heavy gloves affecting head injury occurrence. I did find this anecdotal report of knock outs by punching increasing 10-fold after MMA required gloves. This is obviously for alot of reasons (fighters wanting to prevent hand injury, etc), but the point of getting hit with an added 16oz's of weight on the chin really makes sense to me. These are good things to think about. You can mitigate risks like you would riding a motor bike or driving a car, but in the end combat sports will be always be a risk that you have to weigh the benefits of.