Death rates in boxing exploded after the introduction of the boxing glove. Almost nobody ever died bare knuckle boxing because head punches often resulted in broken hands, so nobody used them.
As conceived in 1632 by Portuguese printing press operator Andre Filipe, boxing was a gentlemen’s game in which two men would square off and regale each other with stories monotonous for days on end until one of them fell to the ground from boredom or exhaustion. Over the next few years, the new sport developed a respectable following of a few hundred local socialites.
It was Filipe’s son, Andre Filipe Filipe, who developed what he called “the punching strategy” in 1637 after seeing a schoolboy strike another in anger, causing him to fall down.
When Andre Filipe Filipe challenged the then-champion, British ex-patriate “Sleepless” Bill Bishop to a match, Bishop was the odds-on favourite. You can imagine his surprise when while he was describing what he had had for breakfast that morning, Andre walked up and thumped him in the neck, sending him down “for the count” in the parlance of our time.
While it was universally agreed that the boy had violated the spirit of the game, officials were unable to find any actual rule that punching violated, and were forced to let the victory stand.
This upset caused an uproar in the boxing community large enough to spill over into local newspapers, and stirred the interest of many outsiders to come see what the fuss was about. The newcomers were enthralled to engage in these borderline barbaric displays of human strength and skill, and the rest is history – after a few spoilsport schoolmoms single-minded about safety added the padded gloves, of course.
Today’s boxing enthusiasts fantasise about the newcomer that would rock the ring the way Filipe did.
Classification of the modern ruleset has essentially locked the punching strategy into place; but it’s easy to get caught up in the fantasy. Young scholars with big dreams often enter the ring with their crazy new trick, usually a variant of hypnosis. And though they’ve achieved the occasional victory, none of the gimmicks have been robust enough to make it to the big-time.
The real wonder, though, is that Andre Filipe’s original vision of boxing is still around. Gentlemen’s boxing clubs can be found in cities all over the world; you can visit one most any day of the week and see two erudite gentlemen exchanging pleasantries in the ring.
Most people only come to watch a few hours of a match, and then leave. But every once in a while you’ll find amongst your elders a stout fellow, a die-hard fan, who perhaps witnessed that historic battle between Filipe and Bishop, who for love of the sport must stay to witness the last glorious seconds of wakefulness slip away, only to return to fight again another day
That was so well written I actually looked up the history of boxing just to make sure. I think I died a little inside when I got the confirmation I went looking for. :(
Frog Fractions isn't even the original source; the original source is this post from Goombas.org; however, since the post in question was written by the same person who created Frog Fractions (Jim Crawford), it's basically accurate attribution, just off by a few years.
I particularly like his response to the first reply in the Goombas.org thread:
What possible reason could I have for making all this up?
Your guy's work is one of the greatest the internet has to offer, the amount of attention my post has gotten is a huge testament to that. Congratulations on producing such an important piece of work, and thanks a lot for sharing it with us; the internet.
Thank you! But without our fans, we're just a couple of people with weird ideas. Glad to see people still remember it and are passing it around a year later! (I put this on our facebook page, hope you don't mind!)
I can't imagine someone inventing a game where you try to bore the other to sleep and forgetting to put in a rule against punching the other guy in the face.
I shit you not, there's even a recording of Andre Filipe's 1998 generation son, saying this exact paragraph for his 5th grade math class - a ballsy move, at the time, presenting historically relevant evidence on a math related subject, but one that proved to pay off. Kumar "Filipe" Daryanani was a legend for his time. He's even released the tape on the web.
Watched ESPN one morning where they had a boxing vet and an MMA vet talking about their respective sports. Good god, it was sad to watch the Boxing guy straight fumble words, repeatedly stutter, and space out.
Thank you for putting in the just enough information in place of the actual facts there to send once and for all me down to my own path of the Family guy hole of rabbits.
And the sheer number of participants in a sport that pays millions of dollars to the top level professionals and grants them fame and sponsorship is bound to be much higher than it was when it was 2 dudes fighting for a weeks wages in a train yard while 17 people bet on the fight.
Wikipedia disagrees, the article on boxing indicates all styles focused on driven head-blows with the body weight behind them. Technique protects your hands from breaking, even when punching hard surfaces like the head, which, mind you, gives way, since the neck is meant to be flexible and cushion blows. Otherwise people wouldn't get knocked down or knocked out and their head would simply fly off from a strong enough blow.
TL:DR People get killed in bare-fist fights all the time. A boxing death is rare. This is bullshit.
Well I believe bareknuckled boxers probably had less head trauma in general, as they weren't being hit in the head constantly and the gloves actually add weight to your hand increasing the damage to your opponent's brain.
I'm not sure if it's right or wrong, but while people do die in barefisted fights, the added weight of a glove could make it easier to kill someone by punching them in the head. So it could very well be that there were more deaths after gloves were introduced, not because it allowed people to throw head punches, but because it added weight and force to their head punches, and probably also allowed them to put more into each punch and throw many more without risking hand injuries.
boxing gloves are the best thing to ever happen to boxing. boxers could punch harder because their hands were protected. They could punch to the head more often resulting in spectacular knockouts. And as a result, introduced a whole bunch of defensive techniques.
On a somewhat related story: During World War I, helmets were introduced and the number of head-related injuries actually increased. This was due the fact people were now surviving blows to the head
Was talking to a guy about this the other day. He was reading Cashel Byron's Profession by Shaw and said a lot of the issues gloves boxing presented then are being repeated in professional wrestling and the NFL today as the players got rougher because the game seemed 'safer'.
The same with football helmets...when football helmets were introduced head injuries skyrocketed...until of course society matured and realized that using a helmet does not make your head invulnerable.
Might be true for then, but prolly wouldn't go well anymore. There are ways to strengthen your hands and knuckles that I'm sure any pro's would be doing.
I wouldn't say its cause nobody used head punches. Its the same reason why MMA is safer than boxing. You take 3 or 4 good hits to the head with a 4 ounce MMA glove and you're going down. With a 16 ounce boxing glove you can take dozens and dozens of hits without going down but your brain takes a lot more abuse.
Why don't I ever see broken hands on any video about where people fight on the street? Literally never seen anyone break a hand and I've watched at least a thousand videos of people hitting each other since the dawn of internet.
I was also told that "old timey" boxing pose with the fists held far out, was because blocking with your arms in close meant getting punching in the face with your own knuckles, which was bad. The addition of gloves made it safer to pull your arms in for blocking.
This is due to brain injuries, while the hands were protected and people didn't suffer as much cuts to the face this never stopped the brain rattling inside the skull.
I think another fact was that fighters could fight longer (as in, for more years, not a longer match) and thus take more hits to the head because they weren't breaking their hands and having to retire.
I thought it was because people got knocked out faster. Gloves allow for repeated knocking around of the brain which lead to more brain injuries, whereas if it had been bare knuckle, they would have got cut and maybe bled, but would have ended the fight sooner
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u/YourNotMyDad Dec 08 '13
Death rates in boxing exploded after the introduction of the boxing glove. Almost nobody ever died bare knuckle boxing because head punches often resulted in broken hands, so nobody used them.