Boxing safer than Bare Knuckle Boxing?
Boxing has a very old history stretching back to the ancient Greeks and Romans. Boxing originated from other combat and fighting sports that were prominent at the time. During those ancient times, boxing and other fighting sports were very brutal and often went on till the death of one of the participants. Over the years boxing evolved to become the massive spectacle it is today. Boxing fans today fill arenas and cheer wildly for their favourite contestant and boxers are paid millions of dollars to compete. One of the most interesting forms of boxing remains bare knuckle boxing and contrary to what people think it is a lot less brutal than boxing with gloves is.
It is said the first proper boxing match to be sanctioned was done in 1681 in England when the Duke of Albemarle set up a fight between his butler and his butcher. That must have been an interesting contest. Over the years, in England bare knuckle boxing became very popular with many fights taking place in arenas all across the country.
The sport remained very violent and brutal until the year 1743 when Jack Boughton, who was also known as the father of boxing, wrote the first set of rules for the sport after a fight when he killed an opponent. The biggest change to the sport came when John Sholto Douglass, in 1865, wrote a new set of rules which changed the format of the sport to resemble very closely what it is today. The new rules had three minute rounds and brought about the use of boxing gloves.
We want to stay in the time period before gloves were introduced to the sport. The first person to really make bare knuckle boxing popular was James Figg. This Englishman opened the first bare knuckle boxing school and turned the sport of boxing into one that relied on punches solely rather than on wrestling, punching, and kicking. His school was a very popular one and produced many fine students and even John Sholto Douglass was a student at Figg’s school. Even though Figg was a prominent bare knuckle boxer, he was also the first boxing coach and fight promoter that the sport had seen.
There were many reasons for the emergence of bare knuckle boxing in England. It was seen as a very masculine sport to take part in and affirmed masculine traditions. It was also associated with courage, risk taking and gallantry and it was seen as protecting old world traditions that were under attack from new age beliefs such as thrift, humanitarianism and self control. The sport was interesting because although some saw it as a lower class activity, it was actually watched and had fans among the aristocracy and the upper classes as well. Soon though the sport fell out of favour in England but was later resurrected in America amongst the immigrant class of the country. Immigrants would get together and bet on the best bare knuckle fighter around. Slowly the sport spread and similar rules to the ones used in England were introduced and bare knuckle boxing was pushed into the underground. That is where it can be found today.
Today because of the unfounded fear that bare knuckle boxing is more brutal than regular gloved boxing, bare knuckle fights can only be found in illegal unsanctioned fights. Recently two MMA fighters, Kimbo Slice and Sean Gannon, took part in an underground street fight that left Kimbo unconscious for the first time in his career. The sport of bare knuckle boxing can also be found in countries such as Thailand and Burma where the rules and regulations of boxing are not easily enforceable.
A lot of research has been done into the brutality of boxing and fighting. What is interesting is the fact that it seems gloved boxing is a lot more brutal than bare knuckle boxing. In the early days of boxing huge metal gloves were worn by boxers which also sometimes had spikes attached to them. The modern form of boxing revives this tradition although with softer gloves and no spikes. In bare knuckle boxing people were reluctant to land too many head shots to their opponent because the impact would also damage their own hands. This aspect of hurting oneself is not there in gloved boxing as boxers only aim for the head now and repeated shots to the head often result in brain damage and other related head injuries for boxers. When they did not wear gloves and had bare hands to fight with, more boxers took care not to injure themselves in a bout. In this regard, bare knuckle boxing, it seems, was safer than gloved boxing.
Whether readers feel gloved boxing is safer or bare knuckle boxing is safer, it is up to them to come up with their own reasoning. Boxing will remain the hugely popular and profitable sport that it is and we should not wait for a resurgence of bare knuckle boxing to occur anytime soon.
Tags: