Ancient Roman boxing gloves unearthed

Wow, what an archeological find. Discovered at Vindolanda fort on Hadrian's Wall.

Two pairs were discovered, one was stuffed with padding much like today's gloves (though they only covered the knuckle).

The other pair was filled with hard leather coils (:o for sparring!)

Apparently they know they were sparring gloves because fighting gloves all had metal (!) inserts in them.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-tyne-43120942

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-tyne-43120942

Actually, it wasn't two complete pairs - it was one glove each from a mismatched pair.

Bloody fascinating all this stuff

Waiting for the punch line.....

;D

No punchline ..... I'm genuinely interested in this

Margarito has been looking all over the place for these.

As this is X and he firmly believes in boxing starting 1900's it is Jack Dempsey's when he used it against Jess Willard.