Brilliant BRILLIANT article about the history and origins of Boxing

Every fight fan should take the time to read this :cool:

This is easily the most in depth and informative boxing article i have ever read.... it's like a book!


The History Of BKB - THE HISTORY OF BAREKNUCKLE BOXING

Thanks for that Smash. Great read.

It's funny because, for the longest time, I've thought that boxing (or prizefighting) is as much at home in a circus tent as it is in an arena.

I personally think that some of the smaller fights over here would have a much better feel if they were contested under a circus tent than in some baron leisure/ shopping centre :cool:

The writer of this fight seriously captures the brutality of this fight!!


Hickman generally stood with his back to me; but in the scuffle, he had changed positions, and Neate just then made a tremendous lunge at him, and hit him full in the face. It was doubtful whether he would fall backwards or forwards; he hung suspended for about a second or two, and then fell back, throwing his hands in the air, and with his face lifted up to the sky. I never saw anything more terrific than his aspect just before he fell. All traces of life, of natural expression, were gone from him.
His face was like a human skull, a death's head, spouting blood. The eyes were filled with blood, the nose streamed with blood, the mouth gaped blood. He was not like an actual man, but like a preternatural, spectral appearance, or like
one of the figures in Dante's "Inferno." Yet he fought on after this for several rounds, still striking the first desperate blow, and Neate standing on the defensive, and using the same cautious guard to the last, as if he had still all his work to do; and it was not till the Gas-man was so stunned in the seventeenth or eighteenth round,

How did the bare knuckle fighters have long careers because their hands must have been prone to injury?

People back then had none of lifes comforts like we do.
Tougher lifes = Tougher harder people.
I think a lot of them were given alcohol between rounds too which would have helped numb the pain and one fighter the legendary Daniel Mendoza was said to have trained by punching tree trunks to harden his fists, I've read lots of different stories from various sources that back that up ;)

Also so many phrases we associate with boxing and everyday life today date back 100s of years.

Purse stakes
Seconds
Toeing the line
Up to scratch

The bit about Romans at the start takes the biscuit in the nutter dpt.

Sat facing each other on a stone trading blows until one was beaten to death hahaha... they then sped up the fights by giving them spiked metal on the gloves so they could kill the other guy faster :)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by smashup

The bit about Romans at the start takes the biscuit in the nutter dpt.

Sat facing each other on a stone trading blows until one was beaten to death hahaha... they then sped up the fights by giving them spiked metal on the gloves so they could kill the other guy faster :)

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I bet they did not have long careers.

Next they fought bears and lions.