Darn right you can have an injury to the rib from a jab. We had it happen just a few weeks ago to one of our pro fighters who was letting an older teen do some sparring with him. The pro admitted he was being laid back, getting lazy and not paying attention when the kid landed a jab to his side and actually fractured two ribs. The freaky thing was this kid had no punching power ...but for that one time, he actually got the balance, the shift, and put the proper weight into a proper punch. It happened so fast, we thought the pro was kidding about being hurt.

Once we had another pro fighter playing around with a 14 year old and got into that "Rocky" stupidity of taking his hands down and letting the kid hit him in the face saying "that don't hurt at all" and "is that all you got". Then the kid connected jurt right with his chin and actually knocked him out. Now the fighter has to endure the ribbing of being punched out by a kid.

Lesson learned: Freaky things can happen.