Re: does numbing your hands gives advantage in actual boxing fight?
It doesn't give you any advantage you wouldn't have if you spent time waiting for the injury to heal and fought without it. The situation as its usually presented is, you call the fight off/postpone till you're fully healed and get the ok from the doc to commence sparring and finish up the last phase of your training...till then you keep your cardio up and diet...or numb your hands and get get some cortizone injections or other anti inflamatory that will allow you to fight the night of the scheduled fight and not blow the whole promotion the (non refundable money invested, tickets printed, venue reserved, your training, your opponents training, etc). If its legal where you're fighting, its not a hard decision for most.
It doesnt make you throw punches any harder, faster or further than you would without an injury. It doesn't allow you to pack on more muscle or enhance any ability other than to fight through pain that was there before the fight started. Their hands are numb as injections are local to the side of the injury, not their whole body. The author of the vid is entitled to his opinions, but I doubt it gives anyone the idea that they can go out there with this aura that theyre are indestructible. You're not throwing any harder than you would had you not been injured. If youre opponent drops their hand low after shooting a jab, you're already countering as a reflex.. youre not thinking "ok ..i'll only throw this one at 50% because of my hand" or "I can punch through walls now!!! so die b@stard!" its already out there and you probably won't even realize how hard you threw it until it lands and you're feeling the sting.
Personally, I liked the feeling in my hands when I connected. The lighter the padding, the better. But I also used to punch things out of anger before boxing and kick boxing...and some of my knuckles are deformed from some of the micro breaks...Even though I've had a fracture or two in a few fingers, my hands were never really brittle, and even less so now as the bone became more dense. For someone like Floyd that has brittle hands and has been wearing gloves his whole life, the pain and injuries can be a chronic problem... Less of a problem since Garcia started wrapping his hands, but before that I remember Floyd having a knockdown registered against him because the pain was so severe from punching another fighter with a fractured metacarpal, that he doubled over and his glove touched the canvas. Had he been treated on the spot with any of these drugs, he might have been able to punch after they took effect, but he still would have felt it. I have lower back problems now and if i reinjure it, I sometimes have to take anti inflammatories and walk with a cane just to get through a day at my desk. When I am move the wrong way or am positioned in a way in which my spine is compacted, I don't feel the pain, but theres a buzz. Its like your body is screaming but its muffled. Where I normally would get a sharp pain that would buckle me at the knees, I feel a dull ache that makes me wince a little but its bareable.
Numbing your hands won't numb your whole body, and definitely won't save your brain from bouncing off the walls of your skull if you get clipped.
They want your @$$ beat because upsets make news. News brings about excitement, excitement brings about ratings. The objective is to bring you up to the tower and tear your @$$ down. And if you don't believe that, you're crazy.
Roy Jones, Jr. "What I've Learned," Esquire 2003
Bookmarks