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Comment by fdanconia | Hacker News Reader

I've read that bare knucke boxing has lower death rates compared to traditional boxing due to the addition of gloves.

FORCE = MASS X ACCELERATION.

The extra mass is something the skull and brain cannot take. Also, the protection of the weapon (hands) assures fights go on linger than in bare knucke boxing. There is conflicting evidence however.

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The point of boxing gloves is to protect your hands, not your opponent's brain. Hands aren't meant for punching, and repeatedly smacking them with great force into the hard skull of your opponent can easily damage them.

I suspect bare knuckle boxing is less satisfying (and thus less popular) because fights can end merely because one person can no longer effectively attack, rather than when one person is conclusively defeated by being knocked out. The KO is always the most widely satisfying finish in boxing and MMA.

> Hands aren't meant for punching

Actually...

http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-human-fi...

Very interesting. That's a hypothesis from just last year that doesn't yet have widespread scientific support though, so the jury's now out.

They are less satisfying, but not for that reason so much.

Bare-knuckle fights can go on for a long, long time. I can't find the source just now, but I recall some fights went on for up to 24 hours.

That doesn't televise well.

Not quite. When your hands are not protected you avoid hitting hard stuff.

Gloves allow head blows. Now the human body's ability to take blunt force damage is very high, when not hitting the balls or the head. So you get longer and not as spectacular fights.

Same with professional football compared to rugby of old. (although it seems rugby after 90s have similar problems after the sport tried to become more spectacular).

The explanation I heard for that is that a bare knuckle boxer would be a fool to aim for his opponent's skull, as it would more likely break their hand than knock out their opponent (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boxer's_fracture)

There is an old brawler's adage that you should never hit somebody in the head with your fist unless you can't find something harder to use.

Bare-knuckle boxers trained to throw punches that wouldn't connect bone-on-bone, and thus end up breaking their hands. Barring that kind of injury, bare-knuckle boxing matches often went 20, 30, 40, 50 rounds, until somebody did throw a bad punch and disable themselves, or somebody fell over from exhaustion.

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