The Cruelest Sport (1992)
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Of course, gloves won't go away. Boxing would be less entertaining without them. People don't want to see fights stopped due to broken hands. They don't want to see disfigured faces (which are practically guaranteed in a bare-knuckle stand-up fight). People want to see spectacular haymakers. They want to see punches flying left and right. Most of all, people want to see knock-outs.
Well, that and not doing the thing to begin with. This and almost all things to do with Everest are similar. They're non-problems.
Anyway, it's still disturbing.
But they also increase the frequency of concussive hits.
The padding of a boxing glove protects the hands, not the skull; the same amount of force is being transferred to the skull, so the brain undergoes the exact same impact as it would without the gloves. By making it safer for a boxer to strike the skull of an opponent, gloves are pretty much tailor-made for encouraging concussive injury.
In other words, gloves prevent the two things that end boxing matches: broken hands and severe cuts, shut eyes etc, but do relatively little to prevent the actual impact of a blow to the brain
So it's no secret in the world of boxing that fights with gloves create fights that otherwise would be rare (12 rounds, back in the day even 15), radically increasing the damage that 'counts', which isn't the cut or the broken hand, but the permanent brain damage.
Everyone in boxing knows this. But to remove gloves is to turn it into a fundamentally different game, everything changes. It is truly a cruel sport, but also one that brings great enjoyment to millions of people including myself. It's definitely one of those things on my list of things where in 100 years, I wouldn't be surprised if we looked at it and thought 'man that was crazy, being gay was considered a psychological disease, we ran cars on oil and we had boxing gladiator matches? insane'.
This is straight-up backwards, if you're arguing that gloves extended the length of matches. It was not uncommon for bare-knuckle boxing matches in the 1800s to go 30, 40, 50, even over 100 rounds, until someone collapsed in exhaustion or broke too many bones in their hands from badly-placed punches to the bonier parts of their opponent.
Of course it'll last longer, doesn't mean it'd last longer under similar rules and fighting styles as boxing is today.
My point is that 15 rounds of the type of punch volume to the head simply wouldn't occur without gloves. It might still be a long fight, but you won't get anywhere near the same type of volume to the head. Hell back in the day there was grappling, kicks and arm locks back in the day. Similar perhaps to MMA, punching the face wasn't nearly as big a thing as it is in boxing today, and a big part of that is because of modern rules as well as boxing gloves.
And again as I mentioned earlier, it's not the broken hands that count. (they can cause permanent damage, yes). It's the permanent brain damage that is the biggest concern, and that risk has increased much more now that gloves make it possible to throw hundreds of punches to the jaw and not injure your hands.
If you're trying to argue that I said that gloves extend fights longer than they did under bare-knuckle rules, you're right, that's not true and that wasn't my point. What I meant to say is that they extend the fights in which fighters mostly punch to the face much longer than they normally could, and radically increase the volume of punches to the face (without reducing the impact to the brain, instead, increasing it, as the weight of the gloves increases the impact).
Although I think it's probably possible to contest the following quote, it's not far from the truth and illustrates the differences a bit:
> As the bare-knuckle campaigner Dr Alan J Ryan pointed out: "In 100 years of bare-knuckle fighting in the United States, which terminated around 1897 with a John L Sullivan heavyweight championship fight, there wasn't a single ring fatality." Today, there are three or four every year in the US, and around 15 per cent of professional fighters suffer some form of permanent brain damage during their career.
Problem 1: You don't know what the other guy would do (they might be a "crazy" outlier) and it protects you from them.
Problem 2: Probably people would drive a little more cautiously on average, but not a LOT more cautiously. (As evidenced by historical behavior before seatbelts were required.) Whereas the severity of injuries would skyrocket.
No, it is not a variation of that. Your argument relies on a change in behavior in response to increased risk. (A change that may or may not occur.) The OP's argument does not require a change in behavior. The point is that boxers without gloves could go on behaving as though they have gloves on and then they'll break their damn hands (preventing 12 rounds of concussive blows to their opponent's brain).
As others have argued below: gloves protect hands not heads.
That is precisely an argument that relies on a change in behavior in response to increased risk. I think you misunderstood the OP's argument.
That is a change in behavior to avoid risking injury to the hand and face! Can we agree on that?
You are arguing that overall injury is increased by using gloves because of the greater frequency and magnitude of punches, despite less severe injury per punch. But that is precisely the no seat belts argument too.
Gloves reduce the risk of injury to the hand and disfiguration of the face, just as seat belts reducing bodily injury in an accident. The argument then goes, seat belts encourage us to drive faster and increase the overall number of accidents, which in the end cause a greater amount of injury. That is the parallel with gloved punching. If we didn't have seat belts, we'd drive slower, because you'd get so messed up if you had an accident. That is the parallel with OP's no-gloves argument.
That argument seems plausible on the surface but as we know from seat belts, it has some problems which I've stated earlier.
"These early fights, the most brilliant being against Cleveland Williams, in 1966, predate by a decade the long, grueling, punishing fights of Ali’s later career, whose accumulative effects hurt Ali irrevocably..."
I just took a look at that fight, which is on YouTube (http://youtu.be/oJUzl0aFHZw). It lasts only 8 minutes. The opponent is clearly a slugger who is baffled by Ali's style. Ali moves very fast, and fights with his gloves down. I'm not a fan of boxing, but she's right, that fight is an amazing spectacle.
Anyway, all that aside, what I wanted to say is what made him special is that when he got out everyone considered him to be too slow. He changed, he wasn't fast any longer, and older. Yet he was able to still dominate the weight class with a completely different style, at the expense of his body.
It's not often we see that. Most fighters who lose their speed never stand a chance to even lesser fighters. It's like Mayweather losing the shoulder roll and still dominating. And it surprised many at the time, it's hard to imagine but Ali, unlike the champions we think of today (like tonights fight) went into many of his later fights as an underdog, the fight against Foreman being the most famous. Foreman was considered an absolute beast, knocking out within 2 rounds (brutally) people like Norton and Frazier, amazing fighters who Ali himself had already lost to. Add to that an Ali way past his prime who had lost his greatest asset: his speed. That was remarkable.
The Ali in your video against Williams was as great as the Ali against Foreman, but completely and totally different in style, strategy and capacity. It's one of those things that don't show up on the scorecards (of say a Mayweather, who never lost and has been a world champ for like 17 years in a row now, compared to Ali who retired with 5 losses), reasons for which most boxing experts don't even have Mayweather in their top 20, no joke, while ali regularly makes a top 5, even though Mayweather is an absolutely brilliant fighter, too.
Thanks for the vid, good memories :)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vBNQNwCyYqk
Cranial trauma is frightening to behold, but it probably can't be separated from the sport.
I also wonder if the ability to wrestle in MMA plays a role. In boxing, as soon as the fighters clinch, the ref breaks up the fighters. In MMA, it's rare to see fighters stand within each other's range and throw full powered punches for extended periods.
I expect that a lot of amateur MMA fighters will end up with brain damage from training even if competitions may be a little safer.
All other sports are now erring on the side of caution when it comes to concussions, especially American football. In boxing the whole point is to give the other guy a concussion. You don't fall down from getting knocked over, you fall down because your body forgets how to stand up. And once that happens, which is some form of minor (or major) concussion, everyone cheers you on, encouraging you to stand back up so that you can get concussed again. Amazing.
As a boxer who trains 3x/week, spars as often as possible, but doesn't compete, I can tell you that sparring newbies is the worst. They get too afraid, too tense, and put all their strength into every punch. Instead of fun technical boxing, you get a boring slugfest.
Great way to get injured. Lousy way to learn how to box.
> getting punched in the face sucks way more than you think it would
Maybe I have the proverbial strong chin, but I never found getting punched in the face with a boxing glove to be that bad. Sure it's disorienting the first time it happens, but it's really not that bad. Boxing gloves distribute the blow over your whole face really nicely.
I strongly recommend that the next time you try boxing, you go against a trained fighter. You'll have a much better time of it.
I'm impressed with anyone who will get in the ring. I might try it again one day with headgear. It's a spectacular workout and I'm sure it would be fun if you could get beyond the pain and fear and start using different tactics and strategies.
At my home gym in Ljubljana, Slovenia, Europe, we fight without head gear. When I'm in the US, they won't let me spar without headgear because of liability issues.
Official amateur fights are with headgear. There has been talk about banning headgear in amateur fights for as long as I've been boxing (about 5 years).
My personal view is that for official fights, headgear is probably good. For sparring, it sucks. People punch like wild animals because hey, he's got headgear, he'll be fine. But it doesn't cover the face much and a full-on blow to the face is, imho, against the spirit of sparring and training. Because of headgear people also care less about hooks[1] because hey, my headgear protects there. But rotationary forces cause the most concussions and damage to the brain[2].
But headgear is amazing at defending against cuts. Although in five years of boxing I've only got punched hard enough to get a cut once.
> Can a boxer make a living as a sparring partner?
Maybe, it depends. I make my living as a software engineer and keep boxing as a pure hobby. But I assume somebody like Mayweather would pay a lot for a really good sparring partner. He most likely would have no use for me, I'm not at that level.
The best fighters I've sparred were amateur kickboxing world champs in various tournaments. There is no money in that, but a lot of fun.
> How much is weight an advantage? Is 5 pounds massive, minor, or inconsequential?
I'm about 60kg (~135lbs) and have sparred people anywhere between 55kg (~120lbs) to 100kg (~220lbs). Most of my partners are in the 70-80kg range (155lbs - 180lbs).
When you're doing gentlemanly sparring, weight doesn't matter as much. You're not trying to kill each other and if somebody sees they're about to make a killer shot because you messed up your defence, they will hold it back and just tap you. Even as a lighter fighter, you would return said favor.
In a real fight, weight has a lot of advantage because it makes killer shots stronger.
But speed and arm-length are far more important. You would statistically come out on top if you always bet on the man with the longer arms.
Speed also more than compensates for weight. Especially in heavily mismatched weights like I'm used to because bigger heavier people are slow. By the time a 80kg fighter pulls their arm back, I can deliver 3 to 4 punches to their face.[3]
> Finally, have you ever received a liver shot http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liver_shot?
Probably? I've never gotten one that was excruciatingly painful, but the gentleman rules of sparring state that body shots are full force.
Because my sparring partners are usually taller, I don't often get punched in the body because it's awkward for them and it's easy for me to defend.
Strong abs and obliques also help a lot and I'm lucky to have a well-trained abdomen.[4]
> It's a spectacular workout and I'm sure it would be fun if you could get beyond the pain and fear and start using different tactics and strategies.
Go to a gym. They will work you out and I promise that there is no better de-stressor than punching a bag for an hour. And you don't have to spar at all. It took me two years of training before I mustered the courage to spar for the first time.
Now I can't live without it. It's just too much fun.
[1] a hook is a blow to the side of the head with a bent elbow
[2] One study a quick google found, but there's a lot of info about this. It's the new fast becoming dominant theory. http://rrg.utk.edu/resources/BME473/lectures/presentation_te...
[3] I'm a short guy and people my size are hard to find, most guys would have to be super scrawny to be my weight. It's hard to be scrawny when you're training hard.
[4] for instance, I can hold a plank on one arm and one leg for about a minute.
Sparring gloves (bigger, heavier, softer) or not is the question, really, not headgear and groin protector.
Why is there an exception for letting someone try to hit you in the head, repeatedly, for "sport"?
It seems like the only reason it's legal is that it wasn't really acknowledged until recently that repeated blows to the head (and the resulting brain and neck/brainstem trauma) could cause serious long-term cognitive deficits, and the legal system hasn't caught up with that yet.
Dementia pugilistica (boxer's dementia) was first described in 1928: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dementia_pugilistica#History. Doctors have been calling for a ban on boxing since the 1950's.
You can't?
The idea of forbidding certain things even with consent is that pre-committing to not doing those things makes you less vulnerable to blackmail.
".... boxing’s very intentions are obscene, which sets it apart, theoretically at least, from purer (i.e., Caucasian) establishment sports ..."
As recently as the 1920s dueling was still a big thing in much of the white world. Many places you had a legally protected right to challenge. It's kind of still a big thing in the black ghetto leading to many deaths. I think they need a more proper and formalized social outlet than street-stompings and shootings.
Personally, I think it's a widespread problem that you can't ask a man way over the line to shut up and apologize or step into the ring. People talk about the decline of manners. The essential reason for that is if you went well over the line back in the day you had to be ready to get punched in the face.
It's not often that I get to quote kindergarten slogans to good effect on HN, but might does not make right. I've been given a beatdown by a person who thought I had wronged them, and I'm here to say it's a pretty useless exercise.
You sound like a man who needs to experience a few rounds. Get thee to a gym.