I’ll go with Alice on the lighter weight classes being better boxing. The boxers are amazingly fast and much less prone to look for a single haymaker to disable an opponent enough to make knocking him out easy. Hence, more technique. The lighter weight boxers also often display amazing endurance and guts in their bouts. Some of the heavyweights like Ali were great technicians, but others depending more on punching power and a strong chin (Foreman, for example). I wouldn’t be sorry to see the sport banned, though, because so many boxers clearly suffer long-term brain damage from all the shots to the head.
Is there a cite for this? It’s nothing I haven’t heard before, but I’ve never seen anything that actually supports it (there may be such sources out there, I suppose, which is why I’d like to see them.)
People often point out Ali as a case in point (not you, Captor, but I’ve heard it many times before), but Ali’s illness has nothing to do with being punched. For a counter-example, look at Sugar Ray Leonard. Lucid, intelligent, clear-headed despite the years of whacking his head took.
archmichael reminded me of a book: Beyond Glory, the story of the second Joe Louis/Max Schmelling fight.
I see that there are also books on James Braddock: The Rise of the Cinderalla Man and Cinderella Man, the latter’s full title suggests it focuses on the Max Baer fight. Here’s a James Braddock biography on DVD.
It could explain why Mike Tyson is so…odd.
Had to look it up, but on HBO’s Legendary Nights they covered the Julio Cesar Chavez vs Meldrick Taylor fight. They showed Meldrick, and you needed subtitles he was slurring his words so badly.
I couldn’t find any video of him though.
I have no way of really knowing, but I suspect Tyson was a freakazoid psychopath long before he was a boxer.
One of the things that improves your appreciation of Boxing is understanding the particular stamina required for it.
I was involved with a couple true amatuer Boxing competetions(which in review I’m sure were illegal as hell). Even guys who were in great shape, and good in other sports, looked like morons. Most every fight went the same way, even in three 1 minute rounds
Round one: Flail like hell for 30 seconds: stand around catching breath and pushing for 30 seconds.
Round 2: Throw about 5 punches each, one guy collapses from lack of energy. Gets up, falls again, ref calls fight. Both guy’s stumble to corner and throw up from exhaustion.
After seeing that happen to guys who could run marathons I got a whole new respect for guys who can throw and take 50 punches a round for 12 3 minute rounds.
There’s absolutely more to it. It’s a display of athleticism, stamina, tactical thinking, talent, and for lack of a better term, heart. It may look like two tough guys whaling on each other (and maybe it is), but there’s lots more to it than just that. Anybody can take a swing at someone, but boxing requires a critical study of how to hit someone so as to make the most efficient use of body mechanics, which is a great deal more difficult than it sounds. I’ve trained with bodybuilders who were doing their very first day of boxing, and it’s odd to see how someone with so much power really didn’t know how to properly tranfser that power into a punch without training. I’d rather box an untrained 240 pound bodybuilder than a 140 pound professional welterweight. Punching is deceptively difficult.
Not only that, every punch your opponent throws opens him up to a counter punch (or two, or three) of your own, and vice versa. Learning to read your opponent and react accordingly is no small feat.
Add to that the skills needed in learning how to establish distance between yourself and your opponent, how to close that distance when you need to, how to create distance when you need to, footwork, closing off the ring, and the incredibly difficult art of not getting hit by someone trying their best to hit you, and you can starts to see where the “sweet science” moniker comes from.
Compared to taking a punch in the face or the abdomen, hardly at all!
There are four basic punches in boxing: jab, cross, hook, and uppercut. From those four basic punches there are many, many variants and combinations.
That’s one. Others are rabbit punches to the back of the head, kicking (except in the different forms of kickboxing, of course), strikes with the elbow (except in Thai boxing), headbutting, blows to the back, holding and punching, striking with backfists, striking with the open palm, striking while holding the ropes, fighting up from or down to the floor, glove in the face, thumb in the eye, and biting.
Others have covered this pretty well, but I’ll throw my two cents in. If a fighter goes down and can’t get back up within the ten count, they’re knocked out. A technical knock out (TKO) occurs if a fighter is too injured to continue, can’t or won’t fight back, or gets knocked down too many times in one round. If none of that occurs, the fight “goes the distance” and the win is awarded by judge’s decision. The ring judges award points each round for aggression, punches landed, power punches landed, “ring generalship,” number of knockdowns, and so on.
Boxing is a martial art. It’s wonderful to watch it done well for the same reason it’s wonderful to watch tae kwan do or judo done well. It’s one of the purest of sports, and one that requires an astonishing mixture of physical skill, strength, endurance, and quickness.
I am fascinated, guys. I started reading up on the history of boxing, and plan to find some books about it. Who knew? I’m so glad I asked…thanks, all.
FWIW, regarding Ali, here’s a snippet from his wikipedia entry:
“Ali was diagnosed with some type of Parkinson’s syndrome in the early 1980s, following which his motor functions began a slow decline. This was eventually determined to be Pugilistic Parkinson’s syndrome, but in the 1980s and even into the late 1990s some doctors (and Ali himself for a time) suggested the the ailment was not degenerative, not Pugilistic Parkinson’s, and even that it was unrelated to boxing - positions now largely abandoned.”
Not definitive, sure. But it certainly suggests a link.
And, by way of comparison, here’s the wikipedia entry on Pugilistic Parkinson’s, which DOES state that PPS "is a neurological disorder which affects career boxers and others who receive multiple dazing blows to the head. The condition develops over a period of years, with the average time of onset being about 16 years after the start of a career in boxing.
Famous sufferers include Jack Dempsey, Joe Louis, Beau Jack and, more recently, Muhammad Ali, Jerry Quarry, Wilfredo Benitez and Freddie Roach.
The condition, which occurs in people who have suffered multiple concussions, commonly manifests as dementia, or declining mental ability, and parkinsonism, or tremors and lack of coordination. It can also cause unsteady gait, inappropriate behavior, and speech problems."
FWIW, regarding Ali, here’s a snippet from his wikipedia entry:
“Ali was diagnosed with some type of Parkinson’s syndrome in the early 1980s, following which his motor functions began a slow decline. This was eventually determined to be Pugilistic Parkinson’s syndrome, but in the 1980s and even into the late 1990s some doctors (and Ali himself for a time) suggested the the ailment was not degenerative, not Pugilistic Parkinson’s, and even that it was unrelated to boxing - positions now largely abandoned.”
Not definitive, sure. But it certainly suggests a link.
And, by way of comparison, here’s the wikipedia entry on Pugilistic Parkinson’s, which DOES state that PPS "is a neurological disorder which affects career boxers and others who receive multiple dazing blows to the head. The condition develops over a period of years, with the average time of onset being about 16 years after the start of a career in boxing.
Famous sufferers include Jack Dempsey, Joe Louis, Beau Jack and, more recently, Muhammad Ali, Jerry Quarry, Wilfredo Benitez and Freddie Roach.
The condition, which occurs in people who have suffered multiple concussions, commonly manifests as dementia, or declining mental ability, and parkinsonism, or tremors and lack of coordination. It can also cause unsteady gait, inappropriate behavior, and speech problems."
Fixed links.
Huh. I’ll be damned. Thanks for the links, folks.
The whole brain-damage thing really bothers me about boxing. Of course, the same can happen from soccer. (In fact, I seem to recall hearing a news story a couple of years ago that suggested that brain damage from headers in soccer was incredibly common, although generally mild. The proposal to require head protection in children’s soccer games met with a surprising amount of opposition, and has not become standard practice.)
How innate to boxing is this problem? I know amature boxing uses head protection and the scoring places less emphasis on KOs. Is it still a serious problem? What about the lower weight classes?
Could boxing be recreated as a reasonably safe sport on par with other martial arts, say by limiting it to only body shots, or is beating someone’s brains out just a fundamental part of the sport, even when it’s not the goal?
You could give The Boxer’s Heart a shot. It’s by a woman (a journalist, IIRC) who asked the same questions, and took up boxing to find the answers.
Ok, so a slightly off-topic question which started plaguing me this morning…what’s up with the kangaroo thing? In fiction and in cartoons, you often see kangaroos boxing. Who thought that kangaroos would box well enough to be funny?
Boxing kangaroos in circuses date back to at least the late 19th Century and their image was popular among Australian pilots in WWII.
I think that there are some things that are the “essence” of competition: racing (running, swimming, jumping), weight lifting (includes throwing objects), and fighting (boxing, wrestling, other martial arts including ultimate fighting) are the primary ones.
Some fights are boring. But, sometimes, when two guys have just given everythign in the tank. Hitting and getting hit. Bleeding, tired, dazed. It’s the most pure of all sports. You have no idea what is compelling a guy to come out for another round.
Anyway, most of this information is in the thread, but here’s a concise boxing primer:
For the most basic start in understanding the “science” of boxing watch two righties fight each other. You’ll know that they’re righties if their left foot and left shoulder are forward. There are 3 basic punches.
From the “base” position, a jab is a straight punch with your left arm. This punch establishes your range, keeps your opponent busy, sets up other punches, and just indicates that you’re active. It’s a quicker, weaker punch and doesn’t leave you as vulnerable to counterpunching because it returns to defense quickly and the fighter stays well-balanced while throwing it (although some fighters – like Mayweather and Roy Jones Jr. in his prime – are so quick they can throw a right back on top of it). It’s the start of most combinations.
A straight right (pretty much the same as a right cross) or just a “right” as in, “he has a great right” or “he knocked him out with a right” is a punch from that “base” position with the right hand. It’s a stronger punch because your body twists into it, but it takes longer to get there than a jab, and it leaves the puncher vulnerable to. . .
THE LEFT HOOK. The most devastating of punches. The left hook is punch that comes from the “base” position in which a righty twists his body clockwise with the left arm horizontal and bent so that it lands on the right side of his opponent’s body or head. If a guy throws a right that leaves him off balance and exposed, a left hook can end a fight. Similarly, a missed left hook can leave a fighter exposed to his opponent’s straight right.
There is also the uppercut. This is a punch that punches straight up to the chin or chest. It’s more often used in close range. Sometimes you can watch a whole fight without seeing it.
Everything that’s not a jab is labelled a “power punch”.
More advanced punching:
The “1-2”. The 1-2 is a jab followed by a right. Hopefully the fighter is still reacting to the jab, or is out of position, or you knocked his guard away so you can hit him cleanly with the right.
A “lead right” is a right hand that doesn’t follow a jab. It’s suspectible to an easy counter. If you watch “When We Were Kings” they talk about Ali using this punch.
Sometimes you see a guy throw a hook off the jab. (jab, then hook). Sometimes guys like to double or triple the jab before throwing a power punch just to break the defender’s rhythm.
Other things you might hear: when guys get tired or they’re not good fighters, they throw more “roundhouses” and “haymakers”. Essentially, these are not “straight” punches (that come up the middle) like jabs and rights, but swing in big arcs from the side. I used to work out in a boxing gym, and when I got pooped, I’d always start hitting the bag with these because they feel good. The trainers would yell, “throw straight punches!”
All of these punches can be thrown to the body or the head. Typical wisdom says that working a guy’s body tires him out for later in the fight. But, there seems to be a modern wave of guys using the left to the body as a knockout punch. It hits a guy where his liver is, and can cause so much pain and shock that even if he has his senses, he can’t get up. This is how Bernard Hopkins took out De La Hoya and how Mayorga took out Forrest. You could see DLH punching the canvas in frustration because he couldn’t stand. It was a beautiful punch.
Defense is basically blocking, slipping (to the side), ducking (bending at the waist or knees) and smartly absorbing punches (rolling with a punch).
When two lefties fight, all this is reversed. He jabs and hooks with his right, and throws straight lefts.
When a righty fights a lefty, things can get messy. They often butt heads because some natural motions bring them together. The jabs come from the same side. It’s not my favorite kind of fight to watch. Sometimes “southpaws” have the advantage because they’re used to fighting righties, but righties aren’t used to fighting lefties.
Wow, **Trunk ** that was a really great description.
So your initial description, that is for righties? So A righty throws a left hook and a straight right, but a lefty would throw a right hook? Like that?
When you are doing these punches, you only have one arm up. Is that enough to defend, or is it guaranteed if the other guy is quick enough that he will get a punch in?
Are there different rules for different fights? Like, are any of these movies legal someplace and illegal elsewhere, or are there other moves that vary?