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The Bare knuckles period

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  • The Bare knuckles period

    Germany was the last nation state to leave Feudalism behind. With the advent of the new world and eventual World Wars came changes in conflict resolution. Europe was bound by different fencing traditions, The Iberians with their natural walking gait while weilding swords, German and Austro-Hungarian Saber Fencing, the vestiges of Italian Fencing... Like Brazil, the county fair became a way to advertise the newest combative ideas. Men like Figg would give lessons, and even entertain exhibition matches.

    Boxing would be forged out of sword methodology combined with how people fought in the new urban expanses. It would be a while before technical skills really held sway. Grappling and folk wrestling styles were known by people. African and Irish dance and movement skills would develop, boxing clubs would contribute by creating a means to train hitting, and all the while the primacy of sword theory would create a distinct distance, timing and method for launching a boxing attack.

    This meant that technique was still quite crude. Boxing was purely viewed as an attack and defend affair, it would take many moons for fighters to understand how to move different parts of the body to slip, to protect, and to counter the opponent. There was the occasional fighter who was lauded as using footwork and a more technical approach, but this has to be put in perspective.

    Fights were long because fighters moved slowly and deliberately between launching at attack into the space between oneself and the opponent and coming to grips. We will never know exactly when the technical brilliance of a fighter like Johnson first came into focus. We know that JJ was a marvel, and that he created a very distinct method for parrying blows and gaining distance on the lead usng pronation... what we call a jab today. But I doubt he himself created these ideas in a vacuum.

    So when did we start to see fighters with technical chops? Men who developed and used technique to become great and make it look effortless in the ring? Thoughts?
    Willow The Wisp Willow The Wisp likes this.

  • #2
    Originally posted by billeau2 View Post
    Germany was the last nation state to leave Feudalism behind. With the advent of the new world and eventual World Wars came changes in conflict resolution. Europe was bound by different fencing traditions, The Iberians with their natural walking gait while weilding swords, German and Austro-Hungarian Saber Fencing, the vestiges of Italian Fencing... Like Brazil, the county fair became a way to advertise the newest combative ideas. Men like Figg would give lessons, and even entertain exhibition matches.

    Boxing would be forged out of sword methodology combined with how people fought in the new urban expanses. It would be a while before technical skills really held sway. Grappling and folk wrestling styles were known by people. African and Irish dance and movement skills would develop, boxing clubs would contribute by creating a means to train hitting, and all the while the primacy of sword theory would create a distinct distance, timing and method for launching a boxing attack.

    This meant that technique was still quite crude. Boxing was purely viewed as an attack and defend affair, it would take many moons for fighters to understand how to move different parts of the body to slip, to protect, and to counter the opponent. There was the occasional fighter who was lauded as using footwork and a more technical approach, but this has to be put in perspective.

    Fights were long because fighters moved slowly and deliberately between launching at attack into the space between oneself and the opponent and coming to grips. We will never know exactly when the technical brilliance of a fighter like Johnson first came into focus. We know that JJ was a marvel, and that he created a very distinct method for parrying blows and gaining distance on the lead usng pronation... what we call a jab today. But I doubt he himself created these ideas in a vacuum.

    So when did we start to see fighters with technical chops? Men who developed and used technique to become great and make it look effortless in the ring? Thoughts?
    Edited
    Last edited by Bronson66; 06-04-2025, 08:59 AM.

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    • #3
      Originally posted by Marchegiano
      All of a sudden Bronny has interest in men and eras where he has already expressed the entire time he has been here he has no interest.


      Wonder what hand wrought this deed.


      Finding out Gypsy wasn't. Cute as ****.
      Edited
      Last edited by Bronson66; 06-04-2025, 08:59 AM.

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      • #4
        Originally posted by Marchegiano
        End of the color line and beginning of globalization.

        What is considered technical and good now wasn't prior. Staying safe and protecting yourself is a distinctly *************** demographic move until those demographics are allowed a fair playing field.


        What became the "Black American" style has roots in 18th century England. It's held by those who are not favored by the powerful and disrespected by fans. Basically a class system.


        To say blacks, ***s, irish, suffered under a class system is not controversial

        So why would you assume their fighting styles were any different?




        Bringing up cats like Tunney is like bringing up cats like Dutch Sam to refute the idea defense wasn't important. The existence of an outlier refutes nothing but does display the refuters ignorance.


        Styles still have racial and national ties but no one disrespects a style for those ties. As in the commie style isn't bad because it is commie. The slugger isn't bad because it is british. The black american style isn't bad because it's black or american. Now we bash on commie boxing or american boxing or whatever based on the individual level.


        Wlad = bad commie boxing

        Usyk = good commie boxing

        easy enough

        No commie boxers can do well is a silly statement to make so no one does it.

        In 1920 no N are worth a F is not a controversial statement. So it was made.
        I was actually hoping someone would seize upon that statement. The color line created a laboratory of sorts. Black fighters had to fight the same pool of opponents over and over. This created a difference in strategy and and circumstances. The skills needed to fight opponents one meets on occasion might translate slightly different when trying to beat an opponent who knows you well.

        Aside from that Irish and Black Urban dwellers both had dance styles that were part of combat movements. The so called "Jig" was a mix of both elements probably originally founded in the Five Points Hood.

        The crucible that forges great fighters from extreme circumstances is alas a melting pot that incorporates the best innovations... eventually!

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        • #5
          Originally posted by Bronson66 View Post

          My contribution to the thread would be round by round summaries of fights, so I will decline,but I hope to learn something of Gypsy Jem Mace,who wasn't a gypsy, he has always rather interested me.






          ​​
          A lot of anecdotal info about Mace.

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          • #6
            Originally posted by Marchegiano

            Bro, you welcome for that interest I have driven.

            Of course I focus on those i teach.
            Edited
            Last edited by Bronson66; 06-04-2025, 09:00 AM.

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            • #7
              Originally posted by Marchegiano
              I misunderstood. I thought the question was when did it all mix into modern boxing not when did it start.

              When it started is easy; late 18th century sees the beginning, 1820s sees the formalization, the sparring masters are the boxers you are looking for. When Sparring was a sport.
              It is a question of refinements. In the science of combatives, in which the late great Marine Donn Draeger was instrumental in founding as a science, we can see Arts that have existed for hundreds of years, when we are lucky. We can see how they were used during peeriods like the Warring States in Japan, when they were refined into Ju Jutsu systems during the Edo period, etc. Boxing is an opportunity for some to see the same sort of developments in a shorter time frame.

              Historically Black fighters contributed a great deal to the technical aspects, because they were forced to fight opponents regularly, and because they had movement skills as a culture allowing them to perfect aspects of boxing footwork. I think this matters... Does not mean that other cultures and people did not also make contributions as well.

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              • #8
                Originally posted by Bronson66 View Post
                You couldn't teach a fish to swim.

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                • #9
                  Originally posted by Marchegiano
                  All of a sudden Bronny has interest in men and eras where he has already expressed the entire time he has been here he has no interest.


                  Wonder what hand wrought this deed.


                  Finding out Gypsy wasn't. Cute as ****.

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    Originally posted by Marchegiano

                    That's beautifully written

                    Neither side of the fore bearers, imo, are superior to the mix.

                    That is to say i don't see modernized boxers in the bare knuckle community. In fact, I might even be swayed into claiming Pygmachia and Pyx more closely resemble modern boxing and the period between the 18th-early 20th centuries is a period of rediscovery.


                    Even if we give credit to a man like Jack Randall, The Nonpareil before Dempsey, for super basic techniques like the cross or pairing the cross behind the jab. If we write by the card he is not the inventor but rather the popularizer. I may, off the cuff and in the context of conversation call him the inventor of the 1,2, but it's like understood by all, even people who love to take issue with my works, I don't mean to imply there is zero evidence anyone ever threw two straights back to back. You will see that found as old as Egyptian and Sumerian art can provide and all readers seem happy with the idea basic punches were known and thrown before society was formed let alone sport.

                    And so, take it a step farther, do you really believe I can't find you both a description and art depicting a corkscrew punch?

                    The real pioneers are too ancient to know and so the best we have is the men who rediscovered.

                    Heavy focus on this rediscovery has fans looking at the progression of sport like as if it represents a progression of man. This is a misleading temptress, the mixing that was allowed by the Greeks, was not reintroduced to boxing until world wars were happening.




                    Allow me my own form of grand speech:

                    For 1,938 year our lord Apollo slept unwilling to show mortals the Pykes or Arete until the most disgusting force in human history dared claim his ritual. The avatar, the textbook, the measure in which all others must find argument against; Joe Louis is the GOAT.
                    It is not that punches were invented, rather it is how things are combined and refined for a purpose. Until Dempsey squared up, (I use Dempsey as an obvious goal post, but Gans, and others, etc...) combinations as we see them technically in a puncher like Louis, could not exist. I do not assert this chauvanistically, rather I simply take the combination of conditions and development of the sport... Moving the body one piece at a time is not a fencing skill. hard rotational movement, and weight drops with full contact would break a hand with no reinforcements like a glove and tape.

                    We know that other punching did have the hand reinforced... With things like the Cestus (sp?), and we know that boxing styles from other cultures understood punching dynamics... But Western boxing needed men like JJ and Dempsey to evolve into a coda of techniques, punches, and strategies we know of as classical boxing. I say this as someone who does not think classical is even "better." Just different. The skill happened in the space between oneself and the opponent, to set up the attack, like a fencer does...

                    JJ parried and eventually Dempsey slipped the shot. This can only happen at a distance of less than three feet from the opponent.
                    Last edited by billeau2; 05-21-2025, 01:03 PM.

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