I was just curious... before boxing fights started to be dominated by gloved bouts under the Marques of Queensbury Rules (which I believe was during the John L Sullivan days in the 1880’s), we obviously had bare knuckle fights fought primarily under the London Prize Ring Rules. So I was just wondering, did these guys spar much back then? And if so, did they actually spar bare knuckle, or did they have some type of gloves they used for sparring and just training in general?
Balboa hit frozen sides of beef. Morlocks sparred actual living cows. He went farm to farm, swung open the gate and declared “I can lick any son of a bovine in the house!”
I'm almost certain I've heard reference to Jack Broughton fashioning gloves for sparring, and his time was about 180 years before Sullivan's. It's just such an obvious thing to do it's pretty safe assumption that it's going to be done as soon as anyone start training seriously. And the concept of course is not limited to empty hands: This content is protected
Ancient greek fighters would wrap their hands in leather strips called "himantes". While I don't know, it's pretty safe to assume they at least wrapped their hands in cloth while training.
I just found this dating from 1743, and it appears to show exactly that. Notice how the centerpiece lithograph depicting an actual match shows bare fists, while the peripheral images that seem to depict sparring show what look to be crude gloves: [url]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Broughton#/media/File:Broughton_Rules.jpg[/url]
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