Back To The Primitive: Boxing In Its Purest Form Is Two Gladiators Going To War.

Far too often I see posters continually writing the same refrain endlessly "The Sweet Science Is The Art of Hit And Not Get Hit."....according to whom, nothing states that in the Marquess Of Queensberry Rules and that was definitely not the intent of the Ancient Sumerians who may have created the sport 5,000 years ago in what is now modern day Iraq, The paintings on cave walls depict 2 men duking it out, not one running away trying to not get hit. I could never imagine what the real men of Babylonia, Assyria and Mesopotamia would think if one of his opponents ran away like a coward to lay in wait for a chance to sucker punch the other and ran some more.... rinse and repeat ad nauseam. The objective was for them to go toe to toe and beat the hell out of each other until one of them keeled over and most likely died. Because the idea of competing in a sport where macho men went head to head in a battle for supremacy in those cultures were built around honor, bravery and valor, so I'm sure anyone who ran would be banish by his people for being a coward or more than likely killed for it.

Then we go to Ancient Greece and Rome anywhere between 4,000 to 3.000 years ago, the Romans, who were the ultimate bad asses, the Gladiators would come out with their hands wrapped up in leather with metal spikes sticking out of their gloves, and of course they beat on each other until one of them died. It was a spectator sport held in their massive amphitheaters that held hundreds or maybe even thousands, can you imagine the blood fests that would occur? Both men wailing on each other with metal spikes tearing the flesh from their opponents faces, with the crowd in a frenzied bloodlust cheering on their guy...in a ring, which is where the term comes from they fought in a ring instead of a square, which is where the term the Squared circle comes from. They banned it around 300 AD for being far too brutal.

In Ancient Greece they called it pugme or pygmachia which is where the term pugilism comes from, it essentially means fist fighting. The Greeks were the first to introduce Boxing gloves to the equation, doing away with the centuries long tradition of just standing naked and pounding each others faces in wearing spiked gloves. No one really knows when Boxing first appeared there, some say it was the mythical founder of Athens Theseus that created the sport, some think it was started by Achilles to honor his friend Patroclus who'd died in the Trojan War, although it was written in Homer's Iliad, that Mycenaean warriors had boxing competitions held to honor their fallen comrades, echoing the Achilles story. The scholar Philostratus believed the sport originated in land of the macho men itself.... Sparta, and my favorite theory is The Spartans thought that helmets were for wussies and boxing got them ready for the shots to the head that they'd receive in battle but they never did it for show, it was in private, they'd punch each other in the face to toughen one another up. The Greeks also introduced punching bags into the equation as well for practice. Boxers wore leather fingerless gloves and had no protection for their face and head. I guess they could be considered the earliest Amateur Boxers or the WSB of the day.

Mother Russia called the sport Kulachniy Boy which translates into fist fighting as well. The Kievan Rus' the name they were known as back in the day, had Boxing in every different region of the land and each region had different rules and it flourished until the fuddy duddy stick in the mud Christians came along and ruined it for everybody by banning it, but it continued to exist in the underground for centuries in various different forms, until it started making a comeback under the founder of St. Petersburg, Peter The Great, perhaps the greatest leader in Russia long glorious history, hence his nickname... he was Great. Catherine the Great was pretty cool too, because it made a full fledged return under her.... until the snobby aristocratic conservative Czar Nicolas II banned it again. Thankfully the radical left wing Bolsheviks overthrew his boring ass and brought it right back, so you can thank Vladimir Lenin for Kovalev's, Klitschko's and Golovkin's of today.

Then the Brits jumped on board when they got sick of sword fighting because it hurt way too much when they lost, so along came prize fighting in the 1600's in England and it had no written rules. There wasn't such thing as weight divisions or round limits or refs. Its was pure brutality like the good old days in Rome. But since the uptight stuffy Brits tend to be really obsessed with rules, along came Broughton's rules, written by champion Jack Broughton in 1743 since so many fighters were getting killed, at least that's a valid reason for more regulation. But then along came the very well known to us John Douglas, the 9th Marquess of Queensberry who actually didn't write The Marquess of Queensberry Rules himself, they were actually written for him by a British Boxer named John Graham Chambers, and The Marquess like the noble scumbag that he was, of course took full credit for them. Well here they are.

1. To be a fair stand-up boxing match in a 24-foot ring, or as near that size as practicable.
2. No wrestling or hugging allowed.
3. The rounds to be of three minutes' duration, and one minute's time between rounds.
4. If either man falls through weakness or otherwise, he must get up unassisted, 10 seconds to be allowed him to do so, the other man meanwhile to return to his corner, and when the fallen man is on his legs the round is to be resumed and continued until the three minutes have expired. If one man fails to come to the scratch in the 10 seconds allowed, it shall be in the power of the referee to give his award in favour of the other man.
5. A man hanging on the ropes in a helpless state, with his toes off the ground, shall be considered down.
6. No seconds or any other person to be allowed in the ring during the rounds.
7. Should the contest be stopped by any unavoidable interference, the referee to name the time and place as soon as possible for finishing the contest; so that the match must be won and lost, unless the backers of both men agree to draw the stakes.
8. The gloves to be fair-sized boxing gloves of the best quality and new.
9. Should a glove burst, or come off, it must be replaced to the referee's satisfaction.
10. A man on one knee is considered down and if struck is entitled to the stakes.
11. That no shoes or boots with spikes or sprigs be allowed.
12. The contest in all other respects to be governed by revised London Prize Ring Rules.

I don't see anything about The Sweet Science of running, clinching, head-butting or anything of that nature, do you? Because there are no rules stating that to be the main objective of a Boxing match, "to hit and not get hit", that's a style of Boxing, one of many and it doesn't deserve anymore credit than any of the other of the countless styles implemented by the millions of Boxers that have existed through the ages. So for all of the snobs who act like that is the one and only true legitimate purest form of Boxing that there is, they are deluding themselves. Its a style that was made up in the 20th Century by guys who wanted to be a Boxer but didn't want to get hit. The objective of the sport is to beat your opponent and make them submit by breaking their will or their body and prove that you are the better man, it has always been that way and just because some trainers came up with a way to be slick and win on points without taking any damage, while it may win you a fight officially, you definitely aren't winning in the manly, noble and honorable way like the truly masculine ancients once did, you're kind of winning like a punk.


So my 2 cents is... for centuries fans, both Women and Men have gone to see two Gladiators go into a one on one war and do battle as a form of entertainment, they go to see this bloodsport to satiate the bloodlust that most of us secretly possess, no matter how much we try to deny it. We like seeing guys fight because it feeds that primordial, savage, animalistic, brutal testosterone fueled beast that we all have living inside of us, which is usually not hidden very far below the surface. It makes us feel good about ourselves to know there are men in this world who are still truly brave, noble and valiant Warriors far manlier than many of us, that are willing to lay their life on the line to provide for their families, and to entertain our stupid asses like the heroic warriors of old. And yes, somewhere deep inside of them its that impulse that is their driving force, often times more so than money itself, because there's far easier ways to make cash than being beaten up for a living. That is a thing of Macho Beauty. Boxers and fans need to re-find our way back to the mindset of the manly art of true Boxing Warfare, mano a mano, toe to toe fist to cuffs find our truest almost puerile essence, find our masculine warrior roots and Go Back to the Primitive.

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Come on, Its worth it.:hey

 

Exactly, I'm sick of the snobbery that exists amongst supposedly high brow fans who think they're better because they "get" the sweet science and everyone else supposedly doesn't, there is no one form or objective in the sport all styles should be respected unfortunately most aren't.

 

Yes I ripped the title off from this song.

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Yep I was actually going to write a little about that as well, but it was getting a lad bit too long so I held back, I wrote an article like that about a year its hidden somewhere in my Threads maybe I bring it out later as a companion piece. They're like art snobs who sit an look at a dot on the wall and pretend to "get it" all in an effort to make themselves feel they are superior and not a Philistine like all the Plebs they look down upon, when in reality all they're doing is trying to build themselves up by stepping on others. They should be like me I love La Dolce Vita yet at the same time I equally love The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.:yep