How Gloves Changed Boxing

Found this interesting piece:

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These guys still fight under the London Prize Ring rules it seems:
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lB0_QEh-KVs"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lB0_QEh-KVs[/ame]

 

Capt John Godfrey's book from 1747, "A Treatise Upon the Useful Science of Defence", mostly about sword-fighting but he talks quit a bit about Boxing & the Boxers of his time:

http://www.sirwilliamhope.org/Library/Godfrey/Godfrey.php

If you go down you will find the 2 sections titled BOXING & CHARACTERS of the BOXERS.

 

Well the only problem is they are not really fighting London Prize Ring rules, just MoQ bare knuckle.

I didn't see any throws or other grappling.

Plus there is a difference between guys fighting bare knuckle once in a while vs a pro fighting hundreds of times bare knuckle, the latter will screw up your hands I would imagine.

Put these guys under London Prize Ring rules against the fighters of that era, then we can see what works.

What the author said can be verified by checking the old training manuals like the one written by Daniel Mendoza (HW champ 1794) entitled "The Art of Boxing". Mendoza was beaten to pulp by John Jackson by grabbing his hair to keep him still in 1795.

 

I think modern techniques can work under the old rules but is it the best?

I don't know about that, because when you change the rules & bring in gloves the fighters would have had to adjust to the new conditions not to mention other changes like time limits etc.

The old techniques must have been refined over the years by trial & error for what worked best under those rules, then they were lost over the years because who really fights under London Prize Ring rules anymore or trains Boxing exclusively for self defense when we have guns. So even guys who take part in bare knuckle fights just use modern techniques I would imagine.

We can't be sure either way because no one really practices techniques from bare knuckle days anymore for a prizefight, and the only way to find out is to match up guys with good grasp of the old techniques vs guys who fight "modern" under London Prize Ring rules.

I tend to favor the older techniques though for bare knuckle just like I favor today's Boxers if it was a gloved Boxing match under MoQ.