[1889] Richard Kyle Fox, Boxing, on the evolution of boxing "science"

Ahh... the lost magical science of the Elders.

 

You have to think that there must have been some refinement of technique through the bare knuckle era, which after all lasted about 160 years.

I would be a little wary of accepting what the author of this article is implying, because he is obviously basing his comments on secondary sources, and in many cases pictures.

 

Somethings never change, this guy could be wrong about the new skills that popped up all of a sudden. Im sure there would've been some heavy criticism if the people who saw Figg, Jackson, and Mendoza were still around.

 

This is a long and involved issue that I need to get home to answer. Gimme a few minutes.

 

I know that you know the answer and are just throwing this out for a discussion...you can put two guys in a ring 3 days a week for 6 months and teach them nothing and they'll learn a "jab", they'll learn some defense, they'll learn to move, etc., but they probably won't do it well. Over the years, trainers have learned and taught correct fundamentals, they have learned which techniques work and they have found what doesn't work and the best trainers teach correct body mechanics. To the people who think fundamentals, technique, and good body mechanics are optional, boxing in 1850 probably looks like it did in 1950.

One guy compared this man to the Harry Greb video...This guy is on balance, he bends his knees, he keeps his elbows in...He looks much better schooled in this video than the old boxers I have seen who were considered "masters." That this guy was considered "crude" in his era should be proof enough that there is no equivalency of eras.

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It's been a while since I read Fox's book. A loooong while. But here goes, from memory:

First, RK Fox was basically a 19th century version of Don King who owned the Victorian Ring magazine (Police Gazette), so he'd have access to pro fighters' own collected lore and traditions about their predecessors. He would probably have seen some old prints of the guys from the late 18th and early 19th centuries. He would have had access to Egan's "Boxiana" and Miles's "Pugilistica". He might have an older manual or two, since he was in the publishing business. And he'd seen his own fighters in the ring. I doubt he was a good historian by modern standards.

Fox probably made the same assumption that a lot of modern commentators make when they see weird stances and punches from a hundred years ago: it was different, so it was clearly wrong.

Second, about the "thousands of years" question: Modern Western boxing is only about 300 years old. It started when Figg, Broughton, and a few other weapons masters in Britain decided to apply their mad cudgeling skillz to the quasi-wrestling, quasi-streetfighting that most European countries had. The claim is often made that Broughton in particular applied fencing theory to produce the first left lead-off, which is actually somewhat plausible. I don't know of any lineages that can trace ancient Greek or Roman boxing to Figg and Broughton.

It's hard to tell whether Fox is right, because we don't hold London Prize Ring bareknuckle fights anymore. How would we intelligently judge whether Fox's bunch of bareknuckle fighters could beat Barclay Allardyce's bunch of bareknuckle fighters? Especially since we've never seen either group, nobody today fights in either style, and we also have never seen a bareknuckle fight under the rules they played by? When I was younger, I was a lot more optimistic about coming to conclusions about this kind of stuff. Now, I don't think there's enough information. We'd have to revive the London Prize Ring to find out.

That being said, Fox's statements bring up an issue that you, in particular, might find interesting.

If you look at the main boxing manual from the early 19th century (about the time of Tom Cribb), you'll see a style that looks a lot like modern boxing. The hands are up, the feet are in roughly the right positions, and the whole thing looks surprisingly modern for its time. Crude, and with several bareknuckle elements, but you could see a modern fighter doing some of the stuff in that manual. Plus the grappling is cool.

Fast forward 80 years, and boxing skills in the manuals look a lot LESS modern than they did in 1800. The hands have come down, the foot positioning has narrowed, the stance is high, the blocks are weirder, the jab is even more of a lunge than it was in 1800, and on it goes. If evolution happens in boxing, then boxing was evolving AWAY from modern skills for at least 80 years. Fox's boys would have looked more "primitive" to modern eyes than Cribb.

So what gives?

Well, we should consider a few things. First, a few Western martial arts hobbyists are still around, and they experiment and spar with the techniques in the old manuals. They think it still works when you use tiny gloves. Second, most professional fighters prefer not to get hit in the face, and learn pretty quickly how to avoid big errors that get them hit. Third, we know that even small changes in the rules make a big difference in fighting styles, and LPR is very different from gloved rules. Now add those three things to the fact that 19th century fighters moved AWAY from modern-looking technique.

I think the most reasonable conclusion is that the boxing techniques used by Fox's guys worked under London Prize Ring Rules. At least as well as modern boxing technique would. Probably better.

I doubt Fox's techniques would work under modern rules, because that's not what they're built for. Although they might surprise a couple modern guys here and there, just because they're so weird.

There are manuals. We have about a dozen clear ones from the 1860-1895 period, and they all look pretty similar. The technique lines up with what we see in the absolute earliest films, like Corbett and Billy Edwards.

Pre-1865, there's one really nice manual that was published I think in about 1800 and reprinted several times until at least 1822. It's consistent with the color prints of boxers from the same period. There's also an even earlier one with beautifully clear illustrations, and plenty of occasions where the author replaces "s"s with "f"s for no apparent reason. That one seems more along Mendoza's lines. There are others as well.

How many of these Fox would have had access to? I don't know. It took me a while to track them down when I was doing research about a decade ago, and that was with the internet.

As for the conditions of modern life, yes, I would expect those to make boxing evolve faster. But boxing had already been a professional sport for about 200 years by the time Fox wrote his book. The question you'd have to ask is how many generations you think it would take a smallish pool of professional fighters to figure this stuff out.

 

This observation in particular I like.

 

Darn right there's not.

 

Tom Sayers could probably make 140 pounds today, with day-before weigh-in, his best fighting weight then being about 150 pounds. He fought and defeated William Perry (202 lbs), John C. Heenan (190 lbs), Aaron Jones first time (172-175 lbs), several men weighing about 164-168 lbs (Harry Poulson, Aaron Jones second bout, Bill Benjamin two times, Tom Paddock). Anybody who thinks he was fighting them hammer and tongs, having no skills or cleverness, must be a complete fool. Same for Jem Mace, he was a welterweight or light middleweight fighting and beating much heavier men.

 

One more thing to consider. They were holding sparring exhibitions regularly since at least Mendoza's time, and I recall there were a number of fighters who looked very impressive with the gloves (according to contemporary press), but who failed miserably in real prize fights with bare knuckles. That proves, in my opinion. that it was a very much different sport, even if having the same name, from MoQ boxing.

 

Why are people talking about bareknuckle boxing as if it meant anything? Who cares whether these oafs could outlast other oafs in a brawl? This forum is about boxing, not streetfights.

The sad fact is that we have footage of the best of these oafs in action.

Since some people are still in denial, let's focus on the absolute #1 basic in boxing: the jab.

Fake boxing historians like Bert Sugar frequently claim that Corbett invented the jab. The sad truth is that Corbett had no idea what a jab even was.

In 1925, naive filmmakers from the Pathex company hooked Gene Tunney, the best boxer of the day, up with “Gentleman” Jim Corbett for a round of boxing instruction.

Corbett, a part-time vaudevillian and retired boxer, had talked himself into a reputation as a Gilded Age boxing wizard. Understandably, then, the film crew and Gene Tunney should have expected great things from the old man, right?

Film has survived of the travesty that followed. Suffice it to say that Corbett was no boxing wizard. I’ve already detailed elsewhere (https://www.boxingforum24.com/threads/corbetts-uppercut.614379/) that Corbett had no idea how to throw a proper uppercut. The same film, however, reveals an even more startling limitation: Corbett had no jab.

No jab! None!

Since the “instructional” film must be seen to be believed, I post it below, and encourage the reader to watch the film in its entirety before proceeding.

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Watched it?

No, go back and watch it. It'll save you a lot of reading time when the evolution deniers appear.

Watched it? Good.

Anyone who understands boxing will immediately see the problems. Corbett’s left punch (it’s clearly not a jab) doesn’t snap. Corbett launches it like a jouster trying to spear his opponent. He even leans into it, like he’s fencing. His punches don’t turn over, which further reduces the punch’s power. The idea of doubling or tripling a punch like this would be ridiculous.

There is more to the story. Any reader who isn’t blind will have noticed that Corbett telegraphs his left drunken-fencer-punch. He wasn’t an anomaly in this respect; most fighters from his period did the same thing. You can even see the “great” John L. Sullivan, a brawler from the 1880s, doing the same thing with none other than Corbett himself:

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If anything, Corbett’s telegraphing in the Tunney clip is even worse. You couldn’t land a punch like that today. Most fighters would see it coming from a different state! The punch would have left Corbett wide open to be put on his backside by anyone who knew what he was doing.

Compare Corbett’s demonstration to an actual boxing trainer’s instructions. For example, here is the eminent Canadian trainer Russ Anber demonstrating the jab with a young David Lemieux:

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The difference is like night and day. Even at 16, Lemieux knew that you need to fire your jab in a straight line, rather than cranking it backward in a "why, I oughta" Jackie Gleason movement. Lemieux also knew that you need to do basic stuff like turn the jab over, snap it, step with it, keep balanced, and not lean over.

One wonders how Gene Tunney could keep from laughing. Yes, sure, Tunney gave the usual polite boilerplate about how much he learned from Corbett, and how great Corbett was. But even on film, Tunney can’t suppress a smile at the silly old humbug trying to rough-house with him.

It’s time for the Emperor’s New Clothes game to end. Corbett wouldn’t have known a jab if one had hit him in the face. Fortunately, he lived in a period where nobody knew how to throw one at him.

 

Lots of people find the early period interesting because it's 200 years of history with colorful personalities in one of the oldest continuously documented professional sports in the world.

You can read the words of a guy who's been dead for 200 years and wore a goofy wig, but find yourself surprised at how much he understood about a sport you share with him. That moment of recognition where a man who lived before the founding of America suddenly says something that echoes what your trainer told you last week is pretty cool. It's not as advanced, sure, but you're both talking about the same stuff, and you care about the same stuff. You don't get that in a lot of historical research.

And London Prize Ring boxing isn't anything close to a street fight. In some ways its rules are more artificial than the modern ones.

/$0.02