Bare-Knuckle Boxer's Companion: Learning How to Hit Hard and Train Tough from the Early Boxing Masters

by David Lindholm

The fighters of the great bare-knuckle boxing era were tough men and skilled combatants. They had to be to endure brutal brawls that could last for hours, testing the skills and guts of both participants. In this fascinating tutorial on this poorly understood combative art, martial artists David Lindholm and Ulf Karlsson Tada extract the practical material from historical bare-knuckle boxing and show how it can be applied in modern self-defense.

Lindholm and Tada have analyzed the surviving texts and illustrations of the masters of bare-knuckle boxing and organized what they've discovered into a complete program for training, conditioning and applying these skills in a real confrontation. In doing so, they show how bare knuckle is an ideal system for real-world self-defense. It contains strikes, throws, parries and a few basic kicks, so it is simple to learn. The techniques are remarkably powerful, which means you get a good payoff for each shot you land. It works regardless of the clothes you wear, the surface you stand on, the space you will fight in or how many attackers you meet. Bare knuckle is also easy to practice alone or with partners, because you need minimal space and equipment to train and enjoy its benefits.

The bare-knuckle boxing era ended in the early 20th century, when gloves were introduced, stricter rules implemented and oversight organizations formed. This book is devoted to reviving this practical combative art.

136 pages, Kindle Edition

First published April 1, 2009

Reviews

[Steve Scott · Rating 1 out of 5]

Here we have another aspiring martial art/sport/self defense book that plays upon the “Golden Age” fallacy. There was a time (don’t you know?) where men knew a more effective way of bare handed fighting...before rules and gloves corrupted the method. Oh for the good old days. The book fails repeatedly to support any of its claims.

It’s poorly written with photos that don’t match the captions. The techniques make one shudder with the thought of application. It starts out bad and gets worse. To borrow a quote from the great lexicographer Samuel Johnson, “That which is original is not good, and that which is good is not original”.

The authors state that a a fighter’s weight is a liability and hindrance to speed, and cite anecdotal evidence of the Dempsey Willard match. It might help to note the average weight of a heavyweight today compared to Dempsey’s fighting weight. It would also serve to note the size of the Klitschko brothers, both heavy weight champions in the nineties, and both quite speedy punchers and large and heavy by even modern standards.

Later they write, “Jack Dempsey, known as the Manassas Mauler, was not a big man, being of average weight and height”. Jack Dempsey was six feet, one inch tall with a lean weight approaching 190. This placed him well above the average height and weight of men for the last 150 years in North America and Europe. They also repeat an old claim that Dempsey badly injured the larger Willard in their fight, but these these allegations were challenged after the fight and are likely spurious.

The authors state that people so often break their hands because of lack of conditioning. “Boxer fractures” are common occurrences in emergency rooms. They involve the metacarpals of the ring and pinky fingers...those flexible and articulate bones whose range of motion allow gracile manipulation of the strings of a violin. But the authors would have boxers hit with those very knuckles. It’s a potentially harmful prescription. The authors call for radial deviation (or radial flexion) of the wrist on punching, hitting with middle, ring and pinky.

The authors prescribe soaking the hands in brine or another solution in order to thicken the skin. They say there is nothing magical about this, but that it is “chemistry, an understanding of human anatomy, and common sense”. How is it any of the three? And what is “common sense” in this case? Would widely held superstition qualify?

They also say the vertical fist allows for hitting without any “kinks or bends”, as if a horizontal fist causes these. This is simply not true.

In the self defense scenario section the authors suggest the defender hit the attacker on the thighs in order to get off the floor after having been knocked down. The purpose is to make him back away. Why not the groin? We’re not told.

My suggestion is to skip everything and go to the end and read the list of recommendations for further reading. Note one of those, Rory Miller, is now a published author, and his books are excellent.

[Joseph Hirsch · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a decent offering from the self-defense imprint Palladin, though I have to be honest and say I enjoyed it less than some of their other titles on the same subject. Ned Beaumont's work is, in my opinion, head and shoulders above what is on offer here.

That said, there is some cool history on display in this book, recounting the development of bare-knuckle fighting from Greek antiquity to the heyday of Irishmen like John L. Sullivan and Jack Dempsey, those rough-and-tumble types in search of a Craic, and their more sober, scientific foils like "Gentleman" Jim Corbett and Gene "the Marine" Tunney, respectively.

Each sequence of defensive and offensive manuevers is broken down step by step, in simple to understand terms accompanied by photographs. Drills and exercises are reasonably explained, and while some fight instructors tend to get lost in their own aura as self-styled gurus, there isn't too much Eastern mysticism on display here. Nor is there a bunch of cromagnon tough guy bravado. There are some decent nuggets about controlling fear, which are right from the Cus D'Amato-by-way-of-Tyson playbook, but for some people this aspect of fight psychology and managing the "adrenaline dump" could be new. The authors point out that fighting with bare fists is dangerous, sometimes fatally so (even for professionals who ply their trade on the cobbles) and the counsel they offer readers is responsible, realistic, and even-handed. It goes without saying that such caveats and warnings are especially key, when you know young men are going to be picking this thing up, and if they can be spared a night in the drunk tank (or a lifetime in the pen for that matter) it's important to try to get their attention and make them understand fighting is not playing. The bibliography provides an embarrassment of other good sources to track down, including treatises on related martial arts like fencing and the less noble (but still necessary) art of being a bouncer working the door at a bar or club.

[Miroku Nemeth · Rating 5 out of 5]

Interesting book for those who train in martial arts/combat sports and who have some street fighting experience. Bare knuckle boxing was much more practical for the streets than modern boxing (though it is still good) because it had few rules and was much more dirty than even modern MMA. I like the use of classic European texts in bare-knuckle boxing as a basis for what they are teaching in this book, as few people know much about bare-knuckle boxing and its practicality as a combat-style. It is perhaps just viewed as boxing without gloves (and some modern competitions are like this), but traditional bare-knuckle boxing was much more close to real combat and consequently much more deadly (arguments for the the cumulative effects of damage to the brain from the softened gloved punches in boxing aside). Fighters were allowed many punches that are illegal in boxing--hammer fists, backfists, etc. A fighter was able to clinch, use certain locks, use certain throws, use headbutts, trips, and often use kicks and elbows. It was much closer to the hand-to-hand combat of the street than modern combat sports are today, and thus provides a great basis for practical combat training methodology grounded in a Western tradition. I liked the book, but felt that many of the illustrated panels that dealt with drills involving deflections, blocks, etc. could have been simplified or eliminated. I was surprised to find that many of the moves to be found in the textbook were similar to the style of fighting I have been trained in in CHA-3 Kenpo, which originated in the '40's with our grandmaster being a boxer. I am not sure how this bare-knuckle influence was retained, but there is a lot that we do in training that is exactly from this textbook, and different in many ways from modern gloved boxing. An interesting read, though one can skim much of it, and one has to have had solid foundational training to actually understand it.

I actually read "Championship Street Fighting" about a month ago, and just finished a biography of John L. Sullivan, (as well as that graphic novel on the famous 18th century British bare knuckle boxer Mendoza, etc.), so it was interesting to me, though it has very real limitations and could have been expanded and developed more, I guess.

It has to be said that the historical material in the text was integrated in in an extremely professional manner, with enough to give a context going from ancient times through the medieval and all the way from the bare knuckle age to the modern, while never being excessive. The allusions to and examples from texts like Sigmund Ringeck's "Ringen" with a set of techniques called "Mortschlag," or murder strikes, for example, are very interesting (and very much like CHA-3 Kenpo).

I have to add as an afterthought (and I added another star because of this), that the chapter on self-defense, for its brevity, was actually very good, and that there were many tips on training and conditioning that were very practical as well-from training the hands to punch to building the complete body strength a fighter, not a bodybuilder with largely "cosmetic" muscles, needs to be able to fight efficiently.