Was just wondering as I overheard a work colleague talking about a fight club type underground place where guys (almost always guys, girls tend to be more sensible lol) challenge each other to settle scores? Just like the movie "Fight club" Sounds like a lot of rubbish to me. You'd think police would shut these places down and there'd be reports of serious injuries and even deaths? Does anybody know of any in Scotland? Just out of curiosity...
I believe there are still some unlicensed boxing matches going on , which may be what your colleague was talking about.
I can't tell you... As teenagers, like a lot of groups I'd imagine, we would have certain places we'd go scrap. It was never serious, and certainly not a dispute settling thing. As an adult I've heard of nothing like what you describe outside of travelling communities, and the occasional booze fuelled scrap.(not me, too old for that stuff). There is quite a movement to make bare knuckle boxing more legit as a sport?
There was a bit of a craze when the film came out and people tried and quickly realised that getting beaten up is not fun. Travelling Communities use BKB as a way to solve disputes. Then theres illegal underground fights. Which really exist but wouldnt be able to tell you where theyre held. (No idea) lol
BKB looks absolutely brutal. What lunatics take part? I guess illegal fights could take place anywhere like someone's back garden or even a martial arts gym (if the fighters don't have a licence).
Wow, really? Could you please explain further? I know they wear hand wraps so I assumed it'd be like being hit with a sledgehammer?? You'd think chances of losing an eye would be way higher?? Also cuts etc. A bit like elbow strike from the thai boxing?
Cuts are nothing really unless they go really deep or into the functioning of the eye. Which is why some fights are allowed to continue despite copious bleeding while others, with what seems like a much smaller cut, are stopped. Black eyes, bloody noses, split lips, etc are pretty superficial (although can look bad) The real danger involved is trauma to the brain itself and someone wearing wraps and gloves can deliver that harder and for longer than someone bare-knuckle or with just wraps.
Not very informed on this but I'm procrastinating from proper work so I'll try and give an answer. From what I can remember: Boxing gloves developed to protect the hand, but in doing so meant boxers punch waaaaay harder than they would without gloves for fear of injury. That means people getting hid harder. Also I have read quite a few times, and you can dig up archival footage on youtube, that old BKB would have way more body shots simply due to fighters not wanting to break their hand. Now that's far less of a risk, head shots are way more usable. On top of that, you also now have people taking an absolute battering for a long amount of time since knockouts seem harder to score with boxing gloves compared to bare knuckle, or smaller gloves like in mma. While being knocked out looks devastating, my belief is that taking repeated concussive, buffeting trauma for 20 minutes is a lot more damaging than getting knocked out. I'm not sure if there's any actual studies to back that up though, and there's an argument mma hasn't been around long enough to draw comparisons. Boxing also has the problem in comparison with mma trauma in allowing 10 counts and having fights go on a lot longer than they would in mma, so its hard to point the higher prevalence of brain damage and death in boxing just to the gloves. Anecdotally though, when I used to use both gloves, I much preferred being punched with an mma glove on. It was a sharper pain, and maybe harder in some ways, but boxing gloves just feel like being buffeted across your whole head. I'd been dropped in mma sparring a few times and I felt my brain rattling around a lot less than a good crack with a boxing glove. That's comparing mma gloves to boxing rather than BKB, but its my closest analogue.
I've never known of anything "organised" like smokers, i know people who would organise glove less sparring matches regularly, but in reality it wasn't anything like bare knuckle, just a bunch of guys too lazy to take up boxing, but with over inflated opinions of their abilities through such events.
Having watched a few of those bootleg DVD's (not out of choice, but round people's houses... I still remember a hippy lesbian couple complaining that there wasn't enough blood, but I digress...), the fights go on for a long time but the headshots become scarce pretty early on. It's down to how painful it is to repeatedly smash your bare knuckles against hard bone, from what I could make out. The willingness to stay in the pocket goes out of the window pretty quickly, moving on to lots of clinching and body shots.
Plenty of vids on youtube. I think Vice did a docu and Netflix has a docu on BKB too. Re safer than regular boxing as above. I keep mentioning it but I swear it was on BBCs Tomorrows World where they got Barry McGuigan to punch a dolls head with varying gloves and headguard sizes and discovered that the weight of the headguard increased potential torque and damage to the neck on impact. Keep googling and cant find anything. But now its why they took it off for Olympic Boxing.
Ya, a funny thing, that. Headgear protects fine from straight-on blows (jab, cross) but for a punch that makes the head turn (a hook) the thickness of the headgear sticking out from one's face actually acts as a lever arm that increases the rotation of the head/neck -- and that's bad!
