How Punching Has Changed: From Cutters to Clubbers by Mark Hatmaker

 

I want you to picture two pugilists stripped to the waist in a makeshift “ring” of crowding spectators who have arrived to enjoy a bit of the “fancy.”

Once the decision of “who gets the glare” [resting on a second’s knee facing the sun] they “toe the scratch” and commence throwing hands.

I want you to conjure the image of the hands being thrown.

If you are like most, you have visions of semi-straightened arms held in extended guard and sweeping clubbing blows.

That is the common narrative but…

First, let’s take a little trip into the world of behavioral economics, talk a little road biking, play a little football, ponder an observation from a pioneer of skydiving and then, finally, bring it back to the titled topic.

In 1975, economist Sam Peltzman of the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, published an intriguing article in the very sexy publication, Journal of Political Economy.

The title of that article was "The Effects of Automobile Safety Regulation.”

In precis, Mr. Peltzman asserted that any advances in automobile safety were not necessarily being reflected in automobile deaths per mile or injury rates.

Or, in other words, “People still seem to be dying at a steady rate despite the new-fangled gear.”

He proffers why the widely touted safety features from Detroit were not being reflected to a greater degree in safer outcomes. He refers to the lack of projected safety gains being due to a change in the behavior of the drivers of these better engineered cars.

The driver knowing, they have a safer vehicle makes riskier decisions at the margins assuming the engineered safety features are, in effect, safer than they were designed to be.

This behavior is known as “risk compensation,” or to some, in deference to Mr. Peltzman, as the Peltzman Effect.

To be clear, cars were [and are] increasingly engineered for greater safety but the drivers behaved no better, and in many instances, worse negating the engineered intentions to some degree.

It seems that humans reasons thusly, “Oh, this is a safe car, I can drive it a bit more recklessly than that old pre-safety standard clunker” thus setting off a treadmill cascade of ever poorer decisions. [I keyed this sentence while texting at a stoplight. I jest, of course.]

Some engineering wags have offered that the wisest safety device they could offer to really drive automobile fatalities down would be a steel-dagger placed on the steering column pointing at the driver’s heart, the driver then, knowing the inherent risk of heart puncture, would adjust behavior accordingly.

Sports psychologists have noted the Peltzman/Risk Compensation Effect across the board.

Bike helmets do indeed protect the noggins of riders but, there is little decrease in injuries or injury severity because the riders ramp performance to the new assumed margin of safety. In other words, the bikers attempt things they may not have if the helmet were not in play.

The rapid increase in Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE) in football is linked by many to the better evolved helmet and neck stabilization gear. This gear for improved safety has led to “gamifying the gear” [Platonization] and altered tactics that increase the incidences of CTE, the very pernicious malady that the gear sought to defeat.

[It is in understanding risk compensation that some forward-thinking coaches advocate some days for helmetless play or old school leather-helmet play to adjust the behaviors of their players for their own health.]

Bill Booth, a pioneer of skydiving has his own name for this trend to reckless behavior that is now enshrined as Booth’s Rule #2.

"The safer skydiving gear becomes, the more chances skydivers will take, in order to keep the fatality rate constant.”

Let us bring it back to the scenario we opened with, our pugilists toeing the scratch.

Contemporary accounts of the early days of boxing, and more recent deep-dives by fistic historians [Eliott Gorn among them] note that the transition from bare-knuckle to glove saw that “Gloves protected fighters’ hands more than their heads, added weight to each punch, and allowed men to throw innumerable blows to such hard-but-vulnerable spots as the temples and jaws.”

Prior to the glove, the bare-fist era is less the unschooled hard-swing melee that many assume. Precise straight punches held sway more often than not, and a staggering array of “cutting” punches were in the arsenal. Punches that were intended to cut, “give the claret” [bring blood], but save the hands.

It is with the advent of the glove that hereto before now finger-breaking roundhouses, swings, hooks and lateral attacks in the minefield of elbow protected ribs gained prominence.

For many, this is the opposite of the mental picture of the early unschooled ones.

An addition of “safety” gear was not the only adjustment that affected how the fistic game was played.

Temporal adjustments are also prey to the Peltzman Effect. In the case of boxing, the adjustment to a 10-second time allotment for a KO as opposed to 30-seconds of “recovery” altered tactics in another direction.

It is far easier to drop an opponent for 10 seconds than for an entire half a minute.

To drop a game opponent for half a minute one must often be prepared for marathon bouts [a common occurrence] looking for wise fist-saving body-punishment, precision eye-closing, energy-draining and spirit flagging cutters and rippers to bring blood and other tools that will put a game man down for three times the time needed for a 10-count.

Whereas, with the advent of 10-seconds qualifying for “He’s done for” spurs wilder and stronger clubbing to get to the easier goal of 10-and-done.

Athletes adjust to the gear and boundaries of their given domain. Humans in general do the same.

Wise athletes play to the margins of the gear and the game but…

If our eye is on the aspect of historical recreation or street survival where gear and boundaries will not come to our aid, then training “as it was” and not merely assuming sporting transfers are the “same as” is the better part of wisdom.

[For more drills, tips, and tactics from the early cutting days and how Street Dentists put the hooking angles back on the reality table have a look at The Black Box Project. Historically accurate and viciously verified tactics for the thinking fighter.]

Or, for an even deeper dive.