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.]
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