Indigenous Ability

Rough ‘n’ Tumble, scufflin’, illegal boxing, boombattle, and all the various and sundry names that go to describe the all-in melee that is truly no-holds-barred, no-strikes-off-the-table uses the entire body as a weapon. Let’s take a brief sojourn with just one of those weapons—The Shoulder. Due to obvious range restrictions, the shoulder is part of the closed-quarters arsenal.  [ Notice, in deference to the origin of the word, I call it “closed quarters” in the piratical naval melee sense and not the modern and incorrect perversion to “close quarters.” Yeah, I’m that guy, a stickler for the details. Consider this, if the name ain’t right, what else might be wrong? If a guy calls a jab “a fisty puncher” and is oblivious to the word “jab” we’d suspect something was a bit awry in the boxing research, would we not?] To the Shoulder! We’ve got three broad ways to use it [Slams, Butts, & Grinds] and essentially only two attack paths [Inward & Upward.]...

[Excerpted from our book and DVD set Boxing like the Champs . But…pay close attention, McCoy, was a conman and also loose with the truth—we have always offered our material in good faith that we had the best information for recreations, but , and this is a big but, Crew, I now have in my hands a tract from one of McCoy’s contemporaries regarding how Kid McCoy threw that powerful   “Corkscrew.” The drills we have offered are correct to a point—with the addition of the new insights this punch does indeed go from an elusive curiosity to a powerful clubbing bit of meanness ready to drop into any and all striking arsenals. The new details will be in the book Boxing Like the Champs Round Two to be released in 2020, but we will hep the RAW Crew to the newly uncovered info on ESP RAW 201 , and, of course, we will cover it in the upcoming Boot Camp.] The man born as Norman Selby in 1872, who later becomes Charles “Kid” McCoy (another fighter’s name that he casually adopted as...

In what now adds up to 43 years [and counting] of loving research in the area of old-school dealers of pain I have come across many unusual blows and quite a few sources naming this or that bit of the human anatomy ideal for delivering a walloping blow. What follows are the targeting observations of an old-timer himself, boxing journalist Earl Raab, writing in 1943, on what he found to be the Top Five Targets from the Bareknuckle Era. ONE-“Beneath the Ear” There are many resources that put targeting the ear fairly high on the list but in Mr. Raab’s findings this bit just below the ear delivers many happy returns. TWO-“Between the Eyebrows” An ungloved blow here was found to give a high-percentage percussive effect. THREE-“The Pit of the Stomach” This would later be called “The Solar Plexus Punch” as made world-famous by Bob Fitzsimmons.  FOUR-“The Heart” A highly coveted blow and ungloved it still has exceptional disconcerting wallop. A pa...

Robert Southey was a poet of the English Romantic school. He is considered one of the renowned Lake Poets, the other two notable Lake Poets being William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Mr. Southey recorded his thoughts regarding prize-fighting in 1807. “ When a match is made between two prize-fighters, the tidings are immediately communicated to the public in the newspapers; a paragraph occasionally appears saying the rivals are in training, what exercise they take, what diet—for some of them feed upon raw beef as a preparative, and the state of the bets appears also in the newspapers; not infrequently the whole is a concerted scheme, that a few rogues may cheat a great many fools.” Aspects of the above remind us that there is nothing new under the sun. For a view of Mr. Southey’s versifying I offer the following. It has nothing to do with combat, but I do love my hound dog. “ On the Death of a Favourite Old Spaniel ” And they have drown'd thee then a...