Description

Taken From The Books Introduction.This book deals with the European art of fighting by using the hands for striking—the martial art of pugilism, or bare-knuckle boxing. We are not talking about the modern sport of boxing. We are going to deal with something else here; namely how to fight using your hands without gloves, wraps, and other aids. The modern sport of boxing is a tough and valuable practice that certainly has self-defense applications, but it is an athletic contest, which means it is regulated and relatively safe. Bare-knuckle boxing, on the other hand, is historically speaking a martial art, at least in the modern sense, as well as a sport. It involves slightly different techniques, methods of training, and even perhaps another sort of fighter—similar to the modern boxer, yet not identical. Our book is intended as a how-to guide, a companion of sorts, rather than a discourse on the history of bare-knuckle boxing. We’ve included some aspects of history, because it is important to understand the context of one’s field of study. But our main focus is to extract the practical material from historical bare-knuckle boxing and show how it can be applied in modern self-defense.