Boxing

CHAPTER I

FIRST PRINCIPLES

THE boxer whose knowledge of the art is founded on the mastery of the principles of what is called the English style, as taught by such instructors as Ned Donnelly, Abe Daltrey, and Bat Mullins, has no need to be ashamed of his knowledge, or to regret that he has not been instructed according to the modern methods of glove fighting of which American, French, and other Continental boxers are the exponents.

So far as professional boxing is concerned, no Englishman is the holder of a world’s title. As to amateur boxing, at the Olympic Games of Paris, 1924, with 29 countries competing, the British team secured First and Second in the Middle weights, First in the Light Heavy, Second in the Fly weight, and but for the injury to the hands of its Heavies’ representative, would almost certainly have figured in that final; a record surpassed only by the U.S.A., which won two Firsts, two Seconds, and two Thirds.

The average glove fighter knows little or nothing of genuine boxing. His methods are unpleasant to watch and bear scant resemblance to the boxing art. Straight, clean hitting he despises—or has never learned; he relies on wild, vicious swings with either hand, some of which he is hopeful may get home. Most of them are wasted on the air. His footwork, upon which the genuine boxer relies for both attack and defence, is all but nil. He is an adept at clinching, roughing, holding, lying on and mauling his opponent, preventing him from doing any clean work. So long as he hits his adversary somewhere, and hard, he appears to be quite satisfied.

This is modern glove fighting at its worst; and this worst is being taken as a model by a disagreeably large number of the amateur boxers of to-day. That it does not succeed when its user comes up against a strong, determined adversary, quick and hard-hitting, who has been trained in the principles of the older school, who keeps his head and refuses to be intimidated by wild slogging and unfair devices, is an assertion not to be successfully contradicted.

PROFESSIONAL METHODS

The system of modern glove fighting is not that which is to the advantage of the man or youth to whom boxing is not the means of livelihood but an athletic exercise, a recreation, a form of physical training bringing both pleasure and profit, and, in addition, a self defensive art upon which he may be able to rely if called upon to secure his bodily safety against a chance assault. It is for him that the present treatise is intended.

To hit and not to be hit, is the terse phrase in which is crystallised the sum of the principles of skilled boxing. The accomplishment of this double feat is the whole science of boxing in a nutshell.

To defeat your opponent—whether your best friend, who is obliging you with a three rounds bout, or a rough who presumes on his physical advantages or has designs on your health or your pocket—you have to be near enough to him to hit him—and not to hit him only once and hard, but hard and often, and to keep on doing so; and to achieve this you must take the risk of his hitting you.

TO ESCAPE BEING HIT

And here indeed is one of the very first things the novice boxer has to learn—that to avoid being hit (the idea which is uppermost in the minds of most novices), it is not necessary to take and try to maintain a position two or three yards away from the opponent.

To stand six feet away from your man means that you have to make an entirely unnecessary effort to reach him; which is waste of energy. Given the knowledge how to defend yourself, you are as safe six inches beyond his reach as at six