Knuckles and Gloves

Knuckles and Gloves

Sports and games may be classified as natural and artificial. Running, jumping, and swimming, for example, are natural sports, though, to be sure, much artifice is required to assure in them especial excellence. In these simple instances it is merely directed to avoid waste of energy. Boxing is one of the artificial sports, and has never been, like wrestling, anything else. In the far distant past the primitive man, with no weapon handy, no doubt clutched and hugged and clawed at his immediate enemies, just as children, who are invariably primitive until they are taught better, clutch and claw to-day. That natural and instinctive grasping and hugging was the forefather of subtle and tricky wrestling, whether Greek, Roman, or North-country English, but as far as we can discover the earliest use of fisticuffs was for sport alone. It may seem natural to hit a man you hate, but it is only second nature, and any one but a trained boxer is apt to seize him by the throat. The employment of fists as weapons of offence and of arms for shields developed from the sport. As such, too, it is very effectual, especially when combined with a knowledge of wrestling, but only when the enemy is of similar mind. I am informed by a former Honorary Secretary of the Oxford University Boxing Club, who from this point of view ruthlessly criticised a former book of mine on the subject, and who has spent many years in close contact with uncivilisation, that boxing is of extremely little value against a man with a broken bottle or a spannerlet alone an armed cannibal. The praises of boxing as a practical means of self-defence have been, perhaps, too loudly sung. A boy at school may earn for himself a certain reputation, may establish a funk amongst his fellows owing to his quickness and agility with or without the gloves; but in practice he seldom has a chance of employing his xx skill against his enemies. On the other hand, a small boy who comes in contact for the first time with anothers skill (or even brutality) receiving a blow in the face, invariably cries, Beastly cad! because a blow in the face hurts him. You have to accept this convention of sportsmanlike warfare, like others, before you can make it work. And the Love of Fair Play of which we have heard so much in the past is quite artificial too. It is not really inherent in human nature. Like other moralities it has to be taught, and it is very seldom taught with success. Let us say, not unreasonably, that you begin to take an interest in boxing as a boy. You hear about various fightsat least you do nowadays, and you want to imitate the fighters, just as in the same way but at a different moment you want to be an engine-driver, or an airman, or the Principal Boy in Robinson Crusoe, when your young attention is drawn to such occupations. When I was a small boy (if, in order to illustrate a point, a short excursion into autobiography may be forgiven me), the last flicker of the Prize-Ring had, so to put it, just expired, and glove-fighting was not then perhaps a pretty business. A curiosity which, not being skilled in the science and practice of psycho-analysis, I can only ascribe to spontaneous generation, and the fact that Tom Sayers once invested my mother, then a little girl, with his champions belt at a village fairthis curiosity impelled me to desire, from a railway bookstall, the purchase on my behalf of a shilling book called The Art of Self-Defence, by one Ned Donelly. It was, I believe, the very first work of its peculiar and spurious kindthat is, a handbook with or without merit (this one had several, notably that of brevity), written by a sporting reporter and inscribed by the pugilist. I had some difficulty in getting that gift, but when I did I devoured the book from gray paper cover to cover. I knew it almost all by heart once. I remember now that Ned Donelly said he had fought under the auspices of Nat Langham, and I wondered what auspices meant, and I wonder now if Ned Donelly knew. Later, in the mid-nineties, Rodney Stone appeared in the pages of The Strand Magazine, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, whilst admitting that rascality was known in xxi connection with the Prize-Ring, yet showed how the Great Tradition of the British Love of Fair Play in the face of the most reprehensible practices maintained itself. All literature which touched the subject, all conversation with elder persons led me to believe that this desire of Fair Play was inseparable from the British composition (though seldom found outside these islands), and that if one had a quarrel at school an adjournment was immediately made to some secret trysting-place, where boys formed a ring, a timekeeper and referee were appointed, and you and your opponent nobly contended until onethe one who was in the wrong, of coursegave in. ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 57329
Author: Lynch, Bohun
Release Date: Jun 14, 2018
Format: eBook
Language: English