Should martial arts always keep changing or be kept in traditional ways?

This statement made me laugh because I know people who use ABS and they are the worst boxers. Aggression and rage can win any bout sure but a clear head and skill will overcome both many times, in my humble opinion. My evidence for that bold statement is Mayweather defeating McGregor. Skill vs Rage, Skill Wins. If you watched the ape fight, skill won there too.

 

I'm talking about the etymology of the words. You have assigned rigid definitions to them, but the history of those words does not follow your personal definitions of them.

Flat feet, no hip movement, standing with hips front-on, legs at an angle and shoulders at an angle. Arm punching with no guard.

I don't know what this image is supposed to prove, other than the artist had no knowledge of anatomy, biomechanics or perspective.

Are hammer fists allowed in boxing?

Apologies for the late replies, I've been away.

 

Well to answer your one question, the fresco clearly shows things we recognize as boxing in 2019, existing in ancient Crete. It's also a two-dimensional fresco. It can't transmit as much information as you seem to desire.

I've noticed several people have mention "no guard". Do you even box, because any boxer knows "guard" is a sometimes thing. Never dropped your guard and got captured doing it in a recording? I'm kidding but seriously, critiquing the ancient boxing fresco is a hilarious use of this thread, and our time together, in my opinion.

Who here has not dropped their guard in a bout???? Step forward! I watched those apes do it several times, and I'm no better.

 

It shows people punching each other, maybe even punching each other in competition. It does not show things we recognize as boxing.

It can transmit information about body positions and mechanics, the fact is it just doesn't contain the basic elements found in boxing.

Guard is almost always a thing, and only tends not to be when a boxer has been significantly tired or stunned. This fresco clearly shows two people punching at the same time. It's clearly not a lunging strike where the opponent has been opened up and one of them is swinging wide as a calculated risk, because the foot position is so narrow and the feet are flat. One has his hand well back behind his body, the other has his hand down at chest level, which was common prior to the advent of boxing gloves in competitive pugilism because shots to the head were significantly fewer compared with boxing because it was boxing gloves which allowed enough hand protection for that dynamic to change.

 

That's exactly the point. And that applies just as much to your point of view.
It transmits that they are engaged in some form of primitive fisticuffs. No more and no less.
It doesn't tell us about style, rules, techniques, tactics, duration, winning conditions, yadda, yadda..
Are they using deft footwork and feints or stand and swing until one falls over?
Are they using the forefist or the hammer fist (or forearm, elbows, etc)
Is a battle of attrition over many rounds or a brief violent affair?
One knockdown wins? Many?

Ultimately it's an interesting picture that tells us combat sports have been with us for millennia but not much more than that sadly.

 

I mean the person on the left us clearly doing wing chun!

 

Here's what I think. Your post brings up the paradox of martial arts traditions in a nutshell.

What's better, primitive fisticuffs or whatever you call a martial art. I'd argue the apes would win. Against any human, I mean. Do you disagree?

I think the idea that anyone in the modern era is superior to the physical fighters of the ancient one is a delusion of grandeur. Especially our ancestors. You could argue any other type of combat other than hand to hand, claw to claw combat and would probably be right, but not this one. Ancient Rome owned everyone here, in theory and in praxis. They figured out puglilism as it is defined. What you and I do is a shadow of all that.

All that said, what would the average modern pugilist's chances be against a silverback? How much would their art serve them against a natural boxer.

 

Homo sapiens took over from the neanderthal in Europe, who were apparently bigger and stronger, although recent genetic research seems to show we took over by being better lovers then fighters.....

Interbreeding between archaic and modern humans - Wikipedia

 

That is a matter of attributes, not technique.

You are conflating so many things here... statecraft, logistics, bureaucracy, engineering, agriculture, diplomacy, culture, military strategy and tactics... the Roman empire didn't expand by challenging neighbouring tribes to a boxing match.

You obviously feel strongly about this, but it is just a feeling. There is no evidence that top-tier combat sport practitioners in ancient Rome would beat those of today, if trained equally for a given ruleset. There is no evidence to the contrary, either, so all this is conjecture.

You are stretching the definitions of boxing and pugilism so thin to prove your point that you are breaking them. Pugilism as it is defined? During what period? When it included kicks and throws? When gloves were introduced?

Silverbacks fight, they don't box. If hammerfists are boxing now, then what about knife-hand chops? Is Wing Chun boxing?

 

Who would win in a fight, one gorilla sized capuchin, or a team of capuchin sized gorillas of the same weight?

 

I have literally no idea what you are on about or what point you are trying to make. I don't think you do either tbh.
Now you're talking about men fighting apes? What's that got to do with what "boxing" was like in Roman times and what "boxing" is like now? I mean...a Roman boxing champion loses to an angry silverback just as easily as a modern boxer.
I guess I must have missed the history lesson where that led to the "Silverback Empire"?

But you are doing the exact opposite of that and putting ancient era athletes and fighters on a pedestal with little or no evidence. You are using a form of the "appeal to antiquity" logical fallacy and a whole bucket of wishful thinking nostalgia that "things ain't what they used to be".
People in Roman times were (by and large) physiologically identical to us.
They were more than likely smaller on average, less well nourished, carrying more chronic conditions and did not have the benefit of our understanding of science, sports science, nutrition, injury management, training protocols, measurable results, bio marker tracking, etc etc.
The two advantages they would have over modern people are mindset and going through the filter of attrition. They would be much more familiar with deadly violence and applying such violence. The successful ones would have also been through the forging and filtering process of fighting. The rubbish ones just wouldn't be around anymore (not all roman boxers would be equally good just like modern boxers aren't).

Don't get me wrong...a tried, tested and honed combative and aggressive mindset, used to operating in a deadly force environment, is a hell of an advantage. Many "fighters" get through multiple fights and situations with not much else.
But in a one on one go (with a defined start and finish criteria) rather than a surprise street attack or ambush can only go so far before superior conditioning, skill, gameplan, tactics play their part.

Personally I think ancient boxers in a modern setting would be aggressive, break the rules all the time, be game for days but ultimately gas out and end up flummoxed by the modern footwork, feints and movement and beaten by a better nourished and conditioned athlete that understands the rules.

At the end of the day we (including you) have no idea what ancient Roman/Greek "boxing" was really like.
We can barely know what much more recent, better transmitted and better documented arts (late 1800's karate, medieval/renaissance sword fighting for example) were really like so pretending you know what ancient boxing over 2000 years ago, with no real documentation or transmission, was really like is stretching the evidence far too far in your favour.

What most of us are saying is...we have no firm idea...we know ancient greeks and romans hit each other with their hands/fists and had some form of competitive rules and bouts. Modern boxers also hit each other with their hands/fists and have competitive bouts.
And while that link is historically interesting and gives "boxing" a long and interesting lineage there's just not enough evidence to be as strongly dogmatic about things as you are being.

 

I mean...I'm typing this on one of Babbage's difference engines rather than a modern PC.
Babbage figured out computing as it is defined and old things are so much better than new things.

 

What's a "natural boxer"?!
Isn't that like saying a "natural footballer" or "natural rugby player"?
You can't be a "natural boxer". Boxing is a learned skill.
You can be a good natural fighter but no one comes into the world able to throw a good jab.
Natural fighters throw swinging haymakers, clubbing hammer fists and flailing backfists. Which can still be effective but it ain't "boxing".
Hell...lot's of people, even with training, can't even throw a good double jab or hook off the jab let alone do those things naturally!

 

One thing that struck me when looking at the sculpture "boxer at rest" was the cauliflower ear.
Now cauli ears aren't unknown in boxing but it seems to me they are more common in situations with prolonged head to head contact and head pressure (grips, headlocks, etc).
Things like grappling, MMA, Rugby, etc. They are less common in stricter striking arts (boxing, kickboxing, etc).
This would suggest to me that the boxer in question either wrestled and/or did pankration as well as his boxing OR the boxing he did do had substantially more grappling involved than modern boxing rules allow.
Could be both those possibilities are true?
Given that old bare knuckle boxing had things like flying mares and cross buttocks throws where you wrap the head in some way I think it's highly likely ancient boxing had that too (or variations of that).

 

There's too much to respond to all at once but I'll try to address a few points concisely.

To David: yes, Wing Chun is a form of Chinese boxing. And, boxing as we know it is mostly grounded in the Greek Olympiad tradition going back to 688BC. The Greeks were great record keepers and the evidence for boxing even more than 2,000 years ago, is pretty extensive. Someone even mentioned introduction of gloves in boxing...that's not a modern thing, there is a 2,000 year old fresco showing hand coverings, as well as the famous Roman statue of the boxer at rest.

 

To Smit, so what do you think Roman and Greek boxers would have done so differently. Because I'm gonna double down on the jab being as old as the opposable thumb.

"Pugil" is literally the thumb and first two digits.

And by natural boxer what I mean was implied in the human/ape comparisons (maybe an extreme example just to make a point). Both are fist fighters, right? Both are natural fighters from birth. Humans have a 2,000+ year old tradition of boxing going back to Greece, and in a sense, apes are proto-pugilists going back way further. Primates in general can be trained, and I don't think pugilism is an exception.

As far as the pedestal thing, consider Scorpius of Rome. Humans still can and do ride chariots around tracks. How many modern chariot riders would survive a single lap against a battle-tested driver in his prime, circa 1st century.

You asked what I was on about? I'll sum it up: I still think humans were probably better hand to hand fighters all around in the past. It may be fallacious reasoning but that doesn't make it untrue.

And picturing Floyd Mayweather in the Colleseum fighting with cestus, where bouts sometimes meant one punch landed killed or incapacitated the loser. Even with just padded cestus, I find it hard to believe he'd stand out in a crowd of tougher, well trained professional Cestus boxers.

 

Isn't the statue Greek not roman?

Boxer at Rest - Wikipedia


I'll let every one else argue the rest.

 

"amoung primates’ hands, ours is unique for its ability to form a fist with the thumb outside the fingers. The fingers of other primates’ hands are too long to curl into their palms, and their thumbs are too short to reach across the fingers. So when apes fight, they are far more likely to wrestle or hold their opponent down while others stomp on him, says Carrier."

Human hands evolved so we could punch each other

 

Last thing, and I apologize for belaboring the points here but like I've been saying, practically all of my points are coming from decent sources like Encyclopedia Britanica and others.

Check out this site on Cestus boxing in Ancient Rome. There are so many things in common between then and now (largely because of traditions). More commonalities than differences, my point all along. And that's why silverbacks fighting looks a lot like men fighting, in a more primitive sense obviously. But the roots of boxing don't stop in Rome or Greece. Fight fighting was probably one of the first tools early man refined. And I don't believe most of that occurred with the introduction of Queensbury.

Cestus Gladiator | Cestus

 

So one of the finest defensive boxers ever, reknowned for being elusive, cautious and hard to hit, while being able to land blows himself, in an environment that rewards single shots and not getting hit, with hard coverings on his relatively fragile hands wouldnt do very well at all. Oh no.

He's about the worst example to pick in that situation because I think he'd do really well. He's got a stile made for that.
Whereas someon like an Arturo Gatti wouldnt do well at all.