The History of Boxing in Ancient Egypt.

[OctoberRed]

Compared to some of the 5h1t im seeing posted... Did you know that Sonny Liston is a poor man's Joe Louis

LOL!

[Mooshashi]

This thread started out good and then you jerk offs ruined it.

Too many big words for you to read?

[BrotherDudeJack]

Too many big words for you to read?

No, not at all. It started out as an interesting thread and then devolved into a tiring back and forth between a couple of jerk offs about race. Maybe you should read it again.

[Miriam_A]

Very interesting topic, thanks!

[QueensburyRules]

A brief history of boxing stretches back a large number of years, beginning as soon as the 16th hundred years BC in historic Egypt. It was a well known sport enjoyed with a small range associated with cultures (primarily within the Mesopotamian region) more than several millennia, giving the activity a rich background. However, it appears that after nov the Roman Empire, boxing disappeared completely for a while.
There are absolutely no historical records throughout the Middle Ages – Mediterranean sea, European, or otherwise – that suggest the activity was practiced in order to any great degree. It wasn’t before 17th century it finally reemerged, this time around in England. Boxing has a much wider target audience today, practiced and spectated through many societies worldwide.

- -No problem with your summation, but as I recall there are friezes during Roman occupation of Tunisia showing boxers.

Coulda just been for decoration or that boxing was being done there at that time, but there it is...

[Rusty Tromboni]

i think this thread is pretty cool!

[billeau2]

Keep in mind the limits of "Boxing."

When we start to look at boxing we should be aware that boxing, as a sport, as a form of "one-up-man-ship" is a separate and distinct form of a greater whole. It gets more complicated than that:

Wrestling styles seem to be the oldest recorded in human history. For example, Sumo, the only indigenious martial art of Japan native stock/soil is written into their creative myths, Shinto Religion. Chinese Wrestling forms Shao Jiao also is ancient being a contest oriented form that has roots in Mogolian wrestling and other such forms.

So where does boxing fit in? It seems that boxing has a much closer tie in to the military as a general idea. Chinese boxing systems are comprehensive and the older systems include weapons, grappling, armour, etc. The same can be said of Japanese systems. In India, boxing was had a similar appeal, the Sikhs who had an incredible military presence used boxing to settle dispute, often employing the bracelet over the hand by mutual consent. the boxing was therefore sportive, the idea being to win an honor fight without maiming the other fellow, but giving him a good hiding in the process...those bracelets are hard as a rock!

And in Egypt, Rome and Greece, there is an intertwine where boxing forms become, at times, part of military technique, part of sportive technique, with many repeats. For example, The Greeks had olympic sportive boxing, but at the same time had full on fighting that employed boxing and grappling (Pankraton), and even Greco Wrestling. All these were considered sportive in nature, part of games.

Rome presumably had to deal with gladiator combat as compared to boxing matches. This might be why Boxing was not always such a big sport in Rome. But what of Egypt?

The Afro-Hamitic cultural landscape was such that military campaigns in Nubia and Kush and by other large sophisticated African empires. had a long history of employing various sticks in warfare. these sticks, could be thrusting weapons, or spears, they could be blunt force weapons, vis a vis a stick with a large haliberd to swing, or they could be sticks to use as a dueling weapon, as a means to attack one on one.

While we don't know for sure what these approaches looked like, being that there were no video tapes around! lol... We can posit the possibility that the glyphs of men boxing were an offshoot of using stick weapons primarily, and guiding the hands to function along the same lines. The metal technology and the design of blades being secondary to stick weapons development, meant that it is more likely hand to hand came out of concussive and slicing stick work and not, as in the west, out of blade work. These kingdoms of course also had wrestling! and one can see grappling work with pictures on the walls.

My own theory is that wrestling is always the oldest and most natural way to contest authority, to have gamesmanship, a contest to determine a winner. for mammals wrestling is natural, we seek to touch, the warmth of others, (not always but most times) and it is natural training given that we grow up held close to our mothers, and naturally tussle with each other.

So every society has forms of wrestling that develop. Boxing, hitting however can be quite varied! As I often point out to people, a trained fighter fights in a manner counter to our evolution. A trained fighter, a boxer will have to learn at some point, in any system, how to punch straighter, and with power that is generated efficiently. If one watches apes fight, they will see what an untrained primate, using natural attributes to hit down and hard upon another, looks like.

So boxing systems along with weapons systems become military in nature. Even a buckler is really a hard surface to put upon the hand to give it hardness to hit, a surfact to deglect an attack and a way to create some distance. So when we ask how Mespotamian, or Egyptian boxing looked, we can know that certain guideposts were followed to achieve boxing forms. These forms often interspliced the use of weapons and the use of the hand as a weapon. There are only so many ways we can use a hand as a weapon:

we can create distance through extension by putting a stick, or shooting a stick through the hands.

We can make the hands hard by covering them, and training them to hit to viral areas... the original vital areas would have to be the seams, the joints in the body where the armour of the opponent cannot cover.

We can make the hands fast and efficient when delivering blows. this means learning to hit straight and anatomically correct ways of delivering blows.

We can lean to assimilate the movement of the hands with the body and most martial arts tend to focus on movements that are either whole body or segmented, foot movements and movements with the shoulders and waist.

All forms of boxing will have these characteristics. Hope this helps.