Also by David Lindholm:

Sigmund Ringeck’s Knightly Art of the Longsword (with Peter Svärd)

Sigmund Ringeck’s Knightly Arts of Combat: Sword and Buckler Fighting,
Wrestling, and Fighting in Armor (with Peter Svärd)
Masters of Medieval and Renaissance Martial Arts: Rediscovering the
Western Combat Heritage (contributor)

The Bare-Knuckle Boxer’s Companion: Learning How to Hit Hard and

Train Tough from the Early Boxing Masters by David Lindholm and Ulf
Karlsson Tada
Copyright © 2009 by David Lindholm and Ulf Karlsson Tada
ISBN 13: 978-1-58160-700-0
ePub ISBN: 9781610047043
PDF ISBN: 9781610047036
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Published by Paladin Press, a division of
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 WARNING

Some of the techniques depicted in this book are dangerous. It is not the
intent of the authors or publisher to encourage readers to attempt any of
them without proper professional supervision and training. Attempting to
do so can result in severe injury or death. Do not attempt any of these
techniques or drills without the supervision of a qualified instructor.
The authors, publisher, and distributors of this book disclaim any
liability from any damage or injury of any type that a reader or user of
information contained in this book may incur from the use or misuse of said
information. This book is for academic study only.
 CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION
Who Are We?

CHAPTER 1: THE PUGILISTIC ARTS IN EUROPE

Boxing in Ancient Greece
Boxing in Ancient Rome
Boxing in the Medieval World
Boxing in the Post-Medieval World

CHAPTER 2: BARE-KNUCKLE BASIC TECHNIQUES

The Basic Techniques
Target Areas

CHAPTER 3: BARE-KNUCKLE STRIKES

The Straight Strike
The Round Strike
The Uppercut
The Back Fist
The Backswing
The Head Butt
The Trip
The Cross Buttock or Over-the-Hip Throw
The Chancery
The Parries
Defending the Mark and the Sides
 Kicking
Giving the Return
Additional Techniques from Sullivan

CHAPTER 4: BARE-KNUCKLE PRACTICE PATTERNS

Lesson 1
Lesson 2
Lesson 3
Lesson 4
Lesson 5
Lesson 6

CHAPTER 5: BARE-KNUCKLE CONDITIONING

Essential Attributes
Physical Conditioning Exercises
Cardiovascular Fitness the Bare-Knuckle Way
Sparring and Training the Bare-Knuckle Skills

CHAPTER 6: ADDITIONAL TECHNIQUES FROM THE

EUROPEAN TRADITION
Pugilistic Techniques Prior to the Bare-Knuckle Era
Nicolaes Petter
Johann Georg Paschen
Sigmund Ringeck

CHAPTER 7: SELF-DEFENSE IN THE REAL WORLD

Thoughts about Self-Defense
Bare-Knuckle Boxing as a Self-Defense System

CHAPTER 8: SCENARIO-BASED BARE-KNUCKLE TRAINING

Training Method 1: Recover from Cover Up
Training Method 2: Attacked from Behind
Training Method 3: Getting Off the Ground
Training Method 4: Preemptive Strike
Training Method 5: Hidden Knife
Training Method 6: Creating Distance
Training Method 7: Disorientation
Training Method 8: Suddenly Surrounded
 Training Method 9: Two On One
Training Method 10: Break for the Door
Training Method 11: Group Pounding
Training Method 12: Group Squeeze
Training Method 13: The Gauntlet
Training Method 14: Fight Bystander
Training Method 15: Fencing with the Hands

CHAPTER 9: RECOMMENDED SELF-DEFENSE BOOKS

BIBLIOGRAPHY
 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.
Exceptionally skilled people who fight with bare hands still exist today.
I am thinking of the Irish and the Gypsies, who stand out as the last
proponents of the old bare-knuckle art. If you have a chance, seek them out
and learn from them and assimilate what is good. Learn what you can from
the old masters we deal with in this book, as well from such great boxers as
Sullivan, Dempsey, Marciano, and Ali. Fighting unarmed with the hands is
a simple concept but a complex skill, too complex to be encompassed by
one book, person, or martial art system. Therefore, learn from as many
relevant sources as possible.
Don’t be fooled by the seemingly quaint, antiquated poses of the boxers
in the period illustrations. The fighters of the bare-knuckle era were tough
men and skilled combatants. They had to be in order to endure brutal, often
bloody bouts that could last for hours. To demonstrate their techniques as
clearly as possible, we have adapted their somewhat formal postures. When
actually applying bare knuckle in a self-defense situation or during a
training session, the action would be much more dynamic.
Please remember that a person who trains in bare-knuckle boxing is
training to be a hard hitter. Therefore, be responsible with what you do with
this knowledge, whether in training or in a real confrontation.

WHO ARE WE?

My name is David Lindholm, and I have an MA in history and medieval

archaeology, amongst a whole lot of other degrees, from Lund University in
Sweden (and other places, come to think of it). I have been practicing
martial arts since 1977, when my father took me to a wrestling club. I have
trained in karate, boxing, sport fencing, iaido, kendo, wrestling, and tai chi
chuan, but since 1996 my main fields have been historical European martial
arts and Japanese koryu sword arts. I have written on the medieval long
sword, sword and buckler, medieval wrestling, and the quarterstaff.
My interest in the early European martial arts led me to consider the art
of pugilism. During my university studies, I had come across illustrations of
Greek and Roman pugilists that piqued my curiosity. Later, I discovered
material on post-medieval bare-knuckle boxing in libraries and archives.
This book is a result of that curiosity and the subsequent work—and lots of
sweat—that went into my hands-on study of bare-knuckle boxing.
Ulf Karlsson studied business administration and Japanese at Växjö
University and later took part in the Programme for East and South East
Asian Studies (with a focus on Japan) at Lund University, including an
exchange year at Waseda University. He started training in Taido—a
Japanese martial art created by Okinawan Seiken Shukumine—in 1984 and
has instructed in that art since 1987, currently holding the grade of Godan
Renshi. Since 1992, Ulf has visited Japan more than 10 times to train,
usually staying for three months per visit. He was a member of the Swedish
Taido team from 1991–1999 and was the ladies’ national team coach from
2003–2005. He has taught Taido in several countries, including Denmark,
Finland, Netherlands, and Japan. Currently, Ulf is exploring the classical
kata of the teacher Soko Kishimoto as a way to better understand the roots
of Taido. Ulf has also trained in ESDS (Explosive Self Defence System)
with Slavo Godzik, Splashing Hands with James McNeil, Ryu Te with
Robert Rousselot, and most recently the Okinawan martial art Te with Mark
Bishop.
Remember, this is our own interpretation of the sources; as such, it is
bound to include our own misunderstandings and preconceptions.
Therefore, be critical and always return to the original sources. Please also
remember that still pictures will always, to some extent, fail to capture the
movement and dynamics of all martial arts. The techniques should be
understood as changing, dynamic, and expressive rather than static.
 Chapter
1
THE PUGILISTIC ARTS IN EUROPE

Our aim for this chapter is not to write an in-depth history of the art of
pugilism. Other more learned scholars can and have done that. Instead, we
will sketch a brief history that serves as a backdrop to the actual techniques
and advice on how to fight that follow in the technique chapters.
We have to go far back to find the first sources of an unarmed system of
combat—i.e., striking with the hands, with some kicking, a few throws, and
an elbow for good measure—practiced in Europe. The first traces emerged
in ancient Greece and Rome, which we will discuss in more detail below.
But first, it is significant to note that the style of boxing practiced in Greece
and Rome corresponds closely with the system as it survived on the British
Isles. We would even go so far as to hypothesize that bare-knuckle boxing
is the direct descendant of the ancient art of pugilism as seen in Greek and
Roman boxing. In other parts of the world, fighting systems using the hands
came up with different ideas and solutions, but we believe that the close
resemblance of British pugilism to the evidence we see in ancient art is not
a coincidence.
From Greece to Spain to North Africa, we can find traces of the same
pugilistic system, but not in the far-flung regions of the empire, in Persia
and India or in the outlying Germanic areas. The core areas seem to be the
European heart of the ancient Roman world, and in some respects Britain
was one of the most Romanized areas of the entire empire. This seemingly
unbroken line is remarkable, since it opens up the possibility of a surviving
system of unarmed combat that is both the oldest still practiced today as
well as a true Western unarmed martial heritage stretching back to the
learning of classical Greece and the glory of ancient Roman.
 So let us begin this little trip back in time and see what the evidence has
to say and, along the way, pick up the foundations of the art of bare-knuckle
boxing.

BOXING IN ANCIENT GREECE

We must go back to ancient Greece to find the first recorded traces of

unarmed arts on the European continent. No doubt such arts were practiced
in other parts of Europe, but no evidence of them has been uncovered. In
Greece, however, the unarmed arts—in the form of wrestling and in the
legendary art of pankration, sadly lost to us—were not only a method of
personal combat; they were an integral part of a young man’s education.
Pankration and wrestling were part of the Pythian and Panathenaic Games,
two of the recurring sports festivals of ancient Greece (one of which was
resurrected as the modern Olympic Games). Frequently, participants in
pankration contests died or sustained injuries that crippled them for life.
(Pankration is worth noting because it contained both wrestling and striking
techniques, which is what we are looking for in a modern martial art
suitable for self-defense. The art of wrestling we leave aside for others to
deal with.)
 Black-figure depiction of the Pananthenaic games showing either a pankration or boxing match.
Notice the attempted chancery along with the strike, as well as the attempt to block the attack by the
fighter being held.

From the island of present-day Santorini (ancient Thera), we have the

oldest illustration of pugilism in the world. It is a wall painting of two
adolescents boxing, wearing gloves on their right hands. The style is
influenced by the Minoan civilization of Crete, and dating sets it at about
1500 B.C.1
We also find boxing, or fighting with the hands, mentioned in Homer’s
Iliad (dating uncertain, but let’s say around 1000 B.C.), where the use of
himantes is mentioned. These thongs of leather, the precursors of the rather
vicious Roman caestus (or cestus), protected the hands by wrapping around
as much as boxing wraps do today. (For a superb look at himantes, see the
wraps in detail on the bronze statue from the 1st century B.C. shown
below.2)

Close-up of the 1st century B.C. bronze piece showing the wrappings of the boxer’s hand and the
himantes tied in place over the knuckles.

The Iliad passage is the first recorded account of pugilism in the

Western world and is well worth reading as a whole.

So spake he, and forthwith uprose a man valiant and tall,

[665] well-skilled in boxing, even Epeius, son of Panopeus;
and he laid hold of the sturdy mule, and spake, saying: Let
him draw nigh, whoso is to bear as his prize the two-handled
cup: the mule I deem that none other of the Achaeans shall
lead away, by worsting me with his fists, for I avow me to be
the best man. [670] Sufficeth it not that I fall short in battle?
One may not, meseemeth, prove him a man of skill in every
work. For thus will I speak, and verily this thing shall be
brought to pass: utterly will I rend his flesh and crush his
bones. Wherefore let them that be next of kin abide here in a
throng, [675] that they may bear him forth when worsted by
my hands. So spake he, and they all became hushed in
silence. Euralyus alone uprose to face him, a godlike man,
son of king Mecisteus, son of Talaus, who on a time had
come to Thebes for the burial of Oedipus, [680] when he had
fallen, and there had worsted all the sons of Cadmus. And
Tydeus son, famed for his spear, made Euryalus ready,
heartening him with words, and much he wished for him
victory. A girdle first he cast about him, and thereafter gave
him well-cut thongs of the hide of an ox of the field. [685]
So the twain, when they had girded themselves, stepped into
the midst of the place of gathering, and lifting their mighty
hands on high one against the other, fell to, and their hands
clashed together in heavy blows. Dread then was the
grinding of their teeth, and the sweat flowed on every side
from off their limbs. But upon him goodly Epeius rushed
[690] as he peered for an opening, and smote him on the
cheek, nor after that, methinks, did he long stand upright, for
even there did his glorious limbs sink beneath him. And as
when beneath the ripple of the North Wind a fish leapeth up
on the tangle-strewn sand of a shallow, and then the black
wave hideth it, even so leapt up Euryalus when he was
smitten. But great-souled Epeius [695] took him in his hands
and set him on his feet, and his dear comrades thronged
about him and led him through the place of gathering with
trailing feet, spitting out clotted blood and letting his head
hang to one side; and they brought him wandering in his wits
and set him down in the midst of their company, and
themselves went and fetched the two-handled cup.3
Greek piece with two boxers trading punches, straight strikes by the look of it. Notice the closeness
of their leading feet and the wrappings on both hands.

In Greek art, the boxer was portrayed less frequently than the wrestler,
who seems to have represented a much more common form of personal
unarmed combat and physical regimen. There is an interesting piece of
evidence as to why this may have been the case, and it is found in the words
of the philosopher Socrates, as told to us by his student Plato. The
philosopher makes two roundabout references to boxers, the first from the
dialog Gorgias:

[515e] … on the assumption that he was a good citizen.

Callicles: Well, what then?

Socrates: Nothing: but tell me one thing in addition—

whether the Athenians are said to have become better
because of Pericles, or quite the contrary, to have been
corrupted by him. What I, for my part, hear is that Pericles
has made the Athenians idle, cowardly, talkative, and
avaricious, by starting the system of public fees.
 Callicles: You hear that from the folk with battered ears,
Socrates.

Socrates: Ah, but what is no longer a matter of hearsay, but

rather of certain knowledge, for you as well as for me, is that
Pericles was popular at first, and the Athenians passed no
degrading sentence upon him so long as they were “worse”;
but as soon as they had been made upright and honorable by
him …4

What is Plato talking about when he refers to people “with battered

ears”? Generally, this is taken by classical scholars to be a reference to the
Spartans, who seem to have been much more fond of boxing than the
civilized Athenians, and if you box much you will get battered ears.
The second quote is along the same lines:
Greek black-figure amphora with two boxers, the left with a nose bleed. Notice the closeness of their
leading feet and the wrappings on both hands. It is difficult to say who is striking or blocking, but it
seems as if a hook has been executed.

ABOVE: Greek krater showing two boxers on the left. The combatant on the right is striking and the
one on the left is blocking the attack.

Greek boxer. Notice the coverings on both hands, indicating that he strikes with both, and the
extended guard, with the other hand coiled back to strike.

[342b] … and sophists are more numerous in those regions:

but the people there deny it and make pretence of ignorance,
 in order to prevent the discovery that it is by wisdom that
they have ascendancy over the rest of the Greeks, like those
sophists of whom Protagoras was speaking; they prefer it to
be thought that they owe their superiority to fighting and
valor, conceiving that the revelation of its real cause would
lead everyone to practice this wisdom. So well have they
kept their secret that they have deceived the followers of the
Spartan cult in our cities, with the result that some get
broken ears …5

Plato here refers to people who were sympathetic to the Spartan way of
life, one that emphasized the arts of combat in all their forms.
Unfortunately, Sparta was not known for its fine artisans and exquisite
prose, and thus we have scant evidence of boxing from that culture.
However, boxing was evidently seen as being enough of a characteristic of
the Spartans for Socrates to make a joke about it, giving it at least some
credibility as a piece of circumstantial evidence.
Physical evidence of pugilism from classical Greece exists mainly in the
form of paintings and decorations on ceramics and statues. A society like
Sparta, with limited emphasis on producing art, would have left fewer
pieces of evidence for us to find, but fortunately we have other examples.
We see, for instance, two boxers in an Attic black-figure amphora painted
by Antimedes of Rhodes, one throwing a straight punch to the opponent’s
stomach.6 On another Attic black figure Samos from the 6th century B.C.,
we see two boxers in a fight, one throwing a straight punch. Curiously, both
wear loincloths. This was not common among the Greeks, who preferred to
exercise in the nude, but it was common among the Etrurians on the Italian
peninsula. This leads one to wonder if boxing was also enjoyed there,7
especially since this particular item is considered to have been made for
export to Etruria, which means the decoration would have had to been one
that was sellable there. Boxing was obviously taken to have been such an
appealing decoration.
 Greek amphora Attic black figure Samos of two boxers, 6th century B.C. The left figure is striking
from below. Notice how close they stand as well as the bent arms, indicating close-in work and thus
no reliance on long, straight strikes only.

Attic black-figure amphora by Antimedes of Rhodes, depicting two boxers. Again, notice the
closeness and the even guard of the left fighter, who is possibly beating down the opponent’s left arm
to create an opening. Alternatively, it may show the fighter on the right striking at the opponent’s
stomach.

BOXING IN ANCIENT ROME

In the Roman world, boxing became more popular than wrestling for an
obvious reason—while the Greeks practiced wrestling and sports mainly
for health and competition, the Romans enjoyed looking at other people
doing it. And to be frank, wrestling is not that exciting to watch, whereas
two grown men pummelling each other into the ground has an undeniable
entertainment value, as we recognize even today.
Boxing in the Roman world was at first a minor event at the games,
overshadowed by chariot racing and gladiator sports. But boxing became
more popular as time went on, and as it became more popular, the
bloodiness of the bouts increased. If we look at the rather limited evidence
of boxing in the Roman world, we see this rise of its “blood sport” aspect,
such as the himantes of the Greeks evolving into the bronze or copper
caestus of the Roman arena. This is not to say that Greek boxing was not
hard on the practitioner, but the Romans often made a point of staging
things so that it would be more of a bloody spectacle to entertain the crowd.

Two boxers from the Roman Empire, 1st–2nd century B.C.

While we have at least circumstantial evidence that boxing or pugilism

was practiced in ancient Greece as a martial art (at least by the Spartans, the
most martial of all the Greek city states), we have no such evidence from
the Roman era. A simple explanation might well be that wrestling was
emphasized more because of its potential practical application on the
battlefield. It is not that practical to punch a man in armour and helmet on
the battlefield, but you can wrestle him down and finish him there. Boxing
in the ancient world, therefore, would not have been as important as
wrestling from a purely martial perspective. And this perspective seems to
have carried over into the medieval world.

BOXING IN THE MEDIEVAL WORLD

In our quest to trace the roots of pugilism, we found that the medieval
world has left us the greatest treasures in the form of manuals of personal
combat. Yet for reasons that are unclear, the evidence from these manuals
suggests that medieval unarmed combat focused on wrestling rather than
striking and kicking. The assertion that it was due to the inefficiency of
striking a man in armour ignores the fact that, in most areas of medieval
life, men fought men without armour (e.g., common brawls). Whereas the
ancient world emphasized wrestling in unarmed combat, the evidence
suggests that boxing and wrestling were practiced side-by-side and
coexisted as two coherent systems. The medieval world seems to have
neglected the striking arts.
 Jack Broughton (left) and his opponent, George Stevenson, depicted in a suitably muscular pose at
George Taylor’s gymnasium in February 1741.

But if we look closer at the unarmed combat manuals of the 15th

century, we find strikes—perhaps not presented as a coherent system, but
sprinkled here and there among the wrestling techniques. This is seen in the
works of Sigmund Ringeck, Johann Paschen, and others. (More on this in
chapter 6.)
One of the most prominent of all medieval masters, Fiore dei Liberi,
actually mentions boxers or pugilists in the foreword of his magnum opus
from 1409, Flos Duellatorum Dimicandi, where he says, “I have decided to
compose a book with regard to the things most useful in this splendid art,
placing in it several figures and with examples of those methods of attack
and defense and parries which the astuteness of the squire or the boxer can
themselves be served” (Fiore dei Liberi Pissano Dossi Ms, translation by
the Exiles). What is interesting is that, while Master Fiore does not seem to
have been a boxer himself, he mentions them as an example of astute
people in the introduction to his major work. They therefore must have been
recognized as being representatives of that description in Italy at that time,
or his wording would have been pointless. Circumstantial evidence, but it is
there.

Bare-knuckle fight in the 19th century. Notice the guard positions and the close distance between the
fighters.

Master Fiore’s work is representative of medieval combat manuals in

that it includes a detailed, solid section on wrestling but not one on boxing.
However, most wrestling texts of the medieval (and post-medieval) world
contained strikes and kicks, indicating a multi-technique system. Wrestling
moves dominate, but this emphasis was probably due to the fact that
wrestling was both a combat art and a form of entertainment. Wrestling
matches were a staple of the jester groups travelling the lands, as a common
spectacle at fairs, or just as a simple pastime.
But there may have been more prosaic reasons for this emphasis.
Wrestling allows for a degree of control that pugilism does not. Boxing as
recreation does not work well because it requires aggression, whereas
wrestling allows for an easier approach. Wrestling matches can certainly
become aggressive, but it is easier to maintain control and safetey. If you
learn to strike with your bare hands with a modicum of technique, you can
damage your opponent severely. This is not something that a travelling
group could afford to do, let alone friends enjoying a little friendly
competition after work. Add to that the fact that it is hard to strike a man in
armour and we have a good idea why wrestling moves dominated in the
medieval martial texts.

BOXING IN THE POST-MEDIEVAL WORLD

Interest in the pugilistic arts seems to have taken off in earnest in the
18th century, when we begin to see an increasing number of texts dealing
with pugilism, as well as reports of matches and masters of the art. It is
from this tradition, especially from the British Isles, that we get the bulk of
our material on bare-knuckle boxing today. This includes the work of such
bare-knuckle greats as Daniel Mendoza (The Art of Boxing, 1789), Thomas
Fewtrell (Boxing Reviewed, 1790), Edmund Price (The Science of Self
Defence, 1867), and James Sullivan (Boxing, 1893).
This rise of pugilism corresponds roughly with the decrease of other
forms of combative sports, i.e., martial arts played for fun, with some
general agreements to reduce injuries. In England and Germany, these
events still could be rather bloody affairs, involving polearms and swords.
By narrowing the focus to fistfights only and introducing other limitations,
the pugilistic arts gradually evolved into the safer but still rough sport of
bare knuckle.
Originally, there seems to have been very few restrictions in bare
knuckle. Basically, you could not use weapons, kick a man lying down, or
bite him. The bare-knuckle era ended in the early 20th century when gloves
were introduced, stricter rules were instituted, and oversight organizations
formed. These developments focused on enhancing the safety of the
combatants, and this led to the loss of knowledge of striking without gloved
hands, as well as such techniques as throws, kicks, and elbows. The
remainder of this book is devoted to reviving this practical combative art.

NOTES
1. Doumas, Santorini: A Guide to the Island and Its Archaeological Treasures.
2. Pedly, Greek Art and Archaeology, p. 338.
3. Homer, Iliad.
4. Plato, Gorgias.
5. Plato, Protagoras.
6. Boardman, The History of Greek Vases, p. 161.
7. Boardman, The History of Greek Vases, pp. 236–237.
 Chapter
2
BARE-KNUCKLE BASIC TECHNIQUES

First, a preliminary note on our interpretation of the techniques. When

working with this material, we were faced with several difficult issues.
Sadly, many of the engravings available to us for interpretation are not that
good. The artist often was not able to depict anatomy in a biomechanically
correct manner—there are shortened legs; impossible angles in knees,
elbows, and feet; stylized positions of the legs; and so on. Facing that, we
preferred to let the illustrations take a back seat in favor of the descriptive
text that the masters wrote, which is often clear, understandable, and
accurate. We tested the biomechanical foundation of each technique, since
this never changes regardless of the century and society in which one lives.
The version of the technique at which we arrived was then applied in a
fighting situation, where we tried to punch each other out. If it worked, we
kept it; if not, we assumed we got it wrong and went back to the drawing
board.
It is important not to simply do what a text says or copy an engraving.
There are, for instance, many ways to throw your head and body back, as
Mendoza advises, but how do we know which way he meant? To find a
solution, we opted to solve the problem in the manner described above. It is
not perfect, but there are limited ways in which we can bypass the veil of
time and discover the veracity of the descriptions. All interpreters of martial
arts, working without a living tradition, will struggle with this problem
when developing their material. We therefore wish to emphasize that this is
our understanding of these techniques at this time, and it will absolutely
change over time.
At the same time, it is evident that the techniques described in the old
texts were intended to be guidelines. As in all martial arts, duplicating a
movement will not make you victorious by that action alone. On the
contrary, the principle of the technique must be internalized by finding your
own way of executing it. We are all different, so we need to find ways to
make things work for each of us, first by copying as close as possible the
original technique, then leaving the level of the child and striking out into
an adult world of actually understanding what we do and making it our
own. As long as you comply with biomechanical principles, the movement
will be sound and work well.
In bare-knuckle boxing, this means to investigate the guards, strikes,
and parries closely, to copy them as faithfully as possible, and, once that
can be done with ease, to develop a variety that suit you personally. This is
a scientific process of constantly testing your thesis in order to arrive at a
new synthesis, to develop your boxing and not fall into the trap of
stagnation by saying, “Now I am copying the illustrations, so now I know it
all.”
The bare-knuckle fight of today is surrounded by much mystique and
plenty of thrills. We can purchase DVDs of illegal fights recorded with
hand-held cameras, many of them originating from the British Isles. (For an
amazing account of a modern-day bare-knuckle hero, read King of the
Gypsies, the story of Bartly Gorman, undefeated bare-knuckle champion of
England and Ireland.) These fights are illuminating in many respects. One
of the most important points is that what is today labeled as bare-knuckle
boxing has little or no resemblance to the system that was developed in
ancient Greece and Rome. It has passed and changed through many hands
until it came to rest in England’s green and pleasant land. Parts of the
ancient art remain, but not as a coherent system. What survives today often
arrived from sport boxing.
Another important point is that bare-knuckle boxing is a European
fighting art, developed for Europeans. It differs from many forms of Asian
martial arts in that it was developed for our climate, constitution, and way
of life. Thai boxing is very impressive, but face it: Ulf and I live in Sweden,
and for six months of the year it is a bit hard to pull off a high kick or knee
strike simply because of restrictive clothing or difficult ground. A
reasonable conclusion would probably be that all fighting arts develop in a
context. Taken out of that context, they lose much of their practical
applicability.
 It is important to preserve and nourish this European fighting art,
especially since it is both easy to learn (but difficult to master, as are all
arts) and effective to use. Bare-knuckle boxing was not boxing with the
hands only, not even in the ring until fairly late. Although limitations were
imposed because participants were severely injured or killed during bouts (a
testament to the effectiveness of the art), such non-hand techniques as
throws and locks are well documented. And these were the types of
unpleasant techniques that did mechanical damage to the opponent rather
than simply pin or immobilize him. The attitude seemed to be, “If you are
doing a throw, why on earth land him on something other than the back of
his head?”
Sport boxing works quite well as a self-defense art, especially if you
make a few changes to it, as Ned Beaumont points out in his books (see
chapter 9). It remains, however, a sport, because it requires gloves, a ring,
timed rounds, and other limitations. Gloves alone allow you to punch less
well and still have a functioning hand, and they guard you to some extent,
in essence giving you a form of shield that is not there once the gloves
come off. Remove the gloves and the sport paraphernalia and everything
changes. That said, many boxers are more than able to adapt their art and
make it effective for self-defense, and boxing is an unquestionably effective
physical fitness regimen.
Bare-knuckle boxing is, however, what boxing was before it turned into
today’s modern spectator sport. We can say that most of the old bare-
knuckle techniques are not that useful in the ring but are very much of use
on the street. But you really cannot compare the bare-knuckle martial art
with the sport of boxing; it is not fair to either art, and we therefore will not
make any comparisons at all, except when we want to emphasize an
important difference to explain an aspect of bare knuckle that might seem
strange or out of place.

THE BASIC TECHNIQUES

The system—for a system it is—of bare-knuckle boxing is not a

precisely fixed one. Depending on which master we consulted, and which
point in time we chose to examine, we found slightly different techniques
and tactics. Here it is important to make the distinction between those
masters who taught a system for fighting primarily in a ring, such as Daniel
Mendoza in his influential work, and, for instance, Edmund Price, who in
his 1867 book, The Science of Self Defence, includes techniques such as
simple wrestling moves and holds, which were not allowed in the ring in his
time but which are essential to self-defense. Price’s book shows also that
the bare-knuckle art was not a sport only, as boxing historians wish us to
believe—it was a fighting art, and as such it could be put to many different
uses. A quote from Mr. Price:

Our object, then, in this volume is to give a correct and

reliable Manual on the “Art of Self Defence”, not founded
on “obsolete” rules of a by-gone age, but on the practical
results of our own experience.

Price’s manual is a useful introduction to bare knuckle simply because

he is one of the last great exponents to write on the art as it was evolving
into modern sport boxing, and he is very lucid and has included some
excellent illustrations that enable us to unlock what he wants us to do. Price
is also one of the few writers on the subject who deal with the art primarily
from a self-defense perspective. Other writers mention that it might be good
to know how to box if you are set upon by “footpads” in the city but do not
go into self-defense as such. Given the words of Price and others, we can
surmise that at least a few considered it to be a defensive art as well as a
sporting activity. It is essential, however, to understand that the varying
advice given by Price, Mendoza, Fewtrell, Allanson-Winn, and all the
anonymous authors—even up to the influential work of Jack Dempsey, who
gave advice on how to punch properly with ungloved hands based on
knowledge from the bare-knuckle era—does not cancel each other out. You
will see how they and many other masters give roughly similar advice, but
the arena differs, and thus the techniques themselves differ.
In the following section, we will examine the basic techniques and
advice of various masters. We have made an editorial decision to include
only what we consider to be the more important points and techniques from
several sources. In doing this, we had to exclude some material that we
simply felt did not work after testing it.

The Guard Position

 Let us begin with the basic guard position. It is similar to the modern
boxer’s stance, but there were different versions. Important in all of them
was that the guard had to protect the head and the “mark” (the area around
the solar plexus), while allowing for powerful strikes and agile foot
movement. Mobility in particular is essential for good defense. Mendoza
states that parrying is OK, but it is better to void the attack, and to do this
effectively you must have mobility. This may be the reason why so many
boxers of the bare-knuckle era fought somewhat upright compared to what
we are used to seeing today. It was a narrower stance, offering greater
mobility but at the cost of stability.
That said, how do we make sense of period illustrations showing widely
spaced legs? It is significant to note that you find the same generic leg
position in illustrations showing people engaging in activities as varied as
boxing, dancing, plowing, fishing, and watching others do a whole host of
different things. Later in the 19th century, when photos and more natural
forms of printing images start to appear, we see these positions become
more upright, with more closely spaced legs. In terms of boxing, there is a
fundamental truth: wide-spaced legs mean hitting harder; narrow-spaced
legs mean moving faster. These stances and their advantages are not
interchangeable, unfortunately. But consider that moving and striking are
not the same thing. This means you can have an upright, narrow stance
when on guard and step out into a wide one to generate more power when
striking.
Guard positions in the fight, late 18th century. Note the widely spaced legs.

Boxer in a guard position. Again, note the wide stance.

Humphreys (right) and Mendoza (left) setting to. Notice the rather similar guard position and how
their feet are overlapping, but they lean away with their upper bodies.

Guard positions of Humphreys on the left and Mendoza on the right, from a book by one of
Mendoza’s students.
 Mendoza shows a stance where he leans slightly forward at the waist,
but with the body upright. The feet are shoulder-width apart, but the lead
foot is more to the side than the front, creating a more square stance. The
legs have a pronounced bend in the knees, his weight is on the lead leg, and
he is guarding his face with the hands positioned almost parallel in front of
his chin, with the left slightly more forward. Mendoza’s crouched posture
withdraws his mark as far from his opponent as possible. This stance offers
very good protection and will let you strike faster blows in more rapid
succession compared to other guards. The downside is that you will not get
your body behind your strikes to the same extent as you would with a more
upright position.
Mendoza’s stance should also be understood in light of the fact that
several sources say he was a somewhat short man. If you are short, your
reach will be shorter than many opponents. To counter this you must move
in close, but as you do you risk getting hit. A possible solution is to make
yourself even smaller while protecting your face with your hands so that
when the opponent tries to strike you, he will at best hit the top of your head
as he strikes downward. This works well whether you are short or simply
prefer to crouch. Your reach will suffer, though, as will the ease with which
you move since you must by necessity bend your knees more and widen the
stance. Although this will slow you down as you move, it does not mean
you cannot move—just watch modern boxers who use this type of stance
for proof of that. It does mean, however, that any change in your angular
direction will be slower since your base is wider.
Mendoza in a guard position. Notice the equidistance of the hands.
Ulf demonstrating the basic guard stance. (See illustration at top left on page 16.)
Mendoza’s crouched stance.
 Ulf demonstrating Humphreys’ rear stance.

Richard Humphreys (sometimes seen spelled as “Humphries” and other

variations), who is the second figure in the copperplate found at the
beginning of Mendoza’s classic work, The Art of Boxing, is in a rear stance.
This position is the one we are all familiar with from photographs of boxers
from the 19th century. It is considered old and not that effective, but what is
crucial to remember is that these men fought without gloves. Gloves may
not seem like much, but they do make a difference—without them, the need
for shifting angles and distance quickly, in accordance with parrying rather
than blocking with the hands, requires a narrower and more upright stance
when on guard. In illegal boxing matches without gloves today, you still see
many fighters in an upright position, and they usually win more often than
those in a more crouched stance. The stance gives you the greatest reach for
straight punches and a better platform for leaning away and parrying, but it
has its drawbacks, too. It makes the fighter more vulnerable to attacks to the
mark, and it makes dodging and ducking more difficult.
In this position, the legs are straighter and the body leans away from the
opponent, with the weight on the rear leg. The hands are staggered, with the
left leading and the right held across the body. The illustration in The Art of
Boxing shows a pronounced bend in the wrists, but it is doubtful this was
the case in real matches; if we look at other illustrations, the wrists are
always held straight to avoid injuries. The front hand is held at shoulder
height and the rear hand at the nipple.
In Thomas Fewtrell’s work Boxing Reviewed, published in 1790, we
find yet another form of guard attributed to Thomas Johnson.1 This is an
altogether different guard, more similar to Mendoza’s than any other. It is
probably a variation of Mendoza’s crouch, but with the upper body angled
in so it faces more to the front.

Thomas Johnson in a guard position, from Boxing Reviewed, or the Science of Manual Defence,
1790.
 Johnson’s stance has the feet almost square, with the legs bent and the
upper body bent sharply forward at the waist. Weight is evenly distributed
between the feet. The hands are held in front of the face at equal distance
from the head. This stance was recommended to pugilists who had great
strength in the legs, and it supposedly was rather decent, being equally
suited to defense and offense. But Fewtrell points out that few used it in his
day.
Edmund Price advocates something in between them all. He stands
upright, with a slight bend in the knees, and holds his hands at chest height,
leading with the left and guarding with the right. This gives him cover,
reach, and mobility. It is also a rather natural stance to be in, which is
essential to self-defense, where anything contrived will cause you problems
once you get the adrenaline dump in a conflict situation.

Ulf demonstrating Johnson’s stance.

 Side view.

Price’s basic guard position.

Front view.
 Side view.

This is a good stance when you fight for real rather than for points or
technical knockout, and let us consider why. When you don’t wear gloves,
it becomes of paramount importance to avoid getting hit. Simply parrying
an attack, rather than avoiding it altogether, will let the opponent keep the
initiative and attack again. What does this have to do with a narrow stance?
A narrower stance enables you to move faster and change the angle of
attack easier and more often than you can with a large, deep stance. (The
importance of this concept of angling will become apparent as we discuss
deflection and counterattacks.) The value of the hand position also becomes
apparent: if you do not wear gloves, you can’t hide behind them and use
them for blocking, period. It is that simple—without gloves, you must use
the hands and arms to deflect attacks or avoid them altogether. In modern
boxing, on the other hand, it is often the glove itself that is used almost as a
shield. It is a radical difference, and it is the reason why the ordinary boxing
stance is not that good, in our and the historical masters’ opinion, in a self-
defense/fighting situation. It is adapted for an athletic contest and not
primarily for self-defense, and it should be evaluated for its utility in the
ring and nothing else.
Leading with one hand as opposed to holding both at a more or less
equal distance from the body is beneficial for many reasons. First, it keeps
the opponent at bay somewhat; if he wants to close in, he must negotiate
your lead hand or else he will get hit in the face with it. (We will deal later
with the fine art of making a true left-hand strike rather than a weak jab,
which is good if your aim is to score points in a 12-round match but less so
in a real fight that may be over in seconds.) The front hand is also a first
line of defense with which to set an incoming attack aside and, through that,
open an angle into the opponent.
The rear hand is held close to the body and often at breast height. The
arm is relaxed but the fist is tensed, creating a slight tension between the
shoulder blades, which is essential for all explosive muscular movement.
The arm is pulled back as far as conveniently possible while still providing
protection. From that position, it is used to strike or deflect an attack to the
head or body.
We now have a guard position that is working. Feet are slightly less than
shoulder-width apart, toes toward the opponent, weight of the body more on
the toes than the heels, left arm held out, and the right close to the body at
chest height. A variation found in the twilight years of the bare-knuckle era
had the lead hand out almost straight, with the rear hand cocked for a
punch. This is actually a decent stance, with some very interesting points.
A rather special skill that was stressed by the bare-knuckle boxers was
that you should be able to lead with either hand. This means you must train
to be ambidextrous in your fighting. It can be very effective to confuse the
opponent by suddenly switching sides, but in doing so from the variation
stance described above, you can also quickly torque your hips and strike
with your cocked rear hand to the opponent’s now open side. So the guard
must be practiced on both sides, as must smoothly changing sides. It gives
you the ability to actually step and punch with either foot and hand, which
is of great use in a real self-defense situation.
 Greek black-figure amphora depicting two boxers. Notice the similarity of the guard position with
that advocated by Mendoza; clearly he was not the first to use it. It was probably one of several in
use at the time that had been handed down since antiquity.

Significantly, examples of the guard stance can be seen in the ancient

world as well. There are some very interesting illustrations of boxers in the
exact same type of high stance, with the hands positioned the same way. In
Rome, for example, we see the same guard being used by the caestus
boxers. The usefulness of these guards, therefore, can be said to have been
understood early, and they survived probably for the simple reason that they
worked.
The orientation of the hands in bare knuckle is interesting since it differs
slightly from modern boxing. In bare knuckle, it was considered a good
idea to hold one or more hands with the palms facing up rather than toward
each other, as is common today. The rear hand was, however, often held in a
vertical position, with the palm facing in.
To understand the position of the front hand, we must consider how a
punch is deflected. An incoming straight punch is deflected upward by
lifting the lead hand. This is also one of the reasons why it is held low; that
way, it more easily travels upward in a straight line. If I hold my hands
below my face, then I know I will deflect upward whatever comes in above
my hands. If I hold my hands in front of my face—and without gloves to
duck behind—I will have to choose whether to deflect an incoming blow up
or down. In a fight, it is important to minimize the amount of decision
making that takes place. Having few choices is a good choice!

How to Hit Properly

It demands great skill and a lot of training to be able to throw a punch,
with all your might and weight, at someone’s head and have something
resembling a fist left afterwards. Conditioning the hands to do this is dealt
with in a separate chapter. We begin here with which part of the hand
should connect with the opponent’s anatomy, and how to do it properly.
The human hand is fragile. Modern-day boxers can pummel away the
way they do because their hands are bandaged and they wear solid gloves
that fix the hand and wrist into a tight, rigid package. As Jack Dempsey
points out in the first two chapters of his book, there has been a watering
down of the knowledge of hitting hard in boxing and his aim in the book is
to recify this. This does not mean that boxers do not hit hard, because they
do. Dempsey meant that when “boxing” in self-defense, you must hit
correctly or you will destroy your hand with one punch. You also must have
conditioned your hands for gloveless punching. Both these issues must be
addressed if the hands are going to be useful in self-defense. There is no
point in throwing a punch and not being able to throw another because you
struck so poorly that you broke your fingers, knuckles, or wrist. (In fact, if
you watch a modern boxing match in slow motion, it becomes very clear
that punches often impact randomly on the fist.)
The first skill is clenching the fist properly. To clench the fist, pull the
fingers in and close the thumb. Clench as tightly as you can without
tightening the arm, as doing that will make you slow and clumsy. This
means that your fist is closed but not squeezed shut.
 Clench the fist.

Tuck the thumb.

When boxers punch, it is often done with the middle of the fist. This
works well when wearing gloves, but if you try that without gloves you will
break your knuckles. To understand the proper bare-knuckle strike, you
must understand the anatomy of the hand.
The striking surface of a clenched hand is shaped like a slope, with the
upper knuckles protruding the furthest. The trick is not to strike with the
most protruding knuckles. In bare knuckle, you want to strike with the
largest and flattest surface in order to spread the force of the impact over a
larger area of the fist. That means you want to hit with the three lowest
knuckles—the pinkie, the ring finger, and the middle finger to be precise—
and you aim with the ring finger knuckle.
 The hand pulled upward, aligning the bottom knuckles with the arm.

The fist seen from the front inside, twisting the wrist upward in order to extend the lowest three
knuckles and giving you a large, flat area with which to impact.

This was common knowledge in earlier days. Jack Dempsey writes

about it in Championship Fighting,2 where he also introduces the last
important aspect of striking with this part of the hand. In order to hit
effectively with the bottom knuckles of a clenched fist, you must pull the
hand upward so those knuckles align with the outstretched arm.
 The three lowest knuckles impacting on target.

If you look at what happens to the force if we connect with an incorrect

fist, we see something very interesting. As you know from basic physics,
any force is counteracted by an equal force in the opposite direction. This
means that if I hit your face with 20kg of force, then 20kg of force is
projected back into my striking fist, which is why people break things in
their hand when they strike incorrectly. If you strike with the uppermost
part of the fist, the line of force will actually go back and leave your arm
before reaching the elbow, leaving you with less mass behind the punch to
absorb this force.
By striking with the bottom part of the fist, you get a straight line to the
elbow and then to the shoulder. It is simple proof that, based on basic
biome-chanical principles, the old way of striking is superior. It offers the
most solid line to absorb the kinetic energy of the strike, resulting in an
unharmed hand. Striking in this manner (and conditioning the hands
properly, covered in chapter 5) will allow for strikes to the head without any
difficulty at all.
A second type of strike with the hand is found in a book by a
proclaimed pupil of both Mendoza and Humphrey. It is done with the palm,
and the target is the ribs. Presumably, this strike was done from a close
distance.3 A palm strike can, of course, be aimed at many other targets on
the body. (As a side note, this anonymously authored work is interesting
because it claims to show boxing as self-defense and not a sport activity.)

Striking with the bottom knuckles enables the entire arm to absorb the kinetic energy of the strike.
Stepping diagram of the angles and distances in the guard position, from R.G Allanson-Winn’s book,
Boxing.

Footwork
Moving in combat is important. The medieval sword master Johannes
Liechtenauer said, “That which moves is alive and that which is still is
dead.”4 True indeed, and even more so if you have no gloves to cover
yourself and no ropes to lean on and the opponent has a friend and both are
hell bent on reducing your face to pulp. Under such circumstances, when
and soaking up hits to score points is not an option, moving and doing
damage to your opponent become of paramount importance.
Considering the rather narrow, high stance that most bare-knuckle
boxers seem to recommend, their footwork must have been very quick, with
short steps. (A similar high stance can be seen in early photos of karate
masters and Chinese martial artists.) With all footwork, the issue of balance
is crucial. If we again look at Mendoza and Humphry (page 17), we see
they have balanced their bodies differently—Mendoza has the weight on his
front foot, while Humphry has his on the rear foot. Both ways have
something to recommend them, but it is easier to shift the feet if you stand
with your weight on your rear foot.
From a self-defense point of view, however, it is perhaps better to have
the weight on the rear leg when in a high stance. Once you step in close to
strike, your stance must become wider in order to facilitate the hip torque
that is the prime powerhouse of the punch. As you retreat, you must again
narrow the stance somewhat. Having your weight on your rear leg not only
facilitates the ability to widen and narrow your stance quickly and in
balance, but it aids greatly in moving in every direction. We can always
move forward, but the further forward you are in your stance, the more
difficult it becomes to move in other directions. With the weight on the rear
leg, you are more at the point of equilibrium (or slightly behind it), and you
will be able to move more quickly and with less effort in directions other
than forward.

The step.

The following movements cover the basic ways to move in a fight,

especially if it takes place on an uneven or slippery surface. It is important
to recall that the European martial arts were intended to be used while
wearing winter clothes and standing on an icy, badly cobbled street.
Simplicity is, therefore, the name of the game. These steps will change a
little when they are combined with hand and leg techniques, as they must to
accommodate the situation you are facing.

The Step
This is a simple step forward with the lead foot, and the rear foot
follows. To the rear it is reversed: the rear foot moves first and the front foot
follows. Neither foot passes the other—the lead foot is maintained moving
forward or backward. This step is used to close with the opponent as well as
when you want to throw a strong, decisive strike with your lead hand.
This is also the way to sidestep the opponent in order to come in from
the side. Your lead foot steps to the side as your body sinks down in the
step, and the other foot follows. The attack lands as the foot lands on the
ground.

The Pass
The pass is when one of your feet passes the other while moving
forward or backward. You use this step when you walk normally, so there is
nothing strange about it. Do not strike while passing if you can avoid it,
because doing so would result in an unbalanced, slow strike. Rather, the
pass is simply a step that takes you to a spot from where you can throw a
solid punch.

The pass.

Angular Stepping
Done with either leg, angular stepping places you to the outside of the
opponent’s attack, either forward or backward depending on the situation.
Here it is even possible to cross your legs for a brief instant while changing
the leading leg.

Angular stepping.

Flying Out
This concept is found very early in English martial arts literature. It is,
for instance, one of the key concepts of George Silver’s method of
swordsmanship outlined in his writings of the late 16th and early 17th
centuries. Flying out is done after you have closed in and made your attack;
if you did not take down the opponent, you “fly out” to regroup for the next
attack. In boxing, flying out can be taken to mean throwing your body and
head backwards. It can be a pass or a shuffle, but do not change the
relationship of the feet during the move, i.e., the same foot remains in the
lead.
There is no way around this—flying out must be done with agility and
speed. This means you need strength, while remaining light on your feet.
With training, flying out can be done very explosively and can move your
body a significant distance backwards.

TARGET AREAS

Bare-knuckle target areas include most of the body you can

conveniently reach. Attacks with the fists connect from the groin up,
depending on where you are in the fight. (More on this in chapter 3.) No
part of the head or neck is excluded. Attacks with the legs target the
opponent’s lower legs and up to the groin but never higher. All kicks are
done forward, not from the side, and with a straight leg (i.e., no roundhouse
kicks). Throws can attack the body, an arm, or the neck, depending on the
technique.

The “mark,” or solar plexus.

The jaw, struck straight or from below.
The chin, struck from the side.
Between the eyes, considered a knockout blow or for cutting the eyebrows.
 Lower ribs (floating ribs), struck from the side or front.

Bare-knuckle boxers did not limit their strikes to soft targets, as some
people erroneously state today. Favorite targets certainly included soft
targets like the pit of the stomach, but they also included the ribs on either
side (with the liver shot a favorite), between the eyes, the chin, behind the
jaw in front of the ear, the back of the head, the nose, and the mouth. Strikes
to the heart were known as well. Striking the bony portion of the head was
also an option if that was all that presented itself, but that meant the hands
had to be that much more conditioned to withstand the stress.
 The kidneys, with the knuckles facing two different ways.

NOTES
1. Fewtrell, Boxing Reviewed.
2. Dempsey, Championship Fighting.
3. Boxing Made Easy, or the Complete Manual of Self Defence, p. 6. (This is likely a reprint of the
English work from 1789 printed in London by Kearsley titled, The Art of Manual Defence, or
System of Boxing Perspicuously Explained in a Series of Lessons and Illustrated by Plates,
authored “by a pupil of both Humphreys and Mendoza.”)
4. Cod.HS.3227.a. Quote from the so-called Döbringers fechtbuch in translation by David Lindholm,
fol.32R (wer do leit der ist tot / Wer sich ru[e]ret der lebt noch), http://www.mhfs.se/bibliotek.htm,
26 June 2006.
 Chapter
3
BARE-KNUCKLE STRIKES

The strikes that were used in bare-knuckle boxing were basically the
same as those seen today in schoolyards across the world. They included a
straight strike, round strike, uppercut, and back fist. Some fighters added
the low straight kick to the knee and groin, elbow to the head and torso,
knee in the groin, and simple hip and neck throws. This is the core arsenal
we will cover in this chapter.
The strikes commence from the guard position. This way you avoid
cocking the shoulder prior to striking and thus telegraphing intent. The
knuckles of your hands should always point toward your opponent—
another reason why the guard positions sometimes look a bit differently.
Depending on angle and the strike you choose, the path of your strike may
change slightly in the heat of the action, but it is important to always try to
maintain proper form.
In all strikes, it is very important to strike through and thus true. You do
not want to hit on something; rather, you want to strike through it. In other
words, to deliver a hard punch, you must drive through the target when your
hand makes contact. The simplest way to accomplish this is to actually aim
your hand beyond where you intend to hit.
The next step is withdrawing the hand, and that must be very quick, but
many people mistake the two steps and blend them into one. You must not
pull your hand back from the target as soon as you connect. The result is a
weak punch that is jerked back before it has delivered its damage. You need
time on target to be able to punch through it and ultimately deliver a hard
strike.

THE STRAIGHT STRIKE

 This was considered the most effective of the possible strikes, at least
from the basic guard position. It has much to recommend it—your fist
travels in a straight line, and by doing so you can defend part of the opening
that the strike creates by extending and lifting the arm. Another nice thing
about the straight punch is that you can either lean in to the technique for
more of a thrust with the fist, or you can punch while keeping the body
back. (Basically it is the same movement, but with different application of
the body. The latter is closer to the modern jab, while the former will knock
someone out cold if it lands solidly.) The straight punch can be delivered
from the side or head on, depending on the situation. All this, along with the
capacity for maintaining good balance and focus, is why the bare-knuckle
masters considered the straight punch was superior to other types of strikes
with the hands.
When throwing a straight strike, it was recommended that you do so
with the hand positioned vertical rather then horizontal. This has to do with
the power line discussed in the previous chapter, which is easier to maintain
if the hand is vertical. Not that a horizontal fist will not work, but as
Dempsey says, and as is illustrated in period manuals of the day, a vertical
fist allows for a completely straight line from the knuckles through the
wrist, elbow, and shoulder without any bends or kinks in it. If you do not
have wraps or gloves, this becomes of paramount importance.
Straight strike on the same side as the leading foot. The body moves slightly forward on both feet;
shoulder is high.
 Straight strike, same leg and hand, stepping in as you strike to get the whole body behind it.

Image
Straight strike on the opposite leg side. This has shorter reach and is best done after closing in.
Straight strike on the opposite leg, this time holding the body back.
Same strike, but this time leaning into it.
A straight strike to the mark, opposite hand and foot, without leaning into the strike too much for fast
withdrawal.

THE ROUND STRIKE

Round strikes were well known and understood, but they were
considered by bare knucklers to have limited use in a real fight. This
attitude was mainly based on fencing theory relating to the small sword, and
to the rapier before that. It stated that any cut (which in this case would
have been synonymous with a round strike) will arrive later than a straight
thrust. This theory could be verified through geometry, but the real reason
round strikes were not favored by bare knucklers may have been because
they left you vulnerable. A round strike’s swinging motion requires you to
commit the body for the strike to have any power. This will put you in
motion in such a way that you will not be able to react to any opposing
movement or attack until your technique is complete, leaving you open to
all sorts of counters.
 Because they increase your risk of getting hit, round strikes are not used
as a closing attack in bare knuckle. They are used, however, as a
counterattack to an opponent’s closing attack. The counter is usually done
to the outside of the opponent’s arms.

The Hook
There is scarce material on the proper way to throw a hook; most old
bare-knuckle manuals focus exclusively on straight strikes and back fists.
Typical, sloppy hooks consisting of flailing arms do little to increase
damage; a proper hook has your body weight behind it. Throwing a solid
hook is a matter of locking the elbow at an angle and violent twisting the
body at the waist. The arm remains more or less stationary as it hooks
toward the target. The smaller the angle in the elbow, the more the strike
becomes a round strike. An acute angle enables you to hook very hard
indeed.
In throwing a hook, it is important that you do not strike with the arm
only but with the body behind it. Try to deliver the hook either in a slightly
rising or falling motion, i.e., start from below and drive your body weight
up with it, or from above so you in a sense sit down a little as you strike,
putting your weight into the technique. It is certainly possible to throw
knockout punches this way.
A hook can be delivered low to the sides of the body and high at the
head and face. After blocking a strike at your ribs, for instance, your arm is
perfectly placed for a hook to the opponent’s body. Hooks can also be done
to great effect when the opponent throws a straight punch and misses—say
if you sidestep his strike and then hook to the kidneys or floating ribs or
over his arm at his head and face.
 This is the kind of swing that the masters warn against. It takes time and leaves you open.

This is a more proper form of hook, with the arm held close to the body and delivered from very
short range. Observe that the elbow on the striking arm should be a bit lower.
 A hook delivered more from below rather than the side.

THE UPPERCUT

The uppercut is another close-in attack that does not lend itself well as
an opening move. The body rises into the strike by driving up with the legs.
The fist is held at roughly 45 degrees, giving you the ability to aim with the
lower knuckles and strike with the correct power line.
As far as I know, there is not a single mention of the uppercut in a bare-
knuckle text prior to the late 19th or early 20th century, when stances and
guards changed to accommodate gloves and rules. The fact is that if you
rely on the recommended guard positions and bare-knuckle strikes, and if
you include such moves as throws and head butts in your arsenal, the
uppercut becomes of limited use. I am convinced that it was used in bare
knuckle, but it would have been of limited importance due to these factors.
Mendoza does mention a form of uppercut (or it can be understood as such)
after blocking a blow to the mark, as do other writers, but it is not
categorized as a strike on its own.
 A standard form of uppercut delivered at close range.

THE BACK FIST

The back fist, or chopper, is used to attack an opponent after you have
parried one of his attacks. It is a counter or a continuation of an attack
already under way; it is not an opening move. Very difficult to defend
against if done well, it was a favorite attack of Daniel Mendoza, but others
were not so enthusiastic about its efficiency. It is perhaps safest to say that it
offers a quick, relatively safe return strike after performing a successful
parry, and this makes it an important part of your arsenal. It can be done
from any high parry; low parries provide better avenues of countering. In
striking a back fist, you flick the knuckles downward in a dragging motion
that goes across the opponent’s face from above to below. It is not a
downward diagonal strike to his face; there is a big difference.
A simple downward back fist aimed at the bridge of the opponent’s nose.
This is similar to what today usually goes under the name of hammer-fist. A chopper easily turns into
this kind of strike from certain angles, but as far as I know it was not recognized as a separate strike.
It is, however, rather useful in the arsenal.

The back fist can, of course, be thrown at other times as well, but that is
more often turned into our next technique.

THE BACKSWING

This is something you could do if you happen to miss with a proper

hook or a wild, poorly done swing. (Never swing at all if you can avoid it—
it was seen as the mark of an amateur.) Directly from the position you end
up in after a missed hook, swing your arm backwards, aiming it high toward
the opponent’s head. Impact can be made with any part of the arm, but if
you consider the line of power, you will realize that hitting with the
knuckles will probably hurt you more than him. A better option is to hit
with the bony underside of the arm just below the elbow. Avoid hitting with
the elbow proper, as this will give you a restricted swing and less power.
The trick to making the backswing powerful is to relax as much as possible
and twist the hips strongly as you swing; do not swing with the arm alone.

THE HEAD BUTT

A classic, but often performed in the wrong way. It is not the same as
hitting a football with your head. (That’s a soccer ball for you American
readers.) To do a good head butt, you must be close to the opponent. Keep
your head still and step into him by falling forward with your body. That
way the impact will carry the entire body weight and not just what you get
from nodding your head a bit. You should connect with the uppermost part
of the forehead. A head butt can also be done to the side, of course, or
backwards as illustrated in medieval German texts. In those cases, you
again want to make impact with the hardest, bony portion of the skull.
 Standard head butt delivered by using the body and not swinging the head back and forth.

THE TRIP

This technique is done by stepping in on the opponent’s outside,

preferably of his lead foot, and locking your own foot behind his. With your
arms and body working in unison, push him over your leg, preferably using
both hands, and twist his body toward his outside as you throw him in order
to take away his balance. This works very well in a clinch or wrestling
situation.
To counter a trip if someone does it to you, step back with your rear leg
and sink down to widen your base. This solidifies your stance and gives you
time to counter his attack.1
As David on the left steps in to strike, Ulf sets up and behind his heel to trip him.
 Ulf trips David by locking his foot behind the heel and driving him backward.

An old-school throw. The fighter on the right steps in behind the opponent’s lead leg (this is
essential) and pushes his opposite shoulder, forcing him back and over. The elbow to the face may be
 the entry technique that enabled him to move in, or it may be an aid to move the opponent
backwards.

THE CROSS BUTTOCK OR OVER-THE-HIP THROW

This throw was taught as part of the old style of bare knuckle. It is a
simple throw over your hip, with your arm gripping the opponent around
either the waist or neck. The good thing about this technique is that it is
very easy to do once you get in to close fighting distance. If you secure a
hold around the opponent’s neck, you can finish him by suddenly and
violently throwing him by the neck alone. No matter how you do it, the aim
is to drop him on his head or neck and not on his back.
A more serious variation is to throw him by the neck and maintain your
hold. This will damage or snap his neck if you pull forcefully up and back
as he flies over and down. Obviously, such a move is only for situations
when your life is in danger.
It is important to understand that you must step in aggressively to
accomplish the cross buttock; do not wait for him to come to you. The step
in needs to be done behind his lead rather than rear leg. This is the only way
to quickly gain both a solid hold and an opening for destroying his balance.
As you step in, use your shoulder on the side of the catching arm to push
him backwards and take his balance prior to throwing him.

A hip throw done from the outside.

 A hip throw from the side. Push him forward and take his balance prior to throwing him. When
applying this hold, start with a swinging hook that circles the opponent’s neck or side.

THE CHANCERY

This is a nice technique that simply entails capturing the opponent’s

head underneath one of your arms and pummeling him with your other fist.
What is less known about the chancery is that it is relatively easy to apply
after you parry a strike due to the positioning of your and the opponent’s
arms. If, for instance, the opponent steps in with a straight punch at your
face and you defend by parrying it upward, simply take a small step
forward and extend your arm until it lands on the opponent’s shoulder. If
you hook the arm in the same motion, you will catch his head in the
chancery. If you think of how often boxers go into clinch, then you can
understand how easy it is to catch the opponent’s head. Just remember that
catching his head is an aggressive forward move and does not entail simply
taking hold of him limply. Once you have him locked up, pull his head
close and twist your body away from his body. This will torque his body
and neck and make it much more difficult for him to escape.
Ulf has locked David’s head in the chancery and pulls him close to be able to control and strike him.

Getting Out of the Chancery

The basic idea for escaping a chancery holds true for any type of hold
around the neck or head. The first issue is to avoid getting hit in the face or
choked out. In order to do that, one hand must be set aside to counter the
attack. If your opponent has your head or upper body in a hold using both
his hands, do not waste time trying to unlock his arms or hands. Either
punch as hard as you can at his liver several times, or strike his chin as hard
as you can from below with the palm of your hand. If you can reach, push
your thumb into one of his eyes as hard and fast as you can. If you do it
slowly, he can actually squeeze his eye shut enough to prevent you from
hurting him badly. You can also dig the knuckles in and gouge his eyes, an
old favorite of the bare-knuckle era.
If you are in a true chancery, place the hand on your opponent’s far side
in front of your face to guard it. Dig your chin into his waist to guard your
face even more and prevent him from choking you. The other hand goes up
the opponent’s back and in front of his face. Then push his head sideways
and back to throw him over your leg.
David escapes the chancery by reaching up and over Ulf’s shoulder with the arm closest to Ulf and
pulls/presses his head and face rearward. As David raises himself up to standing, he uses the power
of the legs to push Ulf backwards and down.

THE PARRIES

The ways to deflect attacks seem to have remained rather consistent

throughout the history of pugilism. On Greek vases we see the same
defenses against strikes as were recommended in later bare-knuckle
instructions. This is perhaps not so strange after all, since human anatomy
hadn’t changed, there are few basic movements that really work, and
intelligent people figured them out at an early date. In the old bare-knuckle
texts, the parries were coupled with the specific attack they were intended
to counter; therefore, here we give the parry and the attack as one unit.
Blocking a straight strike. The left figure blocks the strike by lifting his arm.

Blocking a strike with the opposite hand.

Blocking a strike with the opposite hand, apparently by pushing it to the outside. He might be lifting
it up, but the image is distorted due to problems with depicting foreshortened parts of the body
correctly.

Parrying the Straight Punch

The straight punch is aimed at the face. It does not matter if the impact
point is the nose, mouth, chin, or eyebrow—the parry works regardless of
target. The basic idea—as described in, for instance, Boxing Made Easy—is
that you lift your arm up and a bit out to deflect the incoming strike with
your forearm.2 This is an easy defense that works surprisingly well.
Both Mendoza and the author of Boxing Made Easy recommend that
you parry with the arm on the same side of the attack. That is, if the
opponent strikes at your face with his left hand, you parry with your right.
We have tried to parry everything with the lead hand regardless of which
side the attacks are aimed, and it works. There are, however, differences in
the possible follow-ups that can be done.
When parrying, it is recommended that you lift your elbow as high as
the rest of your arm so you have a horizontal bar just above your head.

We start in a guard position. Here we use a more upright guard than, for instance, Mendoza seems to
have done.
Ulf steps and punches at David’s face, who parries with the same hand as the strike, which is the left.
This opens up the opponent’s outside for a counter.

Here David parries with the same side as the strike but not the same hand—that is, Ulf strikes with
the left and David defends with the right. This opens up the centerline for a counter.
 Parrying the Round Strike
The round strike in any form did not have a good reputation in the bare-
knuckle era. The reason was said to be that a round strike took longer to
reach its target, and it was that much more difficult to perform with power.
It opened you up while providing a small return on your investment, so to
speak. That said, it was used in bouts, and we surmise that the original
discontent with this technique stemmed from the fact that a bad swing is too
easily countered (a good hook, however, is another matter). In all
likelihood, this view indicates that infighting at close distance was not that
popular with bare-knuckle fighters. One reason might be that they were
wary of throws and locks, which were allowed during bouts. Such
techniques end fights soon, as we know from watching K-1 and similar
events today.
Parrying a round strike is simple. It is done by either raising the elbow
forward and up, catching the strike on the outside of the arm, or by lifting
the elbow sideways, catching the strike on the side or underside of the arm.
Essentially, it is more of a stop than the front-strike parry, which is more of
an upward redirection of the attack.
Ulf strikes round at David, who parries by lifting the elbow and catching the strike. The parry can
either stop the strike or lift it over to the opposite side.
The fighter on the right throws a round strike at the face, which his opponent blocks by raising the
elbow. The attacker follows with a blow to the mark, which is defended by barring it.

A variation on the parry against a round strike, where the elbow is lifted, catching the strike on the
arm. Seen in Sullivan’s text from 1893 and still in use in modern boxing, this version also works
well.
 The fighter on the right stops the blow by catching it on his bent right arm.

DEFENDING THE MARK AND THE SIDES

Hitting the mark—the solar plexus, described as the “pit of the

stomach” to indicate the depression between the ribcage—was considered
to be of primary importance. The reason was simply that most people can’t
take a hit with a bare fist there without going down.
Defending the mark could be done in two ways. The first was by
barring, which meant simply placing your rearmost arm across the mark
and letting the opponent hit it. The second possibility was to strike the
opponent’s attacking arm with your own. This has the added benefit of
hurting the opponent as well, possibly disabling him for a few seconds if
you do it well, and opening him for a strike from below.
 Ulf strikes at David’s stomach, who bars with his right arm (it hurts, let me tell you).

Ulf strikes with his other hand and David strikes his hand down using the bony part of his own wrist.
This hurts Ulf quite a bit and pulls him slightly forward, opening him for David’s counter.
 The fighter on the right strikes first high at the face and then low at the mark. The first strike is
blocked by lifting it up and the second by barring the mark. Notice how close to each other they
stand.

Ulf strikes at David’s sides, who defends by pulling down the elbow.

In order to defend the sides of the body (i.e., kidneys and sides of the
ribcage), you simply pull down the elbow sharply, keeping it in contact with
your body to act as a shield.
 KICKING

Kicking is not an expressed part of the bare-knuckle manuals, but it can

be inferred that it was done since it was eventually prohibited, as was using
the knees (among other things). Therefore, we would like to present a few
simple kicks that can be found in earlier European material dating from the
Middle Ages and Renaissance.
Kicks are aimed low (i.e., below the groin) simply because it is difficult
to kick higher with efficiency in a real-life situation and when wearing
normal clothing. Deliver them a bit like savate kicks, with a rather straight
leg driven forward and without leaning over with the body. Kick using the
bottom or tip of the foot, but remember that shoes do help!

Ulf kicks David with the bottom of the foot.

Ulf kicks with the bottom of the foot at David’s shin—a useful technique when the opponent closes
in.

Ulf kicks David above the knee with the tip of the foot.

GIVING THE RETURN

Although the author of Boxing Made Easy claims “giving the return” to
be an invention of Mendoza, we know this is not the case because the
concept was shown in sword texts from the Middle Ages. Mendoza does,
however, describe this tactic in his book. Basically, the idea is that as you
parry, you must simultaneously launch a counterattack. If you do not do
this, your opponent will control the development of combat and you will
most likely lose. To give the return also means that you should not do your
movements in a predictable, 1-2 pattern or rhythm, which will give the
opponent time to rearrange his defenses after his attack or attacks. Instead,
you must counter immediately, in the quickest way possible, and with
conviction and force. The return may also come in the form of chopper
attack that is not that forceful but perhaps is quick. In any case, it is of
paramount importance that you always counter when attacked and not just
sit there and take it. The medieval master Johannes Liechtenauer said that it
was essential to strive for the first strike (Vorschlag), but if that failed then
the “after strike” (Nachschlag) absolutely had to be gained. Initiative must
be retaken, and this is nothing else then the “return” of the bare-knuckle
boxers. Same concept, different terminology.

ADDITIONAL TECHNIQUES FROM SULLIVAN

James Sullivan’s book from 1893 on boxing as self-defense contains

much interesting material. The following is a selection of his techniques to
complement the previous material. Sullivan is relevant for the same reason
as Price: he stands at the crossroads of the bare-knuckle martial art and the
modern sport of boxing, and as such his recommendations are more likely
to reflect the earlier, tested techniques and ideas that had not yet been
adapted to the ring.
Sullivan starts with some general, sound advice. First, he says, always
strike using the body rather than with the strength of the arms alone.
Always make sure your strikes connect, even if it risks a counter, with the
motivation that it will teach you to hit faster and guard better next time.
Sullivan considered footwork important. The weight should be evenly
placed, the front foot pointed at the opponent, the rear foot cocked out at 45
degrees or so, and the distance between the front heel and rear toes about
12-15 inches. The rear heel should be raised a little, the knees slightly bent.
As you work on your opponent, strive toward your right side since you then
move away of his right hand.
The body should be turned a quarter away from the opponent, with the
rear shoulder lower than the front, giving you an inclining posture. Keep the
eyes focused on the opponent’s eyes, and be sure your tongue is not lodged
between the lips or teeth so you don’t bite it during the action. Keep moving
the head, and feel the body as being light and mobile. Counter to either side,
and do so with the hand on the same side as the incoming strike so your
counter comes in from his outside. Never duck without hitting back.
Sullivan has interesting suggestions on timing. When the opponent
advances, extend the left hand halfway and withdraw the right. It should be
done easy and slight. This allows you to keep the time of the opponent,
positioning yourself so you can anticipate his advance and prepare a timely
counterstrike. When the opponent steps in to attack, he must move in to
cover the distance, and that’s when you use timing to your advantage. In
retreating, you lure or pull the opponent further into his attack until he has
gone too far and overextended himself. This is when you counter with ease.
(In tai chi, there is a saying that when the opponent advances the distance is
surprisingly long, yet when I advance, the distance is surprisingly short.)

Guard Position
Stand with your feet some 15 inches apart and with the heels in line.
The right hand arm should be held across the ribs, with the finger knuckles
in front of or touching the left breast. The left should be extended in line
with your elbow and your opponent’s face.

Both fighters in the guard position.

 Right Hand Guard for the Body
To guard against a strike to the body, whip your arm down and out to
sweep the blow aside. When the opponent tries to strike at your body, he
will be forced to bend forward and down to some extent, so it is also
possible to stop him by delivering a straight punch to the face as he comes
forward.

The guard with the right hand, seen from both sides. David’s left hand is being extended in
preparation for an uppercut.

Left Hand Counter

Here, David deflects a left strike to the face and counters at once with a
left to Ulf’s face. It is essential to move both arms simultaneously. Lean
forward slightly to the side you are countering on to put weight behind the
counter. This works well on either side.
 Countering with the left hand.

Duck/Step with a Left Hand Counter to the Face

When the opponent strikes at you with a straight punch, move your head
and upper body forward to your right so his strike passes over your left
shoulder; then, step in with either the rear or front foot (maintaining the
same footing), and counter to his face. You are also in a perfect position to
strike his ribs.
If you want to guard yourself from this counter, duck outside to your
right at the same time as your opponent and/or push the counterpunch
sideways with your right hand.

Left Hand Guard and Right Hand Counter

This is a useful technique against an opponent who tends to swing
slightly toward the opposite side when throwing a straight. You deflect his
strike with the same hand (e.g., left versus left), which will turn him further
and expose his side and ribs. Counter with a strike to the ribs, leaning in
with the body as you strike. Raise your guarding arm slightly higher than
usual.
 Ulf deflects with his left and counters to the ribs with his right.

David has stepped forward with the rear foot in the counter. (In the original illustration it is a shuffle
step, leading with the same foot.) To put weight behind the counter, allow the body to come in behind
the strike.
 David deflects with his left and counters to the face with his right.

Left Hand Guard and Right Hand Counter

Ulf strikes at David with a right and David guards with the left. As he
does so, David strikes at Ulf’s face, throwing his shoulder forward in order
to engage the body and avoid a limp arm strike. As usual, this can be done
on either side.

Right Hand Cross Counter

When the opponent strikes at you with a left, bend slightly forward at
the waist and duck a bit out to the left side. Strike over the opponent’s arm
with your right, hitting him in the face. This strike often becomes more of a
swing since you must cross over the opponent’s lead arm. Don’t be too
quick here—it is almost as if you are allowing him to hit you. If you are too
quick, your intentions will be easy to read and counter. As you connect, turn
your feet slightly toward the side that the strike is traveling in order to get
the body really into it. Follow up with a left to the face or body as you see
an opening. This works against a right as well, but you should lead with the
other hand or switch stance.
If you see a cross counter coming, move your head forward and touch
the inside of your arm to your ear. That way the strike will pass over your
head. It also gives you a solid opening for a counter. You can also guard in
the old style by withdrawing the left arm a bit and raising the elbow, which
also offers the opportunity for a good counter. Finally, if you anticipate this
move, you can preempt it by hitting him in the chest or near the attacking
shoulder.

This shows stopping a cross counter by halting the opponent’s body with a solid straight to the chest.
This counter is useful as a general way of impeding the opponent’s advance. You can employ it with
several forms of stepping and ducking.
 Right hand cross counter, seen from both sides.

Left Hand Uppercut

The uppercut lends itself well against, for instance, a straight strike from
the left. As the opponent strikes, you counter with your left from below. It
doesn’t matter which strike the opponent uses, but the uppercut should
come in across the body and move upward. In essence, it is more of a
counter rather than an attack since it has less reach and depends on the
opponent first coming to you. Uppercuts as strikes are always done from a
close range.

Right Hand Uppercut to the Outside

This strike is executed as a counter when the opponent uppercuts. Lean
the body slightly to the outside as you strike. Do not turn it into a horizontal
swing by launching it from too far out to the side.

David counters Ulf’s uppercut by coming in from the outside.

Duck and Counter for an Uppercut

When the opponent strikes at you with an uppercut, duck toward the
outside and strike at once. Here, David has simultaneously taken a step
forward as he counters to the body. If you remain stationary with the feet,
simply lean toward the side opposite of his strike since that will be both
open and safe. A counter to the body will be most natural, even though a
counter to the head also works well.
 Ulf counters with an uppercut to David’s chin.

David ducks and counters Ulf’s uppercut from the outside.

Chancery
If your hand passes over your opponent’s as you strike, wrap your hand
around his neck and pull forward to execute a chancery. Cock your free
hand while holding him tight; then pull his head toward you as you drive a
punch into his face.
 When using the chancery, try to avoid clinging to the opponent too long.
You really only want one or, at best, two solid punches to the face; then be
prepared to let him go. If you cling to him, it can be used against you since
this grip can easily be turned into a trip or fall.

Ulf locks David in a chancery and prepares to punch.

Getting Out of the Chancery

When the opponent has you around the neck, you need to get away
quickly. The fastest way is to push him away while simultaneously creating
a barrier for a counterstrike. Lift your free arm up and strike/push the
opponent’s head away.
David’s left arm creates a guard against a counterstrike as he forcefully pushes Ulf away to escape
the chancery.

The other chancery, seen from both sides.

Another Form of Chancery

 This is another version of the chancery, executed when the opponent
steps in with a lead and then ducks left as you counter. Lock your arm
around his neck and draw his head down and to the right, opening him up
for an attack to his ribs. This is a more solid grip then the previous
chancery; remember, however, that just as you can strike at his exposed ribs
to great effect, so can he do some serious damage to you from this position,
especially in a self-defense situation were there are no rules.

Getting Out of the Chancery

Since this hold is inverted, it is much more difficult to extract yourself,
especially since the opponent is striking at your ribs. To get out, forcefully
shove his head with your right hand and his body with your left. The right
pushes back and up on the jaw; the left pushes at the hip, since that joint is
hard to keep rigid when attacked. Push the hip back and away and the body
will follow.

David escapes the inverted chancery with an explosive shove to Ulf’s head and body.
 Ulf executes a back fall against David.

Back Fall
A marked difference between the older forms of bare knuckle and the
modern sport was that throws and tripping were allowed in the former. This
is, of course, especially interesting from a self-defense perspective, where a
rudimentary grasp of throwing techniques is a must.
To execute this back fall, rush in close to the opponent and throw your
left arm around his waist and right arm under his chin. As you step in, try to
place your left leg behind his right. The throw is done by pushing him back
under the chin while maintaining your hold around his waist. It might seem
odd, but the arm around the waist prevents him from moving backward to
regain balance. Once his balance is gone, simply continue to push, but
release the waist and down he goes.

Countering a Back Fall

To counter a back fall, you must first immobilize the arm around your
waist by locking it to your body with the arm on the same side. This will
put pressure on the opponent’s arm and elbow joint. With your other hand,
push the arm under the chin up and a bit sideways, preferably by applying
pressure at the elbow joint. Proceeding from this point is more difficult,
since both your hands are engaged. Striking is not a top priority, but
executing your own back fall might work, or simply disengage and deliver a
straight strike to his face.

Ulf attempts a back fall against David.

 David locks Ulf’s left arm to his body and shoves his right at the elbow.

By maintaining pressure on the elbow and pushing forward, David executes his own back fall against
Ulf.
 The back hip fall, seen from both sides.

Back Hip Fall

This is a very good throw that allows for a quick end to a fight. The
opponent leads with a left, and you step out and duck to your right. As you
rush in, throw your left arm around his waist and step in with your left leg
well behind him. Place the right hand under his chin, raise him on your hip,
and throw him over with force, using both hands for leverage.

NOTES
1. Allanson-Winn, Boxing, pp. 50–51.
2. Boxing Made Easy, or the Complete Manual of Self Defence, p. 7.
 Chapter
4
BARE-KNUCKLE PRACTICE PATTERNS

It seems that much bare-knuckle training that was not done in the form
of sparring consisted of set patterns, a mode of working with combative arts
well documented both in Europe and Asia. It is a simple, safe, and
extremely effective way of internalizing movements, responses, and
attitudes. Patterns have the added benefit of taking the practitioner to a
decent level of proficiency much quicker than other forms of training. Yet
another benefit is that you can easily do patterns alone if necessary simply
by shadow boxing.
We have decided to include a number of practice patterns from the most
accessible master text, that of Daniel Mendoza. This is not a complete list
of Mendoza’s patterns; rather, our intention is to show you the ones that
contain the most basic material covered in his book so you can clearly see
how to train in bare knuckle. We have, however, included all unillustrated
patterns as text so you can work them out on your own if you wish.
You can also find great patterns and exercises in the works of Sullivan
and Price. The value of the patterns of Mendoza and his pupils lies less in
the excellence of the patterns as in the fact that they provide historical,
easy-to-follow sets of movements on which you can easily base and
construct your own.
The terms “Master” and “Scholar” are an old way of designating the
two parties in any practice sequence. The master takes the role of the
knowledgeable teacher, while the scholar is the young man learning the art.
You can think of it as the uke and tori in Japanese arts.
Do not try to copy Mendoza’s way of doing these patterns exactly.
Rather, use his methods as a starting point and find what suits your training
needs. Virtually the same patterns are found in the works of other authors
who advocated different styles and guards. In that sense, these patterns
seem to have been used as a general training regimen rather than as a
unique Mendoza system. Then again, his text appears to be the first to
contain them, so perhaps he created the patterns later used by others. In any
case, they a good foundation for training in bare knuckle, so they work well
for our purposes.
When practicing the patterns, execute them carefully. Do not do them
quickly and become sloppy. Practice slow and learn fast.
In all these patterns, you can use many different forms of footwork. We
have opted to not try to show overly active footwork since it takes away
from the clarity of the strikes and blocks.
Note that when lifting the opponent’s arm—especially when you
perform the forearm parry—you will lift him up and in essence unbalance
him as he extends. Also notice how both Ulf and David aim the arm not in
use directly at the opponent, ready for an immediate counter strike. This is
most clearly visible in Ulf’s postures.

LESSON 1

Master strikes with his left arm at your face.

Parry with your right forearm, at the same time barring your stomach with
your left forearm while throwing your head and body back.
 From the guard position…

…David steps in and strikes at Ulf’s face with the left, who parries by lifting his elbow while barring
the mark with his other arm.

Master strikes with his right at your face.

Parry with your left forearm, at the same time barring your stomach with
your right forearm and throwing your head and body back.

On guard. (The remaining photo sequences will presume to begin from this guard position.)
David steps in and strikes at Ulf with his right. Ulf parries by lifting his elbow while barring the mark
with his other arm.

Master strikes round at your right ear with his left.

Parry with your right arm, turning the elbow up to cover the side of the
head, barring the stomach with the left forearm, and throwing the head and
body back.

David steps in and strikes at Ulf with his left. Ulf lifts the elbow and blocks.
Master strikes round at your left ear with his right.
Parry with your left arm, turning the elbow up to cover the side of the head,
barring the stomach with the right forearm, and throwing the head and body
back.

David strikes at Ulf from his right. Ulf lifts the elbow to deflect it…

…and lifts the attacking arm over, as shown here, or stops it, as is most suitable to the situation.
Master strikes at your stomach with his left.
Bar your stomach with your right forearm, keeping your left opposite his
nose and throwing your head and body back.

Ulf bars David’s strike to the stomach.

He strikes at your stomach with his right.

Bar your stomach with your left forearm, keeping the right opposite his
nose and throwing head and body back.
 Ulf bars David’s strike to the stomach.

His right strikes at your left side.

Stop the strike with your left elbow, keeping your right fist opposite his
nose and throwing head and body back.

David steps in and strikes at Ulf’s side. He blocks it by pulling down the elbow.

LESSON 2
 1, 2
Master feints 1, 2 at your face, first with his left in order to hit
you in the face with his right.
Parry first with your right forearm and then with your left forearm, covering
the stomach with the right forearm and throwing your head and body back.

David strikes at Ulf ’s face with his left; he blocks it with the forearm.

David then strikes with the right, which Ulf blocks in the same way.
 It is also possible to block diagonally, which places you outside the opponent’s main line.

Master feints in the same manner, beginning with his right.

Parry first with your left arm and then with your right forearm, covering the
stomach with the left forearm and throwing head and body back.

David strikes at Ulf with his right, who parries it.

 David then strikes with the left, which Ulf parries.

He feints left at your stomach, to hit your face with his right.
Bar your stomach with your right forearm and parry the blow to your face
with your left forearm, throwing head and body back.

David feints at Ulf’s stomach, which Ulf bars.

 David then throws the real strike at Ulf’s face, which Ulf parries.

He does the same with his right.

Bar your stomach with your left forearm and parry the blow to your face
with your right forearm, throwing head and body back.

David strikes at Ulf’s stomach, who bars it.

 David then strikes at Ulf’s face with his left. Ulf parries by lifting it upward.

He feints left at your right side, to hit your face with his right.
Stop the feint with your right elbow and parry his blow to your face with
the left forearm, throwing head and body back.

David feints a strike at Ulf’s side. He parries by dropping his elbow.

 David then strikes at Ulf’s face, which Ulf parries.

He does the same with his right.

Stop with your left elbow and parry his blow to your face with the right
forearm, throwing head and body back.

David’s right strikes at Ulf’s side. He parries by dropping the elbow.

 David then strikes at Ulf’s face with his left, who parries it with his right forearm.

Master strikes 1 at the face, 2 at the stomach, with alternate arms.

Parry the first with the proper forearm and the second with the proper bar;
that is, if he strikes with his left at your face and the right at your stomach,
parry his left with your right forearm and his right with your left across
your stomach. If he strikes first with his right at your face and his left at
your stomach, parry his right with your left forearm and his left with your
right across your stomach.
 David strikes with his left at Ulf’s face, who deflects it with the proper parry.

David strikes with the right at Ulf’s stomach, and he bars it.

Master strikes 1 at the side and 2 at the stomach.

Parry with the proper arms, first by catching the blow on the proper elbow
and then by parrying the blow at the stomach with the proper forearm; that
is, if he strikes with his left first, catch it with your right elbow and bar his
right with your left across your stomach, and vice versa if he strikes with
his right.
 David strikes at Ulf’s right side. Ulf tucks his right elbow to block it.

David strikes at Ulf’s stomach, which Ulf bars.

He strikes at the face 1 and 2 at the side.

Parry each with the proper forearm and elbow.
 David strikes at Ulf’s face. Ulf parries.

David strikes at Ulf side. Ulf bars.

He strikes at the stomach 1 and 2 at the side.

Bar the first with the proper forearm and catch the other with the proper
elbow.
 David strikes at Ulf’s stomach. Ulf bars the strike.

David strikes at Ulf’s side. Ulf catches it on his elbow.

LESSON 3

1, 2, 3
Master strikes with his left at your face 1; with his right at your
face 2; and with his left at your stomach 3, the intended blow.
Parry the first with your right forearm, the second with your left forearm,
and the third with the right forearm barring your stomach, throwing head
and body back.

David strikes at Ulf with a straight left. Ulf parries.

David throws a straight right. Ulf parries.

 David strikes at Ulf’s stomach. Ulf bars.

Master strikes with his right at your face 1; with his left, 2; and
with his right at your stomach 3.
Parry the first with your left forearm, the second with your right forearm,
and the third with your left arm, barring your stomach and throwing head
and body back.

David throws a straight right at Ulf’s face. Ulf parries.

 Then a straight left, which Ulf parries.

Then the intended blow at the stomach. Ulf bars.

1, 2, 3 at the Face
Master strikes at your head first with his left; second with his
right at your face; and third with his left, the intended blow.
Parry the first with your right, the second with your left, the third with your
right, your forearm ultimately covering your stomach while throwing head
and body back.
David strikes a left at Ulf’s face. Ulf parries.

David strikes with the right. Ulf parries.

 With the left again. Ulf parries.

Master strikes with his right at your head 1; with his left at your
face 2; and with his right 3, the intended blow.
Parry the first strike with your left; the second with your right; the third
with your left, your forearm ultimately covering your stomach while
throwing head and body back.

David strikes a straight right at Ulf ‘s face. Ulf parries.

 Then with the left. Ulf parries.

And again with the right. Ulf parries.

1, 2, 3 at the Side
Master strikes with his left hand at your head first; with his right
second; and his left at your side third, the intended blow.
Parry the first with your right forearm; the second with your left forearm;
the third with the right elbow.
 David strikes a left. Ulf parries.

Then he strikes with the right. Ulf parries.

 A variation. After the third parry, Ulf closes in to execute a cross buttocks throw.

Master strikes with his right at your head first; with his left at
your head second; then with his right at your side, the intended
blow.
Parry the first with your left forearm; the second with your right forearm;
and the third with your left elbow.

First a straight right, which Ulf parries.

 David throws a straight left. Ulf parries.

David strikes at Ulf ‘s right side. Ulf parries.

 In this variation, Ulf counters by catching David’s heel and locking it while pushing him backward
with the right arm (which starts as a strike).

LESSON 4
Ripostes

Master’s left strikes at your face.

Parry with your right forearm and return at his face with your left, which he
catches in his open hand.
 David throws a straight left at Ulf’s face. Ulf parries.

Ulf throws a straight left in return, which David catches in his hand from the front (variations will
come later).

His right strikes at your face.

Parry with your left forearm and return at his face with your right.

David strikes a straight left at Ulf, who parries it.

 Ulf returns a straight right. David catches it on the side and moves it sideways. This is a more
plausible maneuver than actually catching it from the front. Ulf is open to several counters here.

Master’s left strikes at your stomach.

Stop by barring with your right forearm and return at his face with your left,
which he catches.

David strikes at Ulf stomach. Ulf bars the strike.

 David catches Ulf’s counter.

His right strikes at your stomach.

Stop by barring with your left forearm and return at his face with your right.

Master’s left strikes at your right side.

Stop by catching the blow on your right elbow, and return at his face with
your left.

His right strikes at your left side.

Stop by catching the blow on your left elbow, and return at his face with
your right.

Master’s left chops at your face.

Parry with your right forearm, and return at his face with your left.

His right does the same.

Parry with your right forearm, and return at his face with your left.

Master’s left strikes at your stomach.

Parry it down with your right and return a back-handed blow with the same
hand, covering your stomach with your left arm.
 David strikes at Ulf ‘s stomach with the left. Ulf parries it.

Ulf then returns a back fist (chopper) at David’s face with the blocking hand.
 This is a variation to show that a back fist does not have to go straight. Here Ulf angles it in to hit
David behind the right jaw, just below the ear.

Master’s right strikes at your stomach.

Parry it down with your left and return a back-handed blow with the same
hand, covering the stomach with the right arm.

David strikes a right at Ulf’s stomach. Ulf parries it down.

 Ulf again returns a back fist at David’s head.

Master’s left strikes again at your stomach.

Parry it down with your right and return a straight blow at his face with the
same hand. Entry by a pass, shifting the lead foot.

David strikes a left at Ulf’s stomach. He parries it with his right.

 This time Ulf counter s with a straight right from the parrying position.

His right does the same.

Parry it down with your left and return a straight blow at his face with the
same hand. Entry by a shuffle step, maintaining the same lead foot.

David strikes at Ulf’s stomach with a straight right. Ulf parries it with his left hand.
 Ulf then returns a straight left at David’s face.

LESSON 5

Ripostes: 1, 2 at the Face

The Scholar strikes 1,2, beginning with his left. Master parries
with his left and ripostes with his left at your face.
Parry this riposte by catching the wrist with your left fist and striking a
back-handed blow across his face with your left hand.
Ulf, in the role of the Scholar, attacks David first with a straight left. David parries.

Ulf then strikes a straight right at David, who parries it as well.

David then executes a riposte at Ulf ‘s face. Ulf catches this with his left hand.
 Ulf returns a back fist (chopper) at David’s face.

Do the same with your right hand, i.e., beginning 1, 2 with your
right.
This time he parries with his right and ripostes with the same. Then you
catch it with your right fist and return with a back-handed blow across his
face.

Ulf begins with a straight right, which David parries.

Ulf then strikes a left, which David parries as well.

Ulf catches David’s right and deflects it sideways.

 Ulf then strikes a chopper with his right hand at David’s head.

Ripostes: 1, 2, 3 at the Face

The Scholar strikes 1, 2, 3, beginning with his left. Master parries

with his right and ripostes at your stomach with his left.
Stop this with your right forearm and return with your left at his face.

Ulf throws a left at David, who parries it.

 Ulf advances and throws a right at David’s face, which he parries.

Ulf advances again and throws a left at David’s face, which he parries.
 At the final strike, David parries with the right and counters at Ulf ‘s stomach with a straight left
aimed at the mark. Ulf parries this.

Ulf then returns a straight left at David’s face.

Strike 1 at the face and 2 at the stomach, beginning with your

left.
This he will stop with his left and riposte 1, 2 at your face, beginning with
his left. Parry with your left and return 1, 2 at his face.
Ulf strikes a left at David’s face. He parries with the right hand.

Ulf advances and strikes a right at David, which he parries.

 David returns with his first strike.

David returns with his second strike.

Strike 1 at the face, 2 at the face, and 3 in the stomach, beginning

with your left, keeping your right fist opposite his face.
This he will stop with his right and riposte 1, 2, 3 at your stomach, which
you must bar.
 Ulf strikes at David’s face with a straight left. David parries.

Ulf steps in with a straight right at David’s face. David parries.

Ulf then steps in with a strike at David’s stomach, which he parries.

David then returns the favor with a straight left, which Ulf parries.
 David continues with a straight right. Again Ulf parries.

David rounds off with a left at Ulf’s stomach, which he parries, making sure the entire time to keep
the unused fist aimed to David’s face and in position for a counterstrike.

Do the same with the other hand, i.e., beginning with your right.
This he will stop with his left and riposte 1, 2, 3 at your stomach, which you
must bar.
The Scholar strikes with his left at the face; the Master parries
with his right and ripostes with his left at the stomach.
Knock the blow down and return straight at the face. Do the same with the
other hand.

LESSON 6

Scholar strikes 1, 2 at the face, beginning with the left.

Master parries and ripostes the same.

Scholar strikes 1, 2, 3 at the face, beginning with the left.

Master parries and ripostes the same.

Scholar strikes 1, 2 at the face and 3 at the stomach, beginning

with the left.
Master parries and ripostes the same.

Scholar strikes 1, 2 at the face and 3 at the side, beginning with

the left.
Master parries and ripostes the same.
 Chapter
5
BARE-KNUCKLE CONDITIONING

Aside from hitting very hard and with accuracy, we need a few more
things to round out the well-formed pugilist. Technique alone will not win
the day—the truth is that strength, stamina, and wind will actually lead to
victory in many real-life confrontations.
These aspects of physical fitness were deemed to be the foundation of
bare knuckle, even more so than the techniques. Successful fighters had
solid core body strength, both to withstand and deliver blows (as well as
being able to move quickly); heart, or the ability to fight and continue to
fight even when the going got tough (the bare knucklers called it “bottom”);
and simple endurance to keep fighting without losing it.

ESSENTIAL ATTRIBUTES

The following is a brief description of the essential attributes of a bare-

knuckle fighter. All of them deal to a great extent with psychological
aspects of fighting, and several bare-knuckle teachers stress that they are
absolutely essential to become a good boxer.

Wind
“Wind” refers to having a strong cardiovascular capacity. It is easy to
think that because you can run for 20 miles, your capacity is at a peak. It
may be, but fighting requires both the ability to sustain hard work over long
periods of time as well as being able to apply 120 percent over very short
periods of time again and again. So it is a common mistake to confuse the
fact that you can run with the fact that you have the wind to fight. The
former is a long-term, steady stress on the system; the latter involves bursts
of intense effort at irregular intervals. In the good old days, matches could
literally go on for hours, so being able to fight while conserving your
strength also is an issue.1
Included in this concept is the muscular conditioning that will raise the
threshold of your lactic acid endurance while fighting. Lactic acid depletion
due to prolonged or intense physical activity will adversely affect your level
of muscular control. Increased lactic acid endurance will give you increased
endurance in general, as well as greater focus and precision.

Bottom
“Bottom” in the bare-knuckle sense does not refer to what is located on
the back of your midsection; it is one part what we would call “guts” and
one part an ability to withstand physical as well as mental punishment.
Bottom, or the lack of it, is seen as being absolutely paramount to being
able to fight well. Rephrased in modern terms, we would say that it is not
possible to fight, either in self-defense or in a match, if you are too scared to
act. Bottom, then, is the ability to master your fear, a fear that all thinking
men will experience in a conflict. It is natural, and yet for some reason we
tend to fear the fear, and that makes us lose our bottom.
Another aspect of bottom is concerned with how we react to pain. This
is the second side of bottom—to take pain and keep going. This is
connected to our innate ability to control fear and not be controlled by it.
The good news is that bottom can be trained to a rather high degree.
You are not born with bottom; you acquire it.

Strength
All of the surviving old texts stress that strength is good; muscle mass,
however, is not. The reason is simple: if you are stronger, you will be able
to accelerate your strikes faster, but only to a certain level. Nature equals
things out, so that as you gain muscle mass, you lose speed since greater
mass needs even greater strength in order to accelerate to the same speed.
That is why applying the body in the strikes is so important; it gives us the
benefits f mass without the need to be so bulked up that our speed suffers.
In fact, the so-called BMI (body mass index) is a very good indicator of
the ideal weight for your height, and your height determines the optimum
size of your mass for your body. This is not rocket science, so you can
easily deviate 5–10 kilograms (roughly 5–10 pounds) from it, but no more.
(An interesting side note is that for every 5 kilograms you lose, you will
gain 10 centimeters [4 inches] in your ability to jump vertically or
horizontally.) The body does not care if you haul around fat or muscle; it is
the weight that matters, not what it consists of. That said, greater body mass
will allow you to withstand more damage and, within set parameters, allow
you to strike harder, but only to a point. Then it just slows you down.
So where did we want to go with this? Bare-knuckle teachers stressed
that strength is good, and they offered instruction on how to train it as best
they knew, but they all cautioned against putting on weight. The history of
pugilism is full of smaller fighters who destroyed much larger opponents
(Dempsey versus Willard, for instance, to pick a favorite), so strength
matters. Weight matters a lot less and is almost always bad if there’s too
much of it, no matter what it consists of.

Speed
You need to move fast if you are to be able to both land strikes and
avoid them. But speed is often mistaken for what is in reality a question of
accuracy and timing. Timing and speed are closely connected, and the
ability to time your actions to the actions of the opponent is always more
important then being fast once you move. Speed, you will find, is largely a
matter of trimming waste from your movements and then timing those
movements to those of your opponent. Then you will move slowly but
appear fast, a paradox.

PHYSICAL CONDITIONING EXERCISES

The following exercises are aimed at conditioning the body and the
delivery system, i.e., the hands and arms. The body needs to be tough
enough to withstand punishment, and the hands and arms need to be tough
enough to deliver it.

Conditioning the Hands

Good hands are a necessity for a pugilist, and having weak hands and
wrists leads to quick defeat, regardless if it is a prizefight or a self-defense
situation. In Asia, there is a longstanding tradition of conditioning the
hands, and these techniques have penetrated the martial arts community in
the Western world. What is not so well known is that there exists in Europe
decent instructions and historical anecdotes for conditioning the hands in
order to withstand hits to the harder parts of the human anatomy during a
bare-knuckle fight.
Basically, conditioning the hands consists of two distinct parts. The first
is increasing the strength in the muscles of the hand, wrist, and forearm.
This is necessary since it is the strength of this entire delivery system and
not just the hands that allows you to turn the fist and forearm into one rigid
ram that will not budge no matter what it encounters. Without this strength,
your hand and wrist integrity will be compromised once you hit something.
This is not a case of having weak bones; it is a case of a weak delivery
system.
The early 20th century heavyweight champion James Tunney was a
great boxer, but he had a weak set of hands. To counter this, he set out to
strengthen them. He did this by 1) doing push-ups on the fingertips, 2)
squeezing a rubber ball, 3) doing single-finger push-ups against a wall, 4)
striking a heavy bag, and 5) chopping trees in lumber camps during his
vacations.2 This, of course, strengthened his hands and forearms immensely
—so much, in fact, that he managed to give “the Man” himself, the great
Jack Dempsey, a run for his money! Everything Tunney did was aimed at
increasing the integrity of his delivery system—his the hands, wrists, and
arms—making sure it was strong enough to withstand the impact of
repeated blows.
The second thing you must do is condition the bone structure of the
hand and wrist to withstand blows. This includes thickening and
strengthening the bones, fascia, tendons, and cartilage. The only way to do
this is to hit things—it is that simple. The trick is to hit the right things.
Some people who work with their hands a lot—such as fishermen,
carpenters, and blacksmiths—have tough hands naturally, but even they
must work on conditioning them to accept an impact straight on. Remember
that if you hit an opponent with, say, the force of 40 kilograms (88 pounds),
your hand will receive the same amount of force back into it, and into the
wrist and arm behind it. This is a Newtonian physical law, and no amount
of technique will change that fact. This is why people break their hands or
wrists when delivering a punch; not because they hit something hard.
To train to prevent this, you need to gradually expose your hands and
wrists to stress, to such a degree that you cause minor fractures, which,
when healed, result in thicker bone. This toughening by repeated impact
goes for the tendons, fascia, and cartilage as well.
Tunney’s method to strengthen his weak hands is interesting because it
corresponds well with the recommendations given to us by earlier bare-
knuckle sources. The first recommendation is to hit something that has
greater density than your hand and which is heavy in itself. Enter the heavy
bag. The bare-knuckle era used a different type of bag than today’s solid,
unyielding versions. The old bags were filled with about 22 kilograms (just
under 50 pounds) of barleycorn and topped off with hay as a lid. This
results in a bag with a heavy, nonyielding softness that is a lot like human
flesh. Jack Dempsey recommended filling the bag with a mixture of
sawdust and rags.3 Again, it is not the rock-solid bag of today.
Modern bags are designed for use with gloves. If you hit them hard
without gloves, you risk breaking something no matter how much you have
conditioned your hands. The result is that you do not train the integrity of
your delivery system to a great degree when hitting a heavy bag with bare
knuckles. The older style of bag has a give that allows your hand to sink
into the target before compacting enough to stop the blow. This not only
better simulates how a body actually behaves when struck, but it also allows
for excellent conditioning by offering gradually increasing resistance to the
hands on impact. You can see the parallel with “iron hand” training in Asian
martial arts.
Tunney also used to soak his hands in brine to make the skin thicker and
leathery, giving him a harder surface, and one less prone to rupturing,
across the part of the hand that impacts on the target. The idea was to create
a chemical allergic reaction that dried out the hands and thereby forced the
skin to thicken. (In earlier days, the Swedish army utilized the same
principle by recommending to recruits with feet that blistered easily to rub
them with alcohol or a solution of water and formaldehyde.) The downside
is that your skin will rupture and crack, which must be countered by
applying some form of moisturizing agent such as a good quality hand
lotion in generous doses.
This method of conditioning is also found in iron palm training in Asia,
but there is nothing magical about it. Apply a solution to the skin to thicken
it, then soften the skin with some form of lotion to prevent cracking, and
then hit something repeatedly to induce a solidifying of tissues through the
strain of impact. It’s just plain chemistry, an understanding of human
anatomy, and common sense.

Conditioning the Body to Withstand Blows

It is necessary to condition the body to withstand blows. Contrary to
popular belief, this has less to do with gaining the ability to absorb damage
as it does with becoming familiar with the sensations of getting hit and the
accompanying physical reactions (e.g., an adrenaline dump). It is, of course,
possible to train the torso hard and thus increase the body’s ability to
withstand hits, but only to a limited extent, and it is restricted to soft tissue
areas. The “iron body” tricks shown by Asian martial artists are just that—
tricks.
Renowned magician Harry Houdini had a party trick to let any man hit
him in the stomach as hard as he could. By practicing how to tense all the
muscle in the stomach wall—not just the superficial ones (i.e., the six pack)
but also the deeper ones that we usually do not have conscious control over
—Houdini managed to become a hard target indeed. (The trick ultimately
led to Houdini’s death. One day he got hit before he could prepare properly
and eventually died of internal injuries.) This is the same goal as in Asian
systems—gradually the student is taught to tense all the muscle and
connective tissue in the stomach wall. You can learn to do the same thing,
and it will result in stronger and thicker muscle tissue, which in turn will
make you more resistant to blows. Again, there is nothing magical about
this, but only an understanding of human anatomy and common training
sense.
How to practice, then. In Europe prior to Houdini, there seems to have
been rather little emphasis on training the stomach, and aiming for the mark
was considered a sure-fire way to end a fight quickly since you can’t do
much to increase your ability to withstand damage to the pit of the stomach.
But the historical sources indicate that sparring was considered the best way
to understand and acquire the ability to absorb hits and ignore the resulting
pain. Toughening the body core through sparring is not the same as
Houdini’s method (which he borrowed from Indian yoga) or that of Asian
systems, but it does accomplish something similar over a longer period of
time, though to a lesser degree.
The old texts also say that sparring should be done without any
protection except perhaps so-called mufflers—gloves with a bit of straw
inside them. Our modern equivalent is perhaps thin mixed martial art
(MMA) gloves at the very most, but preferably thinner. (I like gardening
gloves without any padding or anything.) The reason seems to have been
that people do get carried away while sparring, and you ought to be careful
with your friend’s health and he of yours. Sparring should be done using
correct technique rather than fast technique so you learn not only how to hit
properly but how to get hit properly. The bare-knuckle way hurts a hell of a
lot more than when using thick boxing gloves, and bare-knuckle or lightly
gloved sparring shows why you must be prepared for both the bodily
sensations of getting hit and the mental response to those sensations.
Here are a few simple exercises that develop the ability to take a hit to
the body and head. Note that it is not possible to condition the head to
withstand full-force blows; you only get brain damaged if you try it, so
training blows to the head should be moderate.

Exercise 1
Stand with your arms above your head, feet spread wide, preferably
with no shirt to absorb impact. Have your partner strike you all over your
upper body, making sure to include the sides and loins but not the groin. Do
not use gloves for this exercise—bare fists only. Do a set of perhaps 50
punches, and let the person getting hit decide if it is hard enough or if it
should be harder. The force should be constantly on the side of painful and
unpleasant, but just barely. Gradually increase the impact until you can take
five or six full blows to the body without going down. You can start by
using the palms, slapping the body with gradually increased force, and then
progress to fists. This training method was recommended by one of the
greatest Western martial artists of all time, Benny “the Jet” Urquidez, a
phenomenal fighter who could withstand immense punishment to the body.
Give it a month or so and you will see a marked difference in your ability to
absorb hits.

Exercise 2
Do exercise 1, but move around, using proper footwork and distancing.
This exercise forces you to change how you absorb impact, since as you
move a different pattern of bodily tension and relaxation is introduced. It
has the added benefit of allowing your partner to practice how to move in
and hit. As before, the person getting hit decides on the force of the blows.
Do 50 or so and then switch roles.

Exercise 3
Start this exercise only after doing the first two exercises for at least a
couple of months, unless you have prior recent experience with contact
martial arts such as muay Thai or kickboxing. As you move around, your
partner steps in and punches to the front of your stomach as hard as he can.
Avoid blows to the kidneys and lower ribs, as either could cause serious
damage. Only strike three or four times, and then rest and change roles.
Never do this in several sets but rather do one set each as a way to feel a
real hit now and then.

Exercise 4
Spar using MMA gloves and mouthguard, with the entire body as a
target. Don’t spar in timed rounds but rather until one of you wants a rest.
Then restart and continue for 30 minutes in all. Go for the entire body,
including the head, but only moderate blows to there. If you have access to
full-contact masks, put them on once every six months and go for the head
with full power while sparring, but not for more than a few hits. Getting hit
in the head does not make you smarter, nor can your head be trained to
absorb blows better. You just think so as the brain dies!

Strength Training
Having bodily strength is important, but you should not put on weight
by joining the local gym. The reason is simple—weight will at a certain
point cease to give you anything in terms of power and instead start to make
you slower. Proper force in punches comes from body mechanics and
speed, not weight. Even at the close of the bare-knuckle era, weight training
was frowned upon since it gave mass but not durability and power. Instead,
many recommended hard physical labor—such as working in mines,
shifting goods in harbors, cutting trees, and blacksmithing—for acquiring
the proper strength. Few people today possess this type of strength simply
because fewer of us perform this sort of work.
How do we accomplish this today if we don’t live on a farm or really
work with our bodies daily? Well, it is a problem, but not without solution.
First, avoid weights and gyms like the plague. This includes kettle bells and
whatever other fitness fad comes along. Instead, focus on forms of strength
training that don’t require weights (manual labor, most likely) or, if that is
not practical, forms that use the body as the only resistance.
In our opinion, a good place to start is a regimen that focuses on neck
bridges, several kinds of push-ups and pull-ups, and squats. Some of these
exercises are old, originating in India or other exotic places, and you will
find them in yoga, but they were used to great effect in the 19th century by
European wrestlers and boxers. They are simple and emphasize the ability
to work for long intervals rather than at an extremely high resistance for
short intervals, as you find in gym training. Rather than simply pressing a
weight in one direction, they are dynamic and require you to have strength
but also softness and a great degree of control in the movement. This makes
for a much more useful form of strength training than the workout you
usually get in a gym. We want muscles that are useful and allow for speed.
This means limited mass and thus limited body weight.
The following exercises are just a few suggestions for developing a
proper form of bodily strength. In addition, seize any chance you can to
work the body by performing physical labor. It’s a great way to make
friends with the neighbors!

Hindu Push-Ups
This exercise is really great since it allows you to work up to high
repetitions without risking the stress on joints induced by ordinary push-
ups. They are also dynamic and require you to tense the entire upper body.
Using the arms is simply not enough to do Hindu push-ups well.
 Spread the feet and hold the hands slightly farther apart than your shoulders.

Dip your body down and as far back as possible and try to brush your chest along the floor as close to
your hands as you can, then go forward.
Push up as far as possible, making sure to bend the neck and look at the ceiling. You want to create a
bend in the spine by pushing your chest forward and up toward the ceiling.

Press your hands into the floor and gently press yourself back up to the starting position. Do not go
back down along the floor on the return, as this carries with it a definite risk of back injury.

Bridging the Right Way

Bridging is an important exercise since it builds up the neck, which is
useful for withstanding blows, but also because it builds the back and
abdominal muscles to some extent. There are a lot of ways to practice the
bridge; this is just one of them. Please be careful with your neck!
 First we do a version that does not involve the neck, so it is not a bridge as such but it loosens the
back and the abdominals and is great for shoulders and arms. Lie on the floor and place the hands by
the shoulders, with fingers pointing toward the feet. Pull the feet in so they are under rather than in
front of the knees.

Press yourself up as high as possible and, as you progress, walk the feet further in and strive to push
the chest toward the hands as much as possible so that hands, shoulders, and chest are in line one
above the other. Hold that position as long as possible and ease yourself down the same way you
went up. Remember to bend the neck to look at the floor as you press yourself up.
 Now the bridge proper. From the same starting position…

…lift your body slightly so your forehead can roll to the rear. The goal is to have the forehead and
not the top of the head in contact with the floor.
When you feel established, remove the hands if it feels OK in the neck and place them on your chest.
You can then try to move back and forth slightly, but remember that the neck is sensitive. A better
way to add stress is to try and walk the feet further in and raise your hips as high as possible. This is
both safer and harder to do, since you will be working against the strong abdominals that must both
stretch and tighten to be able to cope.

Doing a Proper Squat

Squatting is great, and there are probably a million ways to do the
exercise. This is an old version found in texts on wrestling from the late
19th century, such as Farmer Burns’ work on physical culture. It is easy to
do and very effective. Do as many as you can and repeat two or three times
—unless you can pump out hundreds, that is! One important detail is that it
is much easier to do them relatively fast since you will gain enough
momentum to bounce up. Don’t! Do this squat really slow. Going down
should take about three to four seconds; take the same amount of time going
up. You will feel a difference. It is better both for your strength
development and your joints.
 Stand erect with your hands stretched out in front of you.

As you go down, your heels should lift off the floor. Maintain your upper body in a straight position
without leaning forward too much.
In the lowest position, you should have folded your legs completely. Maintain the straightness of the
arms.

You can also do this exercise with the arms at your hips.

Strengthening the Wrists with the Sea Lion Push-Up

Although sea lion push-ups are perhaps not kosher in terms of antiquity,
they have similarities with early wrestling exercises, so we would like to
include them since they really work wonders for weak wrists. The general
idea is to use the ordinary push-up to stress the wrists rather than the arms
and chest by using the backs of the hands to perform the exercise and
pointing the fingers in different directions!
Here you have the backs of the hands on the mat, with the fingers pointing out to the sides. In this
position, you will not be able to go down very far due to the angle of the elbow, but that is of less
importance. It works nonetheless.

This is as far down as it is practical to go.

 And up again!

Here we have the fingers pointing inward, still with the backs of the hands on the floor.
Maintain the tension in the body and keep facing forward as you go down.

Press yourself back into the starting position.

 Here we have the fingertips pointing backwards, with the backs of the hands still on the floor.

Maintain tension as you go down; face forward and do not sag.

Here is the classic push-up on the knuckles. Keep the fists more toward your waist than under your
shoulders to deemphasize the stress on the upper body.
 Maintain tension and face forward as you lower to the floor.

Return to the starting position.

Fingertip Push-Ups
This was one of Tunney’s favorite exercises. When doing fingertip
push-ups, listen to your body. If it really hurts and feels horrible, back off
and rest. The most important thing to remember is that you must tense the
entire torso package and make the body absolutely stiff as a board, with the
back arching slightly upward rather than sagging down. This is also the case
once you go down to the floor—keep it tense! Work your way up to as high
a number as you can crank out and repeat for, say, a max of three sets.
 The starting position, with eyes forward and the body stiff and slightly arched.

Go all the way down to the floor while maintaining the tension in the body and the slight arch in the
lower back, facing forward as always.
 Straighten the arms and push up, without sagging the back! Face forward.

Starting position for one-finger pushes against a wall. (If you are really tough like Bruce Lee, do it on
the floor. The rest of us use a wall.) Maintain a slight upward arch in the finger so it does not sag
downward in the joint from stress.

Lean in to the wall, maintaining the straightness of the finger and good contact with the wall. Do not
let it bend.
 Push yourself out, again not letting the finger bend.

CARDIOVASCULAR FITNESS THE BARE-KNUCKLE

WAY

The concept of wind was very important in bare knuckle, and today’s
boxers also emphasize the need to be able to fight for long periods of time.
The difference is that bare-knuckle matches were considerably longer than
modern bouts. In spite of that, the old texts did not advocate running to get
fit; instead, it was recommended that you take brisk walks several times a
day. In our modern lifestyle, this might mean walking briskly to and from
work, and perhaps taking a walk over lunch break.
The concept of wind was closely integrated with having a durable
strength, which enabled a combatant to not run out of steam (something you
see in quite a few modern full-contact matches, regardless of style). The
emphasis thus was on having what we might call core strength and
cardiovascular capacity to endure a long, grueling bare-knuckle contest.
To develop this level of fitness, it is essential to partake in training that
emphasizes prolonged repetitions. This gives us long-lasting endurance as
well as the capacity to explode into attacks. Explosiveness is based on
short-term energy, but it must be backed by a long-term endurance, because
without the latter the former quickly becomes useless in a fight.
Again, the preferred exercise historically was walking briskly, twice or
three times a day for as much as 10 miles. You can do the same thing today,
but to do it properly, do not just stroll along quietly. Instead, walk quickly
and with purpose, maintaining the same pace throughout the entire walk.
This is much harder than it sounds. If you live in the country, so much the
better; take a walk in the countryside, but without losing the pace. Avoid the
temptation to include a backpack—you don’t want to add extra weight
unless there are specific reasons for it, such as soldiers training while
wearing their field kit. Instead, you want to work out under conditions as
close to the ones you will be in during a bare-knuckle fight, which means
no backpack. You will notice that your cardiovascular capacity will increase
greatly. Start with 30 minutes and increase from there. As you improve, do
not train longer than one hour. Instead, aim for a faster pace throughout the
session. If you can keep a brisk pace for an hour, you will be fit—have no
doubt about that.

SPARRING AND TRAINING THE BARE-KNUCKLE

SKILLS

Sparring was considered an absolutely essential part of the path to

mastery of the art. As we noted earlier, it allows you not only to increase
how hard you hit but teaches you how to absorb rather hard shots to the
body.
At the same time, the old texts admonish us to spar with restraint and
not get carried away, to focus on good technique and keep under control at
all times, regardless of what happens. If you get hit, don’t get upset. Instead,
consider why it happened and make sure it does not happen again. Strive to
emphasize correct, relaxed techniques and movements, always maintaining
control over your breathing by not panting and always breathing through
the nose.
Avoid throws and the like during sparring, not because they do not work
but because it is very easy to damage your training partner by accident. All
throws, falls, and trips, therefore, should be practiced with care and absolute
control, preferably on budo mats to allow for really practicing the
techniques without holding back. We also recommend using so-called
mufflers during sparring, which are gloves stuffed with some straw, or
simply a pair of gardening gloves without any padding. Their purpose is to
spare the training partner as much as possible.
 NOTES
1. See The Savage Science of Streetfighting for some interesting commentary on the length of fights.
2. Beaumont, The Savage Science of Streetfighting, pp. 78–79.
3. Dempsey, Championship Fighting, p. 44.
 Chapter
6
ADDITIONAL TECHNIQUES FROM THE
EUROPEAN TRADITION

These techniques are not part of the bare-knuckle curriculum in the

sense that they are described in any of the texts that have surfaced so far.
But we know they existed in bare knuckle because they were specifically
banned, and from those descriptions we can match them to surviving
techniques in other manuals of personal combat from Europe’s martial
history. We have decided to include them in this book because we feel they
reflect the missing elements of the bare-knuckle material, and they work
very well. That was the reason why they were banned—they work a bit too
well!

PUGILISTIC TECHNIQUES PRIOR TO THE BARE-

KNUCKLE ERA

Striking techniques existed prior to the great English bare-knuckle era

(i.e., from the 1700s to 1900). From the Middle Ages there survives a great
collection of instruction on wrestling, and sprinkled among these techniques
we find the strikes. (If you are interested in reading more about wrestling in
the Middle Ages, I can recommend the books Sigmund Ringeck’s Knightly
Arts of Combat and Codex Wallerstein, both of which have a long chapters
on the art of medieval wrestling.1) But because these strikes were grouped
with wrestling techniques, it has led to the mistaken idea that no system of
striking existed in earlier days. We know this to be incorrect from several
sources, such as the introduction to Flos Duellatorum by Master Fiore dei
Liberi, dated to 1409. While it does not describe any specific bare-knuckle
techniques, it mentions pugilates—that is, people who fight with their fists.
This piece of evidence, among others, lays to rest the idea that the bare-
knuckle arts have a later (and predominantly English) provenance.
We also know that early unarmed combative systems encompassed
boxing and other non-wrestling techniques because it can be surmised by
looking at the early bare-knuckle rules, which expressly forbid such
techniques as gouging the eyes, kicking the groin, throwing by the
breeches, and breaking joints. The truth is that the striking parts of the
earlier systems were banned in order to create something that was a bit less
harmful to the participants, although a few of the techniques survived in
bare knuckle, such as the cross-buttocks throw, tripping, and even a less
brutal form of eye gouging (with the knuckles rather then the fingers and
thumb, as it was done earlier).
Why this separation between wrestling and pugilism? The reason is
probably twofold and simple. First, wrestling is more difficult to learn,
especially the complex and technically advanced techniques, so in their
work the masters rightly made the choice to emphasize that which was most
difficult. Furthermore, wrestling was done from time immemorial mostly as
a pastime and as a way of educating mind and body. That did not preclude
using it in combat, nor the inclusion of brutal techniques even in its sporting
form, but pugilism is another matter. It is a less forgiving activity in that it
is not possible to exclude the damaging techniques since that was all the
techniques there were! In other words, you cannot really fight for fun. An
easy example: Jack Dempsey, known as the Manassas Mauler, was not a
large man, being of average weight and height. Yet in his match with Jess
Willard, a giant of a man, Dempsey broke his jaw, face bone, and ribs and
knocked out some of his teeth—with gloves on.
In short, things break when you fight with the hands, and even a
modicum of skill will make that certain. There are many reasons why we
see so few serious injuries of that kind today, but in the historic era from
Rome onward, the only “softening” ever used in pugilism consisted of hard
leather straps wound over the hand!
Finally, the emphasis on wrestling during the Middle Ages may have
had a social reason. Wrestling instruction from that era is found in texts that
describe the curriculum of respectable schools of martial arts, texts aimed at
the nobility. Pugilism may simply have been the provenience of lower
social orders and thus not recorded to the same extent in the fight books of
Europe. Pugilism starts to emerge in the martial arena in the late 17th and
early 18th centuries, when we start to get a wider variety of reports on
social events. It was, however, still socially suspect well into the 19th
century, and to some degree even today it is seen as rather unrefined. So
maybe that is the simple and uneventful reason for this uneven interest in
wrestling and pugilism in European martial history.
We would now like to include a few of the earlier striking techniques
and some other interesting moves from the treasure chest of the Western
martial arts, including a short presentation on each source.

NICOLAES PETTER

In Nicolaes Petter’s magnificent book on unarmed combat from 1674,

there is a plate on page 55 depicting the straight strike to the face while
stepping on the opponent’s lead foot to prevent him from moving away.2
This is a variation in Petter’s book that does not really introduce a system of
punching; rather, it is a dirty trick that presupposes that you were allowed to
punch. It is therefore reasonable to surmise that striking was a technical part
of combat systems prior to the 18th century.

JOHANN GEORG PASCHEN

Vollstandiges Ring-Buch, Johann Georg Paschen’s book from 1659, is a

favorite among martial scholars because it contains material that indicates a
working system of self-defense rather than sport. It is a bit hard to follow in
places due to ambiguities in the text and illustrations, but it is possible to
make sense of most of the techniques if you give it some time.
The book deals primarily with freeing yourself from holds. As such it is
not a wrestling book proper but a book on how to counter wrestling. It
contains a few strikes and kicks as well as two parries that can be used
against someone trying to strike or achieve a hold.
The elbows were used in Europe prior to the introduction of modern
martial arts, and an interesting example is found in Paschen’s wrestling
manual. It seems to be done with the elbow traveling downward so you
strike the opponent’s face in a descending movement. The elbow strike to
the ribs is done, by necessity of the target’s location, more straight.3
 Paschen has two more interesting striking techniques that deserve to be
mentioned. The first is a strike with the stiff edge of the hand at the
opponent’s nose and mouth, used as a close-in technique. The second
technique was to grab your opponent’s hair and pull sharply backwards.
Paschen’s parries are interesting because he illustrates a high and low
block, which appear to be identical to the parries recommended later by the
bare-knuckle masters. The high block is executed by lifting the arm to parry
a strike to the face. The low block is executed by striking down and out in
the manner recommend by Sullivan, for instance, to deflect a strike at the
mark or sides of the ribs.
Here is a small selection of Paschen’s techniques that illustrate a strike
in some respect.

Strike to Chin with Hair Pull

David grabs Ulf by the hair behind the neck, pulls his head back, and strikes Ulf underneath the chin.
Another option for life-or-death self-defense is to strike straight to the throat.

Ridge-Hand Strike to Face and Neck

Ulf strikes at David’s nose with the ridge of the hand. This strike can be delivered from various
positions and angles.

The strike can also be aimed at the opponent’s throat or mouth. Here Ulf strikes David’s throat.

Elbow Strikes
This elbow strike is aimed at both high and low targets. David starts with a straight strike at Ulf, who
defends by deflecting as usual.

Ulf steps in and delivers a strike in the face with the elbow while maintaining control of David’s arm.
David steps in with a right-hand strike, which Ulf defends with the same-side arm. Notice the change
in geometry: deflection with the same-side arm creates a diagonal line, with a wide opening for Ulf to
drive his elbow into David’s right side.

Ulf steps in and strikes with the elbow, maintaining the control over David’s arm. The strike and step
must be simultaneous for the best effect. Remember not to slap him with the fleshy part of the arm
but try to drive the bony part of the elbow in to his ribs.

Kicks
Kicks were not invented by savate, as proved by their existence in
Paschen’s text. These kicks are low and fast; in fact, you never see a leg
attack that goes above the waist in the European material.

David steps in to attack with a straight strike. Ulf simply kicks low with a straight leg, aiming at the
knee. This effectively stops David in his tracks, upsets his balance, and opens him up for a follow-up.

Here Ulf nails David with a low kick when both are in the guard position but still at a distance. No
attack has been made; it is a way to open the engagement.
This a nice follow-up to the kick from the guard position. Ulf simply steps in with a strike to the face.

SIGMUND RINGECK

Sigmund Ringeck wrote one of the more influential texts on personal

combat in the late Middle Ages. His work included sections on fighting
with the long sword and with the spear (in and out of armor) as well as on
unarmed combat. In his text, wrestling (or Ringen in German) plays an
important part, and the striking attacks play a rather minor role. But striking
techniques are there, and it seems as if boxers as a separate category also
existed.
The more colorful striking techniques in Ringeck’s book are called
Mortschlag, or murder strikes. One of particular interest to the bare-knuckle
man is aimed at the temple. This can be done most easily with a hammer
fist from the front, but it also can be done from the side with a straight
strike. Another interesting strike is aimed at the heart, going forward and
slightly downward to create a strong strike at the heart and optimally send it
into arrhythmia and cardiac arrest. This is most easily done as a follow-up
technique after a block against a straight punch to the face.
We have chosen to include Ringeck’s Mortschlag here, because they are
interesting in themselves, and they complement the more modern material.
These techniques are of no use in a sporting context but have a place in
serious self-defense.
 Hammer Strike to Heart

Ulf throws a strike at David, who blocks upward, maintaining focus and the free hand aimed at the
opponent.

David then strikes at Ulf’s heart from above. The idea is to allow the strike to hit and slide downward
rather than striking directly inward at the target.
David then reaches up and grabs Ulf’s throat, gripping the larynx with the thumb, index, and middle
fingers while pushing Ulf’s head back, opening him up for a strike.

Knee to Mark

David throws a straight strike at Ulf, who deflects it upward.

David then tries to follow up with either a second strike with the other hand or by reaching forward
to grab Ulf. Ulf again deflects by lifting his other arm, maintaining control of David’s position with
the right arm.

Ulf reaches forward to take hold of David by the collar, neck, or whatever is available to grab.
Ulf then pulls David toward him and simultaneously slams his knee into the mark (the groin is too
hard to hit effectively). There are, of course, many more ways to deliver a knee to the mark or
another target on the lower part of the body.

Vertical Fist to Temple

Ulf throws a straight strike at David, who deflects it upwards as usual.

David then turns his fist vertical and strikes down, aiming at Ulf’s temple. In a self-defense situation,
this could be executed with an implement, such as keys in the hand.

NOTES
1. Lindholm & Svârd, Sigmund Ringeck’s Knightly Arts of Combat, pp. 23–158, 173–184, 201–218.
(A translation of a 15th century work, this book also has modern comments and plenty of
illustrations of how the techniques are to be done.) Zabinski & Walczak, Codex Wallerstein.
2. Petter, Klare Onderrichtinge der Voortreffelijcke Worstel-Konst, p. 55, plate 1.
3. Paschen, Vollstandiges Ring-Buch.
 Chapter
7
SELF-DEFENSE IN THE REAL WORLD

Self-defense is, for the common man and woman at least, perhaps the
most misunderstood aspect of all martial arts training today. There is
usually nothing wrong with the techniques and concepts presented in many
martial art schools—except that you must have the skills of Bruce Lee, not
to mention a lot of luck, to execute them successfully in a real self-defense
situation.
Self-defense is so much more than technique. Such things as awareness
and evasion are much more important than many people realize. Paladin
Press has some really good books on self-defense and the handling of
violence, and we recommend some in chapter 9. But first we will discuss
self-defense in general and how bare knuckle fits into the picture.
Author Geoff Thompson has written several good books on self-defense
based on his work as a bouncer/doorman in the less savory parts of English
industrial cities, where people are hard for real, so he has some authority on
the matter. In his excellent book Watch My Back, Thompson says that
effective self-defense boils down to this: “Learn to hit fucking hard, hit
first, and keep hitting until he does not move any more.” This may sound
harsh, but if a situation deteriorates to the point where fighting is necessary
to defend yourself, it sums thing up very well.
There is, however, a misconception that self-defense is about hitting
only. In reality, self-defense is 80 percent psychology, 10 percent
conditioning, and 10 percent technique.
A short story from my life illustrates the importance of psychology in a
confrontation. I was walking home pleasantly drunk around two in the
morning, when I saw three young fellows step out onto the pavement on my
side of the street up ahead. They looked at me, started talking, and looked
again. This was a set-up if I ever saw one, and I knew I needed to do
something or get stomped.
I walked up to the largest guy, stared into his eyes, and said, “Sorry
mate, what time is it?” One of the small fish next to him said, “I’m going to
kill you.” I kept staring at the big guy, who was somewhat flabbergasted by
my actions and the fact that I completely ignored the small guy on my right.
In reality, I was observing him closely; if he made a move for me, I would
have sunk my keys in his eye socket, having set them up as knuckledusters
in my right-hand pocket so they protruded between my fingers. The big guy
suddenly found his voice and said, “Uhm, about two.” “Thank you. ’Night,”
I replied and walked away. They stood there for some time, and the skinny
little fellow kept screaming that he was going to do me in. He did not budge
asmall but informative bookn inch to put any muscle behind those words.
The point is that I took charge of the situation and commanded them
instead of running or allowing them to command me. This gave me the
initiative and created insecurity in their minds. (Who walks up to three guys
out for a fight in the middle of the night and asks about the time?) Part of
my victory was due to the psychology behind this unspoken intimidation;
the second part was that I was prepared to maim them all permanently,
while they were only out for a regular stomping. They wanted to beat me up
old style, but no more; I would not have thought twice about sending them
to the morgue.
Another point to remember is that I chose to initiate contact with these
guys as a last resort. Running was not an option, and neither was a regular
fight of three against one, since I was too pissed to run quickly or fight well.
If I was going to have a chance, I had to deliver a really good bluff—backed
up by being prepared to land the first blow and make very sure the one on
the receiving end was not going to get up again. This is what real self-
defense is about: less technique and more awareness, planning, and attitude.

THOUGHTS ABOUT SELF-DEFENSE

The following is a short discussion about self-defense and tactical

thinking in general, collected from some of the best authorities on the
subject. You can combine their knowledge with your bare-knuckle training
to create a solid, complete self-defense system. If you want to go into these
ideas in depth, read the works of Gavin DeBecker, Rory Miller, Geoff
Thompson, and the other authors discussed in chapter 9. Just remember
that, no matter from which source you get ideas and options about self-
defense, what you do when it’s for real always comes down to you and you
alone.

The Basic Requirements of a Self-Defense System

A good self-defense system should satisfy the following criteria:

• It should have few techniques and be easy to learn and execute.

• It should be based on natural instincts (to avoid freezing in a sharp
situation).
• It should employ basic, sound tactics to avoid unnecessary decision-
making under pressure.
• It should work well under stress (i.e., rely mainly on gross motor skills
as opposed to complex and fine skills).
• If should fit your needs (e.g., a bar bouncer’s needs will be different
than those of the average office worker).
• Perhaps the most important point, it should fit your personal
disposition (i.e., it must fit how you are as a person).

Stress and Motor Skills

Stress is a big part of any confrontation, and it will affect you in a lot of
ways. Your heart rate will increase radically when you’re under the type of
stress induced by a fight. (Just consider how your body reacts to something
as nonviolent as speaking in public!) Generally, you will lose your fine
motor skills (i.e., actions or movements that require a degree of dexterity
and hand-eye coordination) at about 115 heartbeats per minute. It happens
suddenly—you have fine motor control over your movements, then you just
lose it. Complex motor skills (i.e., movements that require several muscle
groups and a degree of cognitive thought processing to perform) are the
next to go, but you can train yourself to retain them a little longer while
under stress. When you lose complex motor skills, you are left with only
gross motor skills, which are dependent on large muscle groups and require
minimal thought to perform. Gross motor skills are not affected under
stress; in fact, they almost get better. Most martial arts techniques involve
gross or complex motor skills, but in many systems you often see some
techniques involving fine motor skills as well. When you see techniques or
systems that focus on fine motor skills, you should be suspicious of their
usefulness in a live self-defense situation.
Bare-knuckle boxing usually calls on complex motor skills, with
fundamental parts involving gross motor skills (e.g., tightly clenching your
fists; repetitive punching). Relying entirely on gross motor skills is not
necessarily a good thing. Swinging wildly, stumbling forward, and even the
inability to change tactics are signs of a person relying too much on gross
motor skills. To be able to adapt to a fluid situation and throw
combinations, you need to operate in at least the complex range of motor
skills. This makes it essential to practice under stress in order to increase
your ability to maintain this level of muscular control. This amounts to not
allowing the adrenaline dump and fatigue of a real fight to pump up your
heart rate too much and too fast. By exposing yourself to situations during
training that simulate a real fight, including such stimuli as loud noise and
pain (or fear of pain), you can desensitize yourself to some degree to the
real thing and thus delay the loss of the complex range of skills in a live
situation.

Pain vs. Injury

Pain is a signal and an important one, but don’t think you or your
opponent will give up in a real fight just because of pain. Anybody can
ignore pain during an altercation due to alcohol, drugs, excitement, or just
will power. Many injured people, whether they’ve suffered broken bones or
knife stabs, only notice their injuries after the fight is over. While a person
is usually sensible and lucid enough to submit to a joint lock under
controlled circumstances, you must be ready to actually break a limb to
achieve the same thing in a real fight. There is a real difference between
physical pain and structural damage, where something in the body simply
cannot function anymore because it is busted, such as a broken knee.
It’s important to note that we are talking about three interrelated but
separate things here—violence, pain, and injury. They are not identical but
should be seen as steps on a ladder, where the latter usually includes the
former but not the opposite. If you induce mechanical damage, you will
cause pain through violence, but you can do violence to someone without
really inducing pain or mechanical damage. See the difference? Consider
the drug addict who does not feel pain, yet if you fracture his skull he will
fall unconscious, or if you break his arm, he can’t make use of it even
though he does not feel pain. The conclusion is that in self-defense,
mechanical damage is the sure way to go, but it is also the most extreme
path and the most difficult to justify legally, whereas violence or physical
pain is more moderate as long as no real damage is done.

Avoidance and Reading the Situation

If you avoid situations and places where you know trouble exists, you
will save yourself a great deal of hassle. It is better to be able to recognize
when a fight is in the making and leave the scene before it erupts instead of
battering the other guy with fists or a beer glass. Know when and where it is
safe to walk rather than having to pull a knife to fend off an aggressive
street person. In short, knowledge of where trouble might occur and how to
avoid it without violence is often worth a lot more than technique and
weapons.
While it is possible to be physically attacked without warning, usually
there are early indications of where things are going. You need to know
how to see the trouble ahead and change your route. For example, you
might recognize an aggressor “interviewing” you to see if you are safe to
attack. By avoiding, defusing, or walking away from the arising situation,
you save yourself a lot of problems. If he starts to psyche himself up by
raising his voice and growling, try to stay calm and talk him down instead
of allowing him to spiral up his aggression, as he intends. You could simply
take him out at once without further ado, but talking people down works
much more often than you might think. The loud mouth is just out to prove
something, so let him. You are bigger than that; admit that he is the boss
and leave. That is usually it. If, on the other hand, you have people there
who are dependant on you, things change. If your wife or child is present
and he is presenting a potential threat to them, give him one chance to leave
and then do what you have to if no other way seems forthcoming.
Basically, you want to make yourself a hard target. Being a hard target
does not mean being the baddest ass on the block, but one who can smell a
fight five minutes before it starts and take whatever measures to emerge on
the winning side, regardless of what that entails.

Have a Game Plan

 Instead of having an “it can’t happen to me” attitude, form a game plan
for various ugly situations. By doing scenario training with friends (covered
in the next chapter), you will get a feeling of what can happen and how fast
it can happen. Be prepared to be surprised, even if you are aware of your
surroundings. You will probably feel fear and physically weak. Shaking
legs, trembling voice, and going white (the blood leaving the skin) are all
natural products of adrenal release. Some of these signs can be covered,
while others are harder. Try getting into the cold, rational mindset of the
hunter. Be prepared to use your body so you don’t freeze up. You may want
to use some physical techniques to counter the effects of adrenal rush. For
example, look from side to side to avoid tunnel vision. This is important so
you don’t miss any partners the aggressor may have.
Also have a game plan for the aftermath of a violent encounter. If you
don’t have a real reason to stay, disappear from the place.

Use the Fence Strategy

It is now getting close and personal. If you sense that this is going
down, you should put up your “fence.” You need to put your hands (or lead
hand) in the important space between you and the aggressor. It is the same
concept as the bare-knuckle boxers keeping their hands out in front of them,
except your hands are not clenched into fists. The best way to do this is to
train yourself to let your open hands “talk” to the other person so it seems
natural and nonaggressive. It should seem comfortable and be done without
thought. Try not to touch the aggressor, as this can trigger a physical attack.
Don’t let the aggressor come so close that he can touch you either. If you
feel bad vibes, don’t shake the aggressor’s hand. It is better to be impolite
then bruised. If he insists on trying to shake your hand or touch your fence
hands, put him down at once. Geoff Thompson’s books contain really good,
in-depth material on this.

The Preemptive Strike

When the shit hits the fan, one option is the preemptive strike. You’ve
assessed the situation and realize your best chance to defend yourself is by
hitting first, then hitting hard as many times as necessary to end it. Target
the jaw or head to finish the fight. If the situation is particularly dangerous,
such as an attempted mugging, run after the initial strike, as it buys you
time to escape. If you are up against a determined aggressor and stay to try
and finish him off, it may only give him time to recover and destroy you.
The preemptive strike solution is advocated because it is effective, and
it agrees with the basic tenets of bareknuckle fighting. Your weapons—your
hands, elbows, and head—are usually close to the aggressor’s head. If you
launch an unexpected, sudden attack, the first strike will usually hit its
target with power. But the preemptive response is usually more difficult to
justify legally, so don’t hang around afterward.

Self-Defense and the Law

You should understand the law and claim self-defense in the correct
manner when giving your statement to the police. Many people who
successfully defended themselves have been convicted for what they said
afterward and not for what was really done by either party. Post-assault
stress, which you may suffer from, can include time and memory distortion
and loss (so called tachypsychia). You may also feel an urge to talk about
the incident, if only to redeem yourself. All this affects your ability to give
an objective statement to the police. If you end up in court months later,
what you said back then will be used, and to the letter.
So make sure you know your rights, and don’t get stressed/psyched out
by the police. If you are not totally clear-minded, ask to wait to make a
statement until the next day or until you see a lawyer. You probably feared
for your life, and you did what you did because it felt absolutely necessary.

Training: You Get Out What You Put In

If you train in tag sparring only, you are probably going to perform the
same way in reality. Therefore you want to learn to always hit as hard as
possible, with as close to zero telegraphing as possible, and as often as
needed to put an end to the threat.
If you are not naturally tough, you can train that part up as well.
Compliance or submissive behavior during training can make you react in
the same manner in real life. Don’t stop when the training session or a real
fight goes bad, you are hurt, or whatever—never give up!
When you are satisfied with your physical and psychological
development, you must work to maintain it. You want to be able to switch
the “go” button on and off, meaning you should be able to attack instantly
without having to go through the entire escalating ritual of violence that
nontrained people perform. Instead, train to go from calm as the pope at
prayer to violent aggression in the blink of an eye.
When you start training with aggression and adrenaline, it will soon
become easy to turn on the rush and energy, but it not equally easy to
suddenly turn it off. This requires more training and good partners. To learn
to stop, you and your training partner should have a secret stop word. You
should not stop defending yourself in training until your partner says the
word stop. Don’t use a word that you can expect to hear in a real
confrontation. You don’t want to pull back from defending yourself before
the aggressor has been completely subdued just because he inadvertently
blurted out the word.
Usually, we train for fun and recreation. People are relaxed and friendly.
This is not the case during a typical assault on the street. Do some training
scenarios where the attacker goes in full throttle, and have the exercise
leader stop the session only when you call the stop word if you’ve been
overcome or when you are going from self-defense to battering the attacker.
The exercise stops instantly when the word is used by anyone.

BARE-KNUCKLE BOXING AS A SELF-DEFENSE SYSTEM

Bare knuckle works well as a self-defense method. It contains strikes,

throws, and a few basic kicks, so it is simple to learn. The techniques are
powerful, which means you get a good payoff for each shot you land. It
relies on gross and some complex motor skills, which gives you an edge in
a sharp situation since you can usually expect to lose all fine motor skills
during an altercation. It works regardless of which clothes you wear, what
surface you will be on, the space you will fight in, or how many attackers
you meet. Bare knuckle is also easy to practice alone or with friends,
because you need very little to train and enjoy its benefits.
In order to be able to use this art as meaningful form of self-defense, a
few points have to be considered:

• You must be able to do the basic punches and blocks.

• You must have hands that are up to the task, which means undergoing
some form of conditioning.
• You must be willing to hit the other person.
 The basic prerequisite is that you must have the physical ability to strike
blows and to take blows. Secondly, you must be able to withstand the
psychological pressure of a bare-knuckle fight, what was called having
“bottom” during the classic bare-knuckle era. And then it is a question of
application, of why and when to apply your bare-knuckle skills in a real
confrontation. After you’ve learned the fundamental techniques and tactics
of this age-old fighting method, you need to adapt it to your own
requirements for real-world self-defense.

The Mentality of Bare Knuckle in Self-Defense

As a self-defense system, bare knuckle is a straightforward. The goal is
to hit your opponent first and continue hitting until it is all over. If there is
more than one opponent, then it is even more important to not be tied up in
a one-on-one wrestling match but to be able to move around and use the
hands to control (read attack) the attackers. If you are caught by surprise
and get hit first, bare-knuckle training gives you the bottom to get back into
the fight.
To hit first and hit till it is all over. This mentality of bare knuckle serves
well for a real self-defense situation, which often is a sudden, fast-paced,
close-up fistfight. But you must be able stop when you’ve won and it is
over. Many people who are not used to the adrenaline cocktail continue
pounding their assailant until it goes from a self-defense situation to a brutal
assault or even homicide of the downed opponent. It has happened. Even if
it doesn’t go that far, the result of a few good strikes can be bleeding,
damaged teeth, and broken bones. It does not look good for the police or
bystanders if you are still looking good while your opponent looks like he’s
been through the meat grinder.

Professional Needs
If your work environment includes violence, you have to consider
whether bare knuckle is your best choice for personal training. Bare
knuckle suits many, but perhaps not all, professional applications. While it
works well for strict self-defense situations, it is not equally appropriate for
apprehension and detention work. If your work involves controlling
aggressive people (e.g., felons as a guard, or patients as a caretaker), in all
probability bare knuckle would be unsuitable for your specific needs, since
it rather quickly escalates into mechanical damage when applied correctly.
 If you need to use open hands in your work (e.g., for shooting), then an
open-hand system may suit you better. For police work, we recommend
ESDS (Explosive Self Defence System) created by Swedish police officer
Slavo Gozdzik under the auspices of the International Police Defensive
Tactics Association (IPDTA). There are many other good systems out there,
but ESDS is one of the best we’ve seen for the professional in our more
than 25 years of experience with martial arts, military arts, and self-defense.
For military hand-to-hand combat, the object is other than self-defense
and therefore outside this discussion, but we like the Fairbairn-Applegate
line of military combatives as taught, for instance, by Matt Temkin. It most
be understood, however, that there are differences between military hand-
to-hand combat and military fitness and toughness training. When you train
for fitness, you can choose whatever system you like, which is what many
military units do. There is, of course, a long history of boxing and pugilism
training in the military (see, for example, the manual Boxing from the
United States Navel Institute, available from Paladin Press).
 Chapter
8
SCENARIO-BASED BARE-KNUCKLE
TRAINING

Scenario training is a very useful form of training, practiced nowadays

by virtually everyone who uses or who may face violence in their daily
jobs, as well as by individuals who want to amp up the intensity of their
self-defense training. The core idea is to train under circumstances that
reflect as close as possible the actual situations where you may have to use
your training. That means not in the dojo or in typical workout clothes!
Instead, practice in your everyday clothing, including shoes and jackets, or
run some scenarios outside in the rain at night. Stand or walk about as you
do outside, with hands in pockets, and have someone try to knock you
down, and then try to defend yourself. The scenarios are limited only by
your imagination, but we present some scenario-based training methods
here to get you started. Remember, you will only get as good as your
partner gives it, so make it intense and as real as possible.

TRAINING METHOD 1: RECOVER FROM COVER UP

The designated attacker starts to wildly throw punches at you, and you
start with the natural reaction to cover up to protect yourself. You have to
try to get back into the game. It is not that easy, and many trained martial
artists have a hard time getting their techniques to work. You can start this
off more gently by having the aggressor come at you with open-hand (i.e.,
palm) strikes as you cover up, then escalate to more aggressive attacks.

TRAINING METHOD 2: ATTACKED FROM BEHIND

 The aggressor hits you from behind in the small of the back, hard
enough to cause pain and a natural response but without injuring you. You
have to recover from whatever position you end up in and start fighting.

TRAINING METHOD 3: GETTING OFF THE GROUND

An attack from behind hits you in the back of the head, and you go
down to the floor. You need to get off the ground while defending yourself
from further attack. Here are some ideas for getting up:

• Hit him hard on the thighs to get him to back away. Do this especially
when he is towering above you and hitting down on you.
• Use your arms as hooks to climb up his body. Works well if you are
dizzy or there are multiple aggressors trying to pound you. You may
get a chance to throw him down as you grapple up his body.
• Slam your head into his stomach or chest, driving forward as you get
up. A good option if you are seated as well.
• If you cannot get up, do you have a plan?

TRAINING METHOD 4: PREEMPTIVE STRIKE

The aggressor is interviewing you, and you see where it is leading. You
decide to take the chance and fire the first shot. Of course, you want a clean
knockout with the first punch. How do you set this up to get the best result?
This training method can be set up in an infinite numbers of scenarios:

• In a doorway. Can you get a chance to close the door and be safe after
hitting him? Try with two or more aggressors as well.
• In a bar. Can you safely leave the place if you put him down? Try with
two or more aggressors as well. Even if you can take out one person,
what then?
• On an unlit street or under a lamppost with bad lighting. Do you see
the aggressor’s hand or not? Does he have a knife in the hand?

TRAINING METHOD 5: HIDDEN KNIFE

 The aggressor tells you everything is cool and turns partly away while
putting his hand in his pocket. Is he reaching for a knife? The situation tells
you that it is going bad. Take him out before he can use the weapon. This is
a preemptive attack. Do not wait for him to remove his hand from his
pocket. He has a knife, so take him out!

TRAINING METHOD 6: CREATING DISTANCE

You are already close to the aggressor and he gets closer. You shove him
away hard and then step back and create even more distance between you.
If you stay close, his natural reaction may be to fight, but by creating a
greater distance, he may actually get a flight response and leave. Practice
this with your verbal de-escalation skills.

TRAINING METHOD 7: DISORIENTATION

You will start with the forehead on a partner’s back while he is

positioned on the ground on all fours. Then, with the head in the same spot,
start to run around him as fast as you can. Usually about one minute will
suffice. Then try to remain steady and fight the aggressor or aggressors that
wait for you. The dizziness you feel simulates adrenaline stress you would
be under in a real fight, coupled with the feeling you might have if you got
hit hard. When it is hard to stand up, it is not that easy to fight. Try it out
and learn from the experience!

TRAINING METHOD 8: SUDDENLY SURROUNDED

One aggressor is interviewing you when one or more companions come

up from the side or behind. Try out different responses here. What do you
say to the aggressors? How can you position yourself when there are two?
When there are three?

TRAINING METHOD 9: TWO ON ONE

With two aggressors, one grabs hold of you and the other tries to punch
you out. You have to fend off both of them.
 TRAINING METHOD 10: BREAK FOR THE DOOR

You’re indoors, and two aggressors are interviewing you. You want to
go for the door. How to get by these two opponents? Do you have anything
to throw at them? Do you have the opportunity to really punch them?

TRAINING METHOD 11: GROUP POUNDING

You are under attack by a small group, say about four or five people.
You will need to be mobile and extremely aggressive to survive.

TRAINING METHOD 12: GROUP SQUEEZE

You are attacked by at least four people with big training mitts, who try
to squeeze you totally flat. You are allowed to hit the mitts as hard and
much as you can. If you can’t keep moving, then they will flatten you out.

TRAINING METHOD 13: THE GAUNTLET

You will pass between two lines of people, all wearing big training mitts
and ready to slam you as you pass. You will have to push through the line
while continuously punching away.

TRAINING METHOD 14: FIGHT BYSTANDER

Two small groups are fighting, and you need to protect your space
without getting hurt or involved. Figure out how to cover up, preferably
doing your protective part without even showing it so nobody mistakes you
for a combatant.

TRAINING METHOD 15: FENCING WITH THE HANDS

Learn how to speak with your hands and use your fence and body
positioning without it becoming obvious to others. At first, practice at home
in front of the mirror. When you start to feel OK with it, test it out with a
knowing friend. When you think it looks normal, try it out on unknowing
friends. If they don’t find it manufactured or strange, you have come a long
way with your “speaking hands.”
 Chapter
9
RECOMMENDED SELF-DEFENSE BOOKS

Here are some recommendations for further reading if you want to learn
more about self-defense and the nature of violence. All these authors and
their books deal in an insightful way with a topic that does not really lend
itself to writing.

Ned Beaumont’s first book, Championship Streetfighting, is about boxing

as a martial art, with interesting reflections from fighters of old. As you
may have already figured out, the book’s title pays homage to one of the
greatest boxing (and bare-knuckle) books of all time, Championship
Fighting by Jack Dempsey. It focuses on American boxing, with hints of
the bare-knuckle era (from about 1869 onward). We may not share his
belief that boxing evolved from bare knuckle over the last hundred years
after remaining almost the same for about 1,000 years, but we
wholeheartedly agree that rules and gloves made all the difference in the
evolution of the modern sport of boxing from its pugilistic roots. Beaumont
has it mostly right when he speaks about boxing and its body mechanics,
although his disparagement of other martial arts is one of the major
negatives of the book. We see Championship Streetfighting more as an
interesting reflection on the history and development of American boxing
than a book about self-defense, but if you are interested in bare knuckle and
boxing, we recommend it.
The Savage Science of Streetfighting is the follow-up to Beaumont’s
Champion Streetfighting. It is less concerned with the basics and techniques
and more with training. It focuses mostly on the sport of boxing, although it
provides some perspective on bare knuckle as well. We like the section on
physical training best, with its solid advice on good-old road work and other
classic training methods. We also like the part on weight training, which is
remarkably close in many parts to what we used ourselves and
recommended for our students. We recommend you start with Beaumont’s
first book, but read this one too if want to know more about sound physical
training from a boxing perspective.

Gavin DeBecker’s The Gift of Fear is very well written and one of the best
books on this subject. Enough said—get the book and read it. What we tend
to fear is the feeling of fear rather than the thing that brought it on. Fear is,
in essence, a chemical reaction in the body. This book helps you understand
what it is, how it works, and why it is good for you. You can even make
fear an ally in a fight.

Mark “Animal” MacYoung has written many books about self-defense.

The following are some recommendations, but if you like the information
he presents, you can continue to explore his work. His style of writing
might put some people off, but remember that it is the information you
want, and his information is good.
Cheap Shots, Ambushes, and Other Lessons (His first book.)
A Professional’s Guide to Ending Violence Quickly (Maybe the best of
his books.)
Violence, Blunders, and Fractured Jaws
Fists, Wits, and Wicked Right
Knives, Knife Fighting, and Related Hassles (While there are many
books out there about knives and knife fighting, there are not that many
good ones about the reality of it.)

Don Pentecost wrote about real-world knife fighting in the small but
informative book called Put ’Em Down, Take ’Em Out! This is probably the
best book on knife fighting ever published, helping you understand how
knife attacks really occur and what you can and should do to survive one
(such as forget the fanciful systems). Find a copy of this out-of-print
booklet and learn from it.

Geoff Thompson has written many books about self-defense, but we

recommend starting with Dead or Alive or his autobiographic Watch My
Back. In Dead or Alive, he gives his opinions of such bad guys as fight
seekers, muggers, rapists, and serial killers. Prevention, including
situational awareness and target hardening, is presented and discussed. It is
not a pleasant read, but crucial if you really are interested self-protection. In
the second book, he tells about his experience as a bouncer, and his takes on
violence and self-defense are interesting. (Among other things, he argues
for the “hit first” option, which he used in his line of work.)

Peyton Quinn’s first book was the classic A Bouncers Guide to Barroom
Brawling. In it, Quinn describes such things as why fights occur, the
psychology of the bully, how bullies select their victims, the concepts of
“interviewing” and “woofing,” and much more. After emphasizing the
importance of awareness and avoidance as the best solution for possibly
violent situations, he goes on to present technical solutions and training.
Real Fighting is about adrenal stress conditioning through scenario-
based training. We agree wholeheartedly with this training concept. Besides
presenting a lot of useful information about scenario-based training, Quinn
discusses the proper mindset for self-defense, which is a relaxed mind. Easy
to say, but harder too achieve, so put some time in to understand the
concept and then practice it through scenario-based training.
These are both really good books about violence and fighting (even if
we consider Real Fighting to be the better of the two) and are well worth
including in your self-defense library.

Rory A. Miller may not have published any books on self-defense yet, but
you can find some of his valuable articles on the Internet. Look for “The
Four Basic Truths of Violent Assault” and “A Strategy and Tactics Primer
for the Martial Artist.”
 BIBLIOGRAPHY

The following list is not complete in any way, but it consists of the
works we made use of that are readily available, including those in library
collections. Most of the modern editions are still available from the
publishers.

Allanson-Winn, R.G. Boxing. London: A.D. Innes & Co., 1897.

Art & Practice of English Boxing. London: W. Gliden, 1807.
Barry, Edward Rev. A Letter on the Practice of Boxing. London: A. Grant,
1789.
Beaumont, Ned. Championship Streetfighting. Boulder, CO: Paladin Press,
1997.
——. The Savage Science of Streetfighting. Boulder, CO: Paladin Press,
2001.
Boardman, John. The History of Greek Vases. London: Thames & Hudson,
2001.
Boxing Made Easy: or the Complete Manual of Self Defence. New York:
Dick & Fitzgerald, date unknown.
Brown, Terry. English Martial Arts. Norfolk: Anglo-Saxon Books, 2002,
2006.
Burns, Martin. Lessons in Wrestling and Physical Culture. Correspondence
course, 1912.
Cod.HS.3227.a. Döbringers fechtbuch.
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Dempsey, Jack. Championship Fighting. New York: Prentice Hall, 1950.
Doumas, Christos. Santorini: A Guide to the Island and Its Archaeological
Treasures. Athens: Ekdotike Athenon, 1995.
Fewtrell, Thomas. Boxing Reviewed, or the Science of Manual Defence.
London: Scatcherd & Whitaker et al, 1790.
Godfrey, John. Treatise Upon the Useful Science of Defense. London: T.
Gardner, 1747.
Golding, Louis. The Bare-Knuckle Breed. New York: A.S. Barnes & Co.,
1954.
Gorman, B. & P. Walsh. King of the Gypsies. Lytham, 2002.
Hand, Stephen. English Swordsmanship. Highland Village, TX: Chivalry
Bookshelf, 2006.
Homer. The Illiad.
Lee, W.F. The Art of Boxing and Self Defence. Newspaper series, reprinted
in The Classical Pugilism and Bare-Knuckle Boxing Companion, Vol. 2,
by Jake Shannon.
Lindholm, David & Peter Svärd. Sigmund Ringeck’s Knightly Arts of
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