The picture above shows the end of a vicious boxing match between Ray Campbell and Dick Hyland. The match left the two fighters looking battered, bloodied, bruised, and staring down at each other at the end of the fight.
Boxing in those days was way different from what we have now as there were no mandatory eight counts, nor was there any neutral corner. If you got knocked down by your opponent, the moment you got off your knees, it was to meet the waiting fist of your opponent.
The Call, a newspaper in San Francisco, reported that “Ray Campbell, formerly of San Francisco, and a boxer who has established quite a reputation over the short distance route in the northwest during the last few months, came to the front in leaps and bounds today at Steveston when he cleverly and clearly outpointed the famous “Fighting Dick” Hyland, a former world’s title aspirant in the lightweight ranks, in a 15 rounds bout, which proved to be one of the best ever witnessed around Vancouver.
A left jab with a right cross that landed more often than it missed, won the bout for Campbell.”
The 17th century saw a major revival in boxing in Britain. While usually, many bouts were fought with bare knuckles and no standard rules. The modern boxing glove was invented in 1743, by Englishman Jack Broughton.
The gloves were known as Broughton’s gloves, or mufflers then and they were only used for practice. Broughton used them to instruct men in self-defence and used his mufflers as a means to “effectively secure pupils from the inconvenience of black eyes, broken noses and bloody jaws”.
Many boxers however kept fighting with bare knuckles till the gloves were made mandatory in 1867 by the Marquess of Queensberry Rules. The impact of gloves on injuries has caused a lot of controversies. While hitting to the head was less common in the bare-knuckle era as a result of the risk of hurting the boxer’s hand.
The British Medical Association research has shown that while the gloves reduce the number of cuts, gloves don’t reduce brain injuries and may even increase them, because the main cause of injury is acceleration and deceleration of the head, and fighters wearing gloves are able to punch harder to the head.
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