Talk:Boxing
This Article Is An Absolute Mess
This article is such a mess it would be best to just delete the whole thing and start over.
Now that's not the right attitude! Boxing, after all, is all about heart :)
Poor Structure
Wow, huge article but poor on structure, and sometimes inconsistent. This is not my area of expertise, but I have some suggestions nonetheless:
- Amateur boxing is often called olympic boxing by practicioners, since in modern usage, "amateur" carries connotations of low skill.
- The noblemen who used fist-fights as a form of duelling can be seen as inspiration for the amateur boxing tradition, as opposed to the prize fights which were the origins of professional boxing. Actually, the differences between the two styles are so big it might be worth separating them into different articles.
- Damages and controvercies should be separated under a heading of its own. A factoid that may be interesting is that professional boxing is illegal in many countries, because of the prevalence of 'chronic concussion' and the long-term effects of boxing. Other things that should be mentioned is "punch-drunk syndrome", and that all knockouts are in fact severe concussions.
- head protectors give some protection against cuts, but relatively little against concussion, since wrapping an egg in cotton won't protect the yolk if you give it a shake, so to say.
- The protective nature of gloves, and that different types are used in olympic vs. professional. I've read that the introduction of gloves into pugilism actually brutalized the sport because participants could now strike to the head with less risk of hand injury. If this can be verified it might be worth a mention.
- In olympic boxing, 1 - 4 % of all fights end in knockouts, according to an article by McCunney & Russo, 1984. I don't have verified numbers for professional boxing, but I've read that it's about one third. (People who watch boxing could perhaps verify or refute this figure). Bear in mind that knockouts are defined rather differently in the two sports, although we are probably still talking about concussion even in O.B.
Boxing champ.
Removed the British view of boxing
Well I was shocked to read the sub heading on personalities. It was nothing but a British view. Some Northern Irish guy and a Scottish fellow and English chaps winning in some obscure fights are mentioned like they were the "Rumble in the Jungle". And there was no mention of Rocky Marciano, Joe Louis, Sugar Ray Leonard, Mike Tyson. There was only a passing reference to Mohd. Ali which says "Other countries have their fighters too" and talks in just one paragraph about him and the rest of the world.
naturally being the wikipedian i've i changed it to better reflect the actual world. this isnt' the British encycopedia on British boxing. I wonder how it's been missed by many people. Or is it that many reading encyclopedias don't read articles on boxing. it was glaringly obvious that the previous versions were basically saying that Britain was and si the only place boxing is going on. ridiculous. Anyway, it's done and dusted.
Some NPOV issues under "Personalities" (e.g., the Tyson paragraph). This is Wikipedia, not an pay-per-view ad. blahpers 02:15, 2005 May 3 (UTC)
Actually there was a HUMUNGOUS bias towards the British boxers before I edited it, and the POV of the entire article needs a little toning down since its obvious the previous version was culled from a book on british boxing. Well I've tried to improve the NPOV in personalities a bit. Generally you give a bit more time to the latest fighters, especially if that person happens to really be one of the all time nasty figures in boxing. Mike Tyson has done all criminal/illegal acts like rape, assault and battery, biting an opponent's ear, talking the trashiest pre box talk ever, being jailed twice, barred from boxing, earning the highest paycheck and going bankrupt to conversion to islam. All this while he was rated in a survey as the one possessing the deadliest right hand punch of the century while being one of the shortest contemporary boxers. I suppose some personalities hog a little more sentences that others. Maybe the tone could be different without losing his "acts". Someone can do a better job here, please do so. That's the spirit of Wikipedia. :)--Idleguy 05:50, May 3, 2005 (UTC)
Injuries
Like pointed out back in October by Vinterman this article lacks any information about the injuries often sustained in professional boxing. Can anyone make a brief summary of what the most common injuries are, how they're handled and what impact it's had on the sport? It's about the only thing missing from this article at the moment.
Peter Isotalo 21:35, 9 July 2005 (UTC)
I have put the cleanup flag since the personalities sections appears twice, and there is some repetition of content. PatGallacher 02:21, 2005 July 29 (UTC)
"Impact of Boxing on the English Language"
"ring down the curtain" - a boxing phrase ? I've heard 'bring down the curtain' - an obvious theatrical phrase for the end of a performance.
The OED supports this by defining an entry for dropping/falling cutains maning the ending of a performance or action.
Because of this I'm deleting the wiki entry for 'ring down the curtain' as I believe it is a corruption of 'bring down the curtain' and not a boxing term
"down for the count" - the OED defines this as being defeated, so I'll amend the entry in the entry in this section to reflect this
Boxing Gloves
These gloves' purpose is to protect the knuckles.
The stated purpose of boxing gloves is to protect the fighters' knuckles, but in various competitions the padding requirements vary wildly. The ~8oz. open-fingered gloves used in UFC and Pride are very lightly padded, whereas boxing and K-1 use heavily padded gloves. I haven't heard of many more knuckle injuries in MMA than in boxing -- and it seems a lot easier to achieve a knockout in UFC or Pride than in K-1 or boxing. Mightn't the "gloves of fair size" rule actually exist foremost to protect the opponent from easy KO (and thereby force some extra strategy above and beyond brute force) rather than to (just) protect the fighter's knuckles?
The boxers wore "mufflers" (padded gloves)
The fact that gloves were previously called mufflers (muffle means to stifle or repress) pretty much supports this.
An idea
If you look at a film's page (take Goldfinger for example) you will see at the end that it contains the text Goldfinger (1964) at the Internet Movie Database,. This is created from the syntax {{imdb title|id=0058150|title=Goldfinger (1964)}}.
Now, as far as I'm concerned, Boxrec is the Internet Movie Database (IMBD) of the boxing world. Could we have a similar bit of syntax (if that is the right word) for individual boxers' pages, linking to their profile? Any suggestions?
U missed the great midleweight during the 80'ts
During the greate but boring Larry Holmes, the middleweight was bigger than the heaviweight. Start like Roberto Duran, Tomas Hearns, Marvin Hagler and most of all Sugar Ray Leonard shined trough all the 80's. Leonard was the biggest personality in boxing during this 10 years, bigger than the hevywights. He become champion of the world in FIVE different weightclasses. Nobody ever done that before or after him. Hes match with Hagler, when he did a comeback after five years inactivity and beat who wa s regarded as the pound for pound best fighter in the world is an unmatched achivment. The page, and specially the "boxing personalitys" is unfairly focusing on heawyweights. This has some relevans in the periods where heavys were dominating the public interest. But as i mentiond before, during the 80, the middleweight was bigger than the heavyweight. The best paid boxers were middleweights, witch reflects the public interest in them. The biggest fight ever was ofcourse the rumble in the jungle between Ali and Foreman but the second was Sugar-Ray vs Hagler.
1867? I'm being pedantic. but ...
"'Boxing' as distinct from any other form of fist fighting can be dated from 1867, when John Chambers drafted new rules."
Codified rules of boxing aside, people were referring to organised fist-fights (formal or infomal) before then. Consider "Tom Brown's Schooldays" by Thomas Hughes, Chapter 5, published in 1857:
" Learn to box then, as you learn to play cricket and football. Not one of you will be the worse, but very much the better for learning to box well."
The chapter describes a fight between Tom Brown and "Slogger" Williams, both attended by seconds. Tom's second, Harry East, is armed with a wet sponge to refresh Tom in between rounds. Although there is a discussion about whether wrestling throws are legal, the fight sounds very much like an organised boxing match, with references to a "timekeeper" and a "ring", suggesting that there was some notion of boxing as a codified sport or martial art, or at the very least, that there was some sporting basis to what is, in essence, a playground scrap.
Boxing Historian as a Hobby
I am a writing teacher at a small university in Northern MN as well as an Boxing History Hobbiest. I think that this article has a great amount of information to start, but there is barely any structure aside from the headings. I think it would be fun to totally overhaul this article, beginning at the ground and working my way up. I'll take into account all the things that have been mentioned here, including some of the information that I have uncovered in my own readings about the sport and see what happens. This is only a fraction of the work that I intend to do with this article and others in this wikipedia.
I'm no expert but a boxing enthusiast with a masochistic streak for textual accuracy. I will edit this article in bits starting with its structure and basic facts like history and techniques. So that our work does not interfere, let's keep the communication alive. Tarkovsky
Training?
Why not include a section about the lengthy training regime a boxer will undertake which includes using the jump rope, punch bag, weights, sparring etc...
Time Periods - History of the Legends
I have added time periods to the Boxing Legends section (previously Great Personalities of Boxing) in single decade intervals. My hope is that the 'Legends of British Boxing' section as well as the legends from other parts of the world will be absorbed into this section. That way, we can view boxing personalities in terms of their place in boxing history rather than belonging to the British history of boxing or the American one, etc. What do you think?
Techniques
Boxing coaches train a wide variety of different ways to throw a punch or stop a punch, so the techniques section will be extremely varied. I understand this problem, but there are absolutely incorrect bits of info that I have found in the techniques section. For example, it is not entirely correct to say that the jab "does not leave the boxer open to attack." It is easily counterable with a slip and a jab or a slip and a lead hook. I wonder how many people contributing to the article actually have boxed? How many know the sport from just watching it? I would like to get a conversation going with people who regularly practice the sport so that we can really clean up the techniques + regulations. Boneheadmx 13:37, 12 December 2005 (UTC)
ALI, CLAY
Mohammad Ali was the best heavyweight boxer in the world ever.