I’ve been asked to (guilted to) give a short presentation on the topic of how American Colonization/Possession of the Phillipine Islands after the Spanish American War may have effected the evolution of western boxing.
As some of you might know Inasanto has put forward the idea that US Marines exposure to indegenous fighting arts led to the guard moving closer to the body. Does anyone have an verifiable (ie. documented) evidence for or against this?
Also as a second point of mediation, does anyone know anything about Ali’s exposure to Filipino footwork (I assume during the thriller in Manila) effecting his approach to movement in the ring.
There was a big debate about this on the FMA digest newsletter awhile back. I can’t remember exactly what was said, but it seemed that it was a bit inconclusive.
Agreed on that. At the same time there seems to be a coinciding shift during the occupation of the Phillipines. Thanks for the suggestion, I’ll check out the digest.
As the Us occupation of the Philipines conveniently coincided with the development of modern gloved boxing, I would think the gloves would have more to do with the closer guard than some FMA influence. In BKB you want the hands out there as a fence, with gloves you can keep them much closer, and use the gloves to absorb the blow.
I would agree that it had far more to do with the increasing prevalence of gloved fighting. Post-Mendoza, and up until the advent of the Queensberry rules, bare-knuckle pugilism relied on distance as the main defense; the lead fist was often extended almost fully towards the opponent and fighters would often assume a slight backward lean through the head and torso. Most punches were linear, guards were deflections rather than blocks, and there was comparatively little in-fighting in the modern sense due to the fact that boxers were allowed to grapple and throw each other when they got into a clinch.
Gradually, as gloves (originally called “mufflers”) became accepted and then compulsory, the fighting stance became more upright and the lead hand was drawn further towards the body.
By the time"scientific boxing" was gaining popularity in the late 1800s/early 1900s, you could still see the vestiges of the BKB style but the sport was definitely undergoing a transformation.
By the 1940s, when the US entered the Phillipines, the stance and tactics had already significantly adapted to the possibilities of gloved fighting - forearm/elbow guarding, use of the glove itself in defense, increased emphasis on bobbing, weaving and fast footwork due to the weight shift from the backward lean to the modern crouch, etc.
It’s not surprising that the indiginous martial arts of the Phillipines should have followed a similar evolutionary path, and that there sould be some similarities between, for example, Panatukan and Western-style boxing as they were both practised in the '40s. There may well have been some inter-cultural exchange between the styles at that point, but I’m inclined to see this much more as a long process of natural evolution based on equipment and rule changes than on a radical shift due to the influence of any one cultural tradition.
Ddlr seems to have covered what i already know, but there is still a fair bit of individuality in each boxer. You see some (early tzuyu, ali) move around a great deal, but then you see others lke the tysons and fenechs of the world (grew up fighting out of the ring a bit) take a really linear agressive approach as I see it.
On important note here is that US presence in the Philipines goes back to 1898 when they were ceded to the US from Spain in the Spanish American war. This led up to an insurrection and a forgotten military action:
By the late 1890s and early 1900s, the glove had been mandated in boxing for several decades (although some professionals continued to fight bare knuckled). For an overview of the rules of “scientific boxing”, which was gaining in popularity during this period and represented a synthesis of BKB and modern glove fighting, see http://ejmas.com/jmanly/articles/2003/jmanlyart_macdonald_0403.htm
I have a printout of a manual for bareknuckle boxing dated around 1860 (can’t remember off hand) which shows lots of differences to the post gloved phase. It won’t answer anything about the Philipines but at least it gives a reference point to identify what the changes were. I’ll see if I can find the URL…
BTW, my gut feeling is that Filipino MA had minimal impact on boxing -else we’d all have heard about it -I’m not aware of any mainstream boxing text which mentions it nor any political reason why they wouldn’t. But that’s just my feelings.
Matt, this may be a little late, but I seem to remember a thread or two on the Dogbrothers public forum that addresses this very topic. You may want to poke around there to find some info.
Well, I’d guess that there is some kind of influence, as a body punch is referred to as a “Bolo” punch. I was told that this is a reference to the motion that bolos make when used as farm tools. The weilder grabs the plant higher up, then hacks at the base, to cut it off from the roots, using the bolo. This is nearly an identical motion to that of a proper close-range body blow. This motion is common to most FMA systems, and I’d guess that it did influence boxing a bit.
Some excellent and accurate history on the English style from Spadaccino and Crafty Dog in the DB Forum thread.
Just a note with reference to the article that begins that thread; there is probably no direct historical link between the pugilism practiced in ancient Greece and Rome and the English “revival” of boxing in the 1800s.
There may be a very tangential link in that there was an old (1600s) Italian tradition of fist-fighting between large groups of men ritualistically battling to control bridges in Venice - see this article and this PDF .
However, this particular fighting style, although it did somewhat resemble boxing as it was later developed in England, was actually an evolution of the earlier Italian arts of stick fighting, which was the original method used in the “bridge battles”. It’s difficult to demonstrate any linear historical connection between the Italian pugilism of this period and English boxing, and almost impossible to demonstrate a similar connection between ancient Greek or Roman boxing and the style that was developed by the bridge battlers.
We have many complete treatises on the arts of self defence as practiced throughout Europe during the Renaissance period, and although they demonstrate highly advanced martial arts for the use of the sword, dagger, unarmed combat, etc. there is very little (if anything) to suggest that boxing-style punching was emphasized in these arts.