The Development of the Close & “Peekaboo” Guards in Boxing
The boxing guard is culturally ubiquitous as a “fighting” posture. Ask any untrained person in the western world to throw a “Fighting stance” and they will look something like this
This is what has become known as the “standard” guard. However, because I am going to reach back to a time before it became standard, I am going to use the alternate term “close guard” for the position. The image has seeped into popular parlance – we talk about “putting our guard up” or “letting our guard down” indicating a level of defensive responsiveness, but the imagery is all to do with those hands.
Their position has changed over the years. As the gallery below should illustrate.
In the Beginning…
All of these late C.19th pugilists demonstrate an extended guard, with similarities to those used in eastern martial arts today. The sole exception in 170 year history of the LPR Bareknuckle Rules appears to be Daniel Mendoza.
Mendoza has gone down as one of history’s greatest boxers, mostly because of his revolutionary foot movement. Like the later champions James Mace, Cassius Clay and Anderson Silva, Mendoza used his footwork to dance away and avoid being hit. At the time this was revolutionary; Mendoza was fighting around three generations after Jack Broughton had coded a rule set designed to limit fatality and serious injury, however the attitudes to fighting had remained fairly stagnant. It was not uncommon for pugilists to have very limited foot movement and concentrate more on hard hitting and wrestling.
A descendent of this practice, known colloquially as “Irish Boxing*” appears in Herbert Asbury’s book, Gangs of New York. Two men would approach the scratch and, rooted to the spot, each attempt to beat the other into submission. It was a challenge of toughness and manliness that could be carried out in the cramped, squalid basements of New York Tenements. It was also extremely injurious to the participants.
Mendoza, who was something of a pretty boy, did not think that taking a beating was a necessary part of being a fighter. This may have had something to do with the fact that, despite being the English Heavyweight Champion, he was 5’7″ tall and weighed around 160 pounds. (In an era where fighters didn’t cut weight to compete!) Had he stood still, any one of his much larger opponents would likely have flattened him.
Thus he developed a close guard. Using angular footwork to dodge punches and rushes, he could remain on the outside of his opponents, and fire in jabs across the top of their blows (incidentally, this is the style that James Mace later perfected). Mendoza, however, had no desire to remain outside. He preferred to enter his opponents space and jam them up with short, choppy strikes, particularly those aimed at the body. To do this he raised his arms close to his head and instead of using an angular deflection, he could absorb incoming strikes on his forearms.
The difference in distance is clearly evident in the two images displayed above. Additionally, the Broughton and London Prize Ring Rules allowed grappling, meaning that once Mendoza closed the distance, his opponents were more likely to grab him than they were to throw hook punches at his head. (The first boxer known to demonstrate a lead left hook was James Corbett, who displayed it in San Francisco, 1892. Whilst it clearly proved successful, older pugilists such as Jem Mace and John Sullivan eschewed the punch because of the danger to one’s ungloved hands). Relatively safe from being knocked out, Mendoza could piston shots into his opponents face and body whilst they would struggle to return fire because of his size and position.
This tactic generally worked well for him, although in a rare defeat Mendoza was to regret underestimating the brawling style of Jack Johnson, who grabbed Mendoza’s hair and proceed to beat his face to a pulp, knocking the smaller man out in the 9th round.
After Mendoza, however, the close guard largely disappeared. The author suspects that this was, at least in part, due to the scientific footwork that Mendoza had done so much to popularise. Fighters who use swift, angular footwork are generally able to hit their opponent whilst avoiding being hit themselves. This style of fighting, known as “counterfighting” (careful with the pronunciation!) conforms to a theory of fighting psychology known as the “Musket Jackpot”.
It is appealing, after all, to be able to hit your opponent from a position of relative safety. And whilst shots from the outside are not the big showstoppers, I would much rather hit you and not get hit at all than hit you very hard only to have you return the favour an instant later. Thus, Mendoza’s “scientific” style of boxing using footwork and jabs to wear down an opponent helped to develop the art into a quite sophisticated form.
When the “sweet art” became a “science”
When the “sweet art” became a “science”
After Mendoza, fighters who drew on his use of movement helped to develop boxing from two thugs brawling to a “science of self defence”. Brawlers remained common, but men with a little education in this “science” began to be prized, at least in certain sections of the community.
In the 1840’s, Nat Langham, then middleweight champion of England, ran a boxing booth. This was a form of entertainment where young pugilists would spar in order to demonstrate their art and entertain onlookers as well as earn something of a wage. Although not outright illegal, prizefighting was basically so because it was considered to create unlawful and unruly gatherings. As such these booths provided a living for fighters when competition was scarce or when local authorities were launching another puritanical crackdown.
Nat Langham’s booth attracted the attentions of a young Norfolk man named James Mace. Already well known to the locals (In his autobiography, Mace recalls boxing being as much a part of the culture for young men as football is in our own time) Mace impressed Langham, and ended up working for him in London. Although primarily a prizefighter, Mace was working out of one of Nat’s London Clubs, the Rum-Pum-Pas, and augmented his pugilistic earnings with bodyguarding. The Rum-Pum-Pas was popular with young aristocrats, who would often hire some of Nat’s “Pugs” to go out into the less salubrious areas of the capital with them. In an era before modern policing, having friends who were handy with their fists had it’s advantages.
The salient point in the anecdote is this; because of their “scientific” approach, these “pugs” were not pariahs amongst the aristocracy – they were their playmates. Their training and intelligence separated them from the class of thugs, at least to the degree where “the fancy” (as boxing inclined aristocrats were termed) would fraternise with them, take lessons from them, and employ them to keep thugs removed.
It was around this time that the low, extended guard, pictured at the beginning of this post, became ubiquitous. This guard offers several advantages; it enhances the field of your vision (your fists aren’t in the way of your eyes), it allow one to launch straight punches quickly and effectively (click here to read about the different types of punches), it is equally useful for striking and grappling (grappling was important under the LPR rules), it protected the body much better than a close guard (the body, being softer than the head, was a more popular target in bareknuckle fights), and it allowed for an angular style of deflection, or blocking.
What is most noticeable, at least to modern fighters, is what the guard does not do. It is truly awful at “covering up”. Absorbing blows on the hands or forearms – the cornerstone of most modern defence – is virtually impossible from this guard position. As the following video demonstrates, defence in pugilism had a slightly different look.
One of the things this tells us is that pugilists were fighting at a different range to modern boxers (and most modern MMA fighters). There were two obvious reasons for this.
The first is that the LPR rules allowed grappling. I’ve spoken before about how throwing punches with a vertical fist is used at different ranges, but the basic information is this; keeping the elbows tight in to the body (which punching with vertical fist alignment does) helps to prevent your opponent grappling you by gaining underhooks, and if grappling is allowed then you do not need to guard your face, because if your opponent is close enough to hit your face you should be wrestling. Old time boxers knew how to clinch and chancery to prevent their opponent hitting them in the head. For example, via the arm and head control demonstrated below.
So in essence, the low guard prevented wrestlers (like Sam Hurst, the “Stalybridge Infant” – a wrestler who briefly reigned as boxing’s heavyweight champion) from dominating a skilled pugilist, protected the body, and did not leave the head too vulnerable, because fighters could and would grapple.
The second reason is the development of footwork and the size of the ring. Modern boxing rings are 16ft square. LPR rings were 24ft squared. For those who, like me, are mathematically challenged, that means that LPR rings were more than twice as big as modern boxing rings. (Check the maths, I’ll wait.) Footwork could be the single biggest part of the fight. More than once a nimble opponent simply outran the other man. John L. Sullivan, for example (who in a move that was probably related, did more than anybody else in history to popularise the 16ft ring) had a career record of 40 victories, 2 draws and 1 loss. The two draws, against Patsy Cardiff and Charlie Mitchell, occurred because Sullivan simply could not catch them. Like many heavyweights, he relied on power more than cardio and was too blown to present a threat to these fleet footed men. He is rumoured to have grumbled that the encounter with Mitchell was “more akin to a foot race than a prize fight”. **
Likewise, his only loss to “Gentleman” Jim Corbett. There is no doubt Corbett was a terrific boxer, but even in a 16ft ring it was his footwork which put him leagues ahead of Sullivan and enabled him to knock out the “Strong Boy”.
The Modern Era
While John L. might have done more than anybody else to popularise the use of gloves and the 16 ft. ring, the first true champion of the modern, gloved, era was Jim Corbett – the first champ never to fight under LPR rules. But Corbett, and other boxers of his era, continued to favour the low guard.
The close guard, as we know it, was largely popularised by Charles “Kid” McCoy. It offered several advantages for McCoy’s fighting style and the newly developing “sport” of boxing. Being smaller than most of his opponents, McCoy didn’t have to worry about body shots, and could afford to worry less about protecting his ribs. Additionally, the removal of grappling from the sport meant that he didn’t have to worry about exposing his ribs, and could throw his trademarked “corkscrew punch”.
McCoy, like Mendoza before him, was a small, aggressive, infighter who was ferociously successful in the ring. While I would like to think that many boxers watched him and were inspired by his performance, I think this could only ever be part of the reason for popularising the close guard. The other two I would suggest are more practical. Firstly, fighters now had 16 oz. pillows strapped to their fists – I would think meanly of them if they hadn’t realised that the same padding which protected their knuckles could be used to protect their vulnerable jawline if it was held close enough. Secondly, as mentioned above, and in the post about punching styles, the distance of engagement changed. A closer opponent, one who doesn’t have to lunge in to hit you in the head, means you need to protect your head more closely all the time – which the close guard does.
The close guard also allow for a great setup for the short, choppy punches which have come to characterise modern boxing. Drawing power from the shoulder and the rotation of the arms, the modern jab and cross differ from their barenuckle cousins both in fist position and in how they develop power. And an extended guard also makes it more difficult to set up hook punches; a staple of modern boxing, but unusual in pugilism and modern systems (like Karate) which still favour the low guard.
And, since the rules haven’t changed much since Kid McCoy’s time; here we are. It is worth noting that in the late 20th century, somebody took the close guard idea to the extreme. Cus D’Aamato and his charge, Mike Tyson, developed a variant of the close guard known playfully as the “Peekaboo” guard. This brings the gloves even higher and closer to the face, effectively turning the head into a large pillow-cum-target. The statement is “I don’t need to block, because I can absorb all your blows, get in close, and then hit you twice as hard”. In this respect, Mike Tyson was an innovator. And Like Mendoza and McCoy before him, the stocky infighter was so successful that everybody who comes after him follows his lead.
I wonder if those in the future will know it?
*The author hopes that this is because of the popularity of pugilism amongst the Irish in the 18th & 19th centuries (Chris Klein, author of “Strong Boy“, attributes this to a displaced nationalist sentiment which could be realised through the masculine figure of the pugilist), who would have formed a significant proportion of the lower class immigrants, and thus spectators and participants, of this sport rather than simple Victorian racism.
**Whilst there is no record of his saying this, in his autobiography Sullivan does admit that the last 39 minutes of the fight passed without a blow being struck, and reproduces an entertaining article by Eugene Field which purports to report on the Sullivan-Mitchell foot race, (Sullivan, J.L. – Reminisces of a 19th Century Gladiator, Promethean Press, pp148-149)
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