Hand Boxing: Is It Really The Safest Fighting Sport?

The modern-day hand-to-hand fist fight between Chad Mendes (R) and Joshua Alvares during Knucklemania II in Hollywood, Florida, February 20, 2022. (Photo: BKFC)

JAKARTA – In April 2018 the boxing world in the United States was presented with a different form of professional boxing, namely bare knuckle boxing or bare-handed boxing. This is actually a boxing activity in the past when the fight was not yet familiar with boxing gloves, but now it has emerged again. Bare-handed boxing is claimed to be much safer than boxing with boxing gloves.

The man who reintroduced hand-to-hand boxing to American society was David Fieldman, a boxing promoter from Philadelphia. In 2018 under the banner of the Bare Knuckle Fighting Championship (BKFC), Feldman tried his luck by introducing this ancient style of boxing.

Dipper welcomes, because Feldman's idea was well received. BKFC is licensed to legally perform hand-to-hand boxing in the United States. Be Feldman, who retired from boxing in 2003, performed BKFC for the first time in Cheyene, Wyoming on June 2, 2018.

“I first got to know boxing with bare hands in 2011, after getting to know a Canadian boxer named Bobby Gunn. I then started studying it, researching, looking for references before making a performance. For me it's a cool spectacle, a more pure boxing fight like in the past," Feldman told Jewish Exponent on June 24, 2019.

Promoter David Feldman against a circular empty-handed boxing background. (Photo: Jewish Exponent/Kenny Ludwig)

Feldman took seven years to convince the fighting sports regulatory authorities in the United States, that hand-to-hand boxing is safe and worth watching. Feldman managed to get official permission for his BKFC performance, so that he smoothly staged his first performance at Cheyene. It was the first official barehanded boxing performance in the United States since 1889.

“Now we are starting to climb up. It hasn't reached where I want it to be, but it's already creeping up. At the beginning, I often got e-mails and messages on Facebook saying that BKFC would not last long. That kind of view actually makes me want to move forward,” said Feldman again.

The Form of Empty Hand Fist

Until February 2022, BKFC has performed 27 performances with a total of hundreds of parties being held. Not only in the United States, empty-handed boxing has even spread to England as the country of origin of modern boxing. In the UK, promoter duo Jim Freeman and Joe Brown founded Bare Knuckle Boxing (BKB) in 2014.

“We are working hard and getting a lot of threats from the boxing community, gangsters and boxing promoters who don't want their comfort disturbed. Also don't want to see this bare-handed boxing become popular," Freeman said.

A BKFC version of a hand-to-hand fist fight between Mike Perry (L) vs Julian Lane in Hollywood, Florida on February 20, 2022. (Photo: BKFC)

Barehand boxing really adapts medieval boxing, when boxing gloves were not yet known, the ring was circular, and there were no rounds. It's just that in today's empty-handed boxing rounds are used as a time limit for the match. The number of rounds used in present-day barehanded boxing is from five to seven, each round being two minutes long.

Even in the division of classes, BKFC barehanded boxing has 7 classes while BKB has 11 classes, ranging from heavy to flying. In contrast to Mixed Martial Arts (MMA), bare-handed boxing only allows blows from bare fists as a weapon. Kicking, slamming, and pinning are prohibited.

Safer Than Modern Boxing and MMA

In November 2020 at the annual meeting of the Association of Ringside Physicians or the Association of Ring Doctors, Doctor Donald Muzzi submitted a research result. Its contents say that barehanded boxing is much safer from brain injury than modern boxing and MMA that already uses gloves.

Muzzi took the case of the BKFC event from 2018 to 2020, which included 131 fights with 262 boxers involved. From the data he collected, none of the boxers suffered brain injuries. It's just that the perpetrators of bare-handed boxing suffered severe physical injuries.

Before the Doter Ring Association meeting was held, there was a case of an empty-handed boxer who died after losing by a knockout. Justin Thornton died after losing by a round 1 KO to Dillon Cleckler in the BKFC 20 event in Mississippi on August 20, 2020. Thornton died not from a brain injury, but from a spinal cord infection.

Bloody faces, broken noses, lumpy heads, puffy eyes are common sights in bare-handed fists. Even so, not a single case of brain injury was found in bare-handed boxers. Surprisingly, the number of broken hands in barehanded boxing is much lower than in modern boxing and MMA.

Heavyweight boxing match between Tom Molineaux vs Tom Cribb in England in 1811. (Photo: Wikipedia)

The risk of brain injury in barehanded boxing is only 1.5 percent, compared to boxing and MMA, which show a percentage of 6 percent to 15 percent. The absence of boxing gloves makes the perpetrators of bare-handed boxing more often attack the opponent's body than the head. That's what causes the risk of brain injury to be small.