By Michael Blackett
Fighting without the protection of Boxing gloves occurs in every pub car park each weekend throughout the country usually fueled with alcohol and it goes without saying that one of the main injuries sustained by those involved is damage to their hands. When competing in bareknuckle boxing what can and what was done to prevent cuts and lacerations on your only weapon available? Your hands!
There are many articles and books written on the subject of toughening and strengthening the actual internal workings of the hands and wrists of fighter’s and also on which shots landed has the least potential for injury. One subject which often creates ridicule no more so than within gloved boxing community is the suggestion of the use of ointments, potions and treatments applied to the hands prior to competing. For the future generation of bareknuckle fighters could the answer lie with what some of the great fighters used in the past and is there any truth that it can be of benefit.
OR Is it all Mumbo Jumbo?
As any building worker will tell you and I can vouch for this myself that after constant hard graft on the buildings or any manual work your hands do toughen naturally. Blisters and tender callouses are only temporary and after a while your hands become like leather. Runners have the same problem with their feet as any beginner runner will tell you so obviously there are ways to toughen the skin that work.
Is there anything to speed up this effect up?
URINE
Urine, be it human or animal derived has for many years been used to toughen not only Boxer’s hands but other athletes including Baseball players:
In a recent interview with ESPN’s Gary Miller, Chicago Cubs outfielder Moises Alou revealed that during baseball season he urinates on his hands to toughen them up. Alou, one of the few major leaguers who doesn’t wear gloves while batting, is backed up by Yankees catcher Jorge Posada, who says, “You don’t want to shake my hand during spring training.” Even Cubs hurler Kerry Wood mentioned on a local radio show that he’s tried the technique to remedy blisters on his pitching hand (though he wryly added that there’s also a well-known clubhouse cure for headaches: “crapping in your hat”). Does urine really toughen the skin?
Many Doctors and Urine Therapy based Professionals suggest that soaking your hands in urine actually has the opposite affect and has been found to soften the hands. Urea is the main component of urine and considering most hand creams contain urea perhaps the doctor are correct.
According to Dr. A.H. Free, in his 1977 book Urinalysis in Clinical Laboratory Practice, urine contains the following:
Zinc, vitamins B12, B6, riboflavin, pantothenic acid, inositol, folic acid, biotin, ascorbic acid, potassium, iron, calcium, iodine, manganese, magnesium, nitrogen, lysine, arginine, allantoin, bicarbonate, creatinine, cystine, dopamine, epinephrine, glucose, glutamic acid, glycine, lysine, methionine, orinthine, phenylalanine, phosphorus, tryptophan, tyrosine and water.
So considering all the active ingredients listed without proper research who can dispute what the fighters have used and who am I to question the great advocate of old school boxing Jack Dempsey who did indeed soak his own hands in urine. If it is used then you would need to soak your hands for a minimum of 5 minutes for absorption into the skin.
BRINE
The following was wrote by the great fighter Bob Fitzsimmons
“Some trainers use a sort of pickling solution with which they pickle the hands, face and neck, in order that a blow will not cut the skin so readily. If my man had a very ten-der skin I might use something to toughen and harden his face, but as a rule I don’t think that pickling the face and neck does any good.
To the hands, however, too much attention cannot be paid, and I have found nothing better than corned beef brine.
This does not smell very nice, it is true, and should be applied three times a day after eating. I would never allow my man to apply it before eating, as it might affect his stomach, which would be bad. But, although the brine does not smell anywhere near as good as Florida water, it does the business, and that is all that is required. After the brine is applied and well rubbed in, the following liniment should also be rubbed in.
It can be obtained at any first class drug store, and the ingredients are as follows; Laudanum, three ounces ; spirits of hartshorn, four ounces ; alcohol. One quart; iodine, two ounces ; eucalyptic,three ounces. These mixed up together with ten cents worth of horseradish and five cents worth of alum, make a liniment which cannot be equalled for strengthening and hardening the bone, and when applied and well rubbed in it has a tendency to make a man feel fresh and strong.brine is basically a mixture of vinegar and water and can come in a variety of strengths.
Jack Dempsey also states….“Put camphor ice on your skinned knuckles before you go to bed. In a few weeks your knuckles will become calloused, and you’ll have no more trouble with them.”
This is an extract from Billy Edwards’ “Art of Boxing and Manual of Training” from 1888
“If at first they should get a little raw or rubbed, a few applications of weak tannic acid solution, or rosin, or good strong pickle out of the salt-pork barrel, will soon make the
hands and knuckles tough.”
It seems evident that a lot of the bareknuckle fighters of the past did indeed use a variety of techniques to harden the skin. The Australian army advised their recruits at parachute school to rub in alcohol to harden the skin as well.
A more recent bareknuckle fighter of the name Paddy Monaghan was also advised to use a brine solution and this advice was given to him from no other than Jack Dempsey. I spoke with Paddy’s son Tyrone who told me this.
“My Da would do the same to me when I was fighting to toughen the skin on my face, it was vinegar in a cup then pour in the salt, Id lie on the floor and with a cotton wool bud he’d put the vinegar and salt or salt and vinegar whichever way … on the skin around my eyes, cheek bones, the bone on the nose.
He’d leave it there to harden and cake, normally about an hour and a half for that to happen. When it was bone dry and the vinegar was soaked into the skin then I’d get up go to the bathroom and rub the salt off but don’t wash it off until the next morning….for BKB my Da used to do the same with his face and with his knuckles.”
Rubbing alcohol into the hands was another way in which some of the past fighters hardened their hands. Jem Mace for instance used a mixture of Gunpowder and whiskey onto his hands and face. (Perhaps this is where he got his explosive punching from). In all seriousness instead of wasting decent Whiskey it’s much cheaper to use surgical spirit and is used by rock climbers and runners.
Old bare-knuckle boxers rubbed sheep urine and alum crystals into their hands after punching practice. A better substitute is mentholated spirits. After punching only a fairly rough surface, such as a heavy canvas punching bag, the knuckles will be reddened. Then rub in the spirits and let it dry. It takes about a month of three or four times a week, and your hands get quite tough. The likes of petrol and diesel have also been used in the past.
I suppose at the end of the day fighters will choose whether or not to use the methods described above but what I would say is if it worked for some of the past greats then WHY NOT!
*If anyone is interested in reading more on the origins of bare knuckle boxing, here is a link to Michael Blackett’s site- THE HISTORY OF BAREKNUCKLE BOXING
