US Army's Hand to Hand for WWI

Haven’t seen this on here yet, might’ve missed it on an earlier thread

That’s pretty awesome Slim. Gotta love the old school bareknuckle boxing techniques!

My great-grandfather was in World War I… hard to believe it was so long ago. These musta been some tough bastards.

Yeah, gotta respect the focus on basic boxing skills and Jiu-Jitsu takedown/come alongs. Not a big fan of the low hands boxing guard for most real world situations, but then they were training for the battlefield, not a crowded bar, multiple attacker, or ambush attack type of civilian situation. Plus that was the common guard for boxing at the time, especially bare knuckle stuff as Irish said.

Nice find Very interesting to watch. Still using most of those techniques today.

[quote]Sentoguy wrote:
Yeah, gotta respect the focus on basic boxing skills and Jiu-Jitsu takedown/come alongs. Not a big fan of the low hands boxing guard for most real world situations, but then they were training for the battlefield, not a crowded bar, multiple attacker, or ambush attack type of civilian situation. Plus that was the common guard for boxing at the time, especially bare knuckle stuff as Irish said.[/quote]

Gotta remember, back then that was the ONLY guard anybody knew. Came from that tendency of bareknuckle punchers to aim for your solar plexus instead of your face - you can break your hand on a guy’s forehead, but you catch him in the solar plexus and it only hurts him.

I still would rather use the high guard, barenuckle or not, but I understand why they did it.

Carl Cestari explains why the low hands makes sense in bare knuckle fighting.

[quote]FightinIrish26 wrote:

[quote]Sentoguy wrote:
Yeah, gotta respect the focus on basic boxing skills and Jiu-Jitsu takedown/come alongs. Not a big fan of the low hands boxing guard for most real world situations, but then they were training for the battlefield, not a crowded bar, multiple attacker, or ambush attack type of civilian situation. Plus that was the common guard for boxing at the time, especially bare knuckle stuff as Irish said.[/quote]

Gotta remember, back then that was the ONLY guard anybody knew. Came from that tendency of bareknuckle punchers to aim for your solar plexus instead of your face - you can break your hand on a guy’s forehead, but you catch him in the solar plexus and it only hurts him.

I still would rather use the high guard, barenuckle or not, but I understand why they did it.
[/quote]

Yeah, I know, and like most sports boxing has evolved (and in many ways improved) since WW1, so I’m not suggesting that they weren’t using the best technology/strategy/techniques that they had available at the time.

[quote]Josann wrote:
Carl Cestari explains why the low hands makes sense in bare knuckle fighting.

[/quote]

I like learning the historical reasons for combative arts, and it’s a good illustration of why competitive bare knuckle boxers may have done so (due to the popular techniques and rules of the time). But it’s still not a very convincing argument in light of what we know now.