It never ceases to amaze me that all practical martial arts all have the same principals and philosophy, they just apply them in different ways. Different tools for different jobs. Great vid

Jack Dempsey's Championship Fighting is a good book

Kickers are why God grew shillelaghs all over Ireland. Not too many kickers there now,

I mean, this makes sense in the medical and martial context of the time. Good focus on not fucking your hands up and expectations of the opponent doing the same. The recommendation of just blasting the rough and tumble fighters is realistic and hilarious.

If I remember right from my military training. you can beat someone who trys to kick you by walking right in to him if you are fast enough.

There are a few MMA guys that gave their perspective on traditional pugilism. Some things they still consider smart, other things not so much... The big gloves change a lot, which is why some things would make still sense today, but not so much in the ring.

Interesting content. I'm a big believer in proper structure and conditioning. Keep up the good work!

looks very different from modern mma. It actually looks very similar to traditional kung fus (not including the fancy wushu stuff).

Never underestimate the power of a fancy man with a moustache and a comb over in a white vest. Ones who have a pipe and a glass of whisky at ring side with a hairy chest are the deadliest

Since slipping came to knowldge of many this way of pugilism was abolished, litlle parries have been left such as the elbow blocks. Because they saw that actually with slipping moves you manage your weight better and create more leverage to execute the next punch with all your body weight behind it, kind off peekaboo stuff and jack dempsey.

Great stuff really love hand to hand hema

For skeptics, a great source for this art is Oz who has his own school on this. He adresses many of the "supposed issues", myths and misconceptions of the art, and also has a few instructionals. kzfaq.info

Could someone post a link to the guest teachers page? Does he have a youtube channel or facebook page or even a website?

Interesting! I really enjoy the historical aspect of this. I can see the basics in this style but I can see why things have evolved over time. That low left can leave you open to fight ending hooks to the head.

Great video guys, I'm getting the book thnx...

great stuff lads

do i have to be overweight and suck at boxing too to to train at your gym?

Where is training near Knoxville Tn?

Blood & Iron is frucking great. I love what there doing over there & i hope the school as well as HEMA blows up in a big way to the point that more know of it than not. But ya im a big supporter, tho dude in this vid wit the long hair looks like he could use some time to work on hand to hand. I know its hard to make enough time for hand to hand on top of time on sword work, but iv seen how big this issue is 1st hand to make a long story short. Always make time & do not shoot urself in the foot over this, but ya its just 1 of those things i always look for in sword play over how important it is to still b deadly without a sword in a sword fight. & its crazy how many ppl dont keep up there hand to hand skills after picking up the sword

Thank GOD it evolved! Structurally it sort of reminds me of a combination fencing and slap boxing, functionally it looks like kyokushin karate (full contact) blocking and Wing Chun Kung Fu punching

A self-defense system for gentlemen against gentlemen. I was very confused at how a man experienced in combat thought this was good fighting, but when he said it was for "gentlemen" and not to destroy your opponent as quickly and efficiently as possible it all made sense. Seems like a fairly fun system to use against other people using the same system - but I would absolutely not trust my life to it.

Remnants of the straight blast are seen in some of this, though with longer motion, though more power potentially generated therein.

Some of the comments said that this form of fighting is ineffective in today's world or tournament style of fighting. But the strong point about this form was that it was meant to protect the fist and arms of the fighter as there were no gloves used during fighting in the old days and even today's street fights.

Just got a copy of his book.

If you blind or barely can see, how will you spar, or fence?

This is weirdly similar to wing Chun. Good stuff

In old german boxing was called Fechten same as fencing so they didnt distinguish or have another word for bare hand.

reminds me a classic karate techniques

what is the difference between pugilism from bare knuckles boxing?

Not having boxing gloves to protect your hands greatly changes the structures and mode of fighting, it seems to me.

It's interesting to note that BK fighting looks closer to okinawan karate that it looks to pro western boxing itself. The add of padded gloves and wrap changes everything

Interesting.

I regret googling American rough-and-tumble fighting. truly horrid shit

Monstery, not monastery, if someone wants to look for it :)

I perfer mendoza his stance and system were decades beyond his time and he was a small guy who rarely was ever beatin

This looks kinda like Xing Yi (Hsing I Chuan)

I would be interested to see any of these techniques performed on someone who is resisting. I would very much like to see them performed in an actual pressure tested situation, as in a hard sparring session.

Funny that they should mention Sherlock and some comments talk about Wing Chun. RDJ used Wing Chun to help choreograph his fights in those shows.

I'm curious as to how effective this would be in boxing I'm assuming ideally you'd have to be comfortable in both stances seeing that you move forward with both legs

Sure

And this is why traditional eastern martial arts do ,,stop in motion" things in grappling techniques. Because good fighter would hit maintaining the line, to have a power and to make the hit for himself. And this is the moment were grappling techniques come in. Today they are no ,,bad", ,,fake" or ,,unrealistic" but just outdated, as many people train (or think so) kickboxing and they throw out completely different punches.

John Patterson is the best awesome video

"Rough and tumble" held as fair game to castrate the opponent through grappling.

#RZA 🔥

Jack dempsey championship fighting

Бокс, Борьба и Скорость рулят!

Dude, this is so similar to traditional wing-chun kung-fu.

What about palm strikes? Not kung-fu trick shit, more like Irish boxing, where you throw the punch like normal but just strike with the base of the palm instead. They completely bypass knuckle damage and remove a lot of the compression that happens in the hand during a punch that absorbs force, as well as lower the area of impact and strike with a single strong bone instead of a lot of small weak ones. I've personally seen a noticeable increase in my striking power since I've started using them. Also, that quote at 10:44 is gloriously gentlemanlike. "You should always be superior to the rowdy", words to live by!

hey Lee, nice beard!

"The walking beams of a locomotive" - that's almost exactly like Bruce Lee's "Straight Blast" technique, of which Straight Blast Gym named themselves after.

If you're going to invent a fighting system for self-defense it has to address all the ranges in order for it to be the most effective. If your answer to kicks is to just run away then that should be the same for punches too.

I see a lot of people are idiots saying that this shit isnt going to work in a real modern fight. People forget that This is the basic things where modern boxing came from. But unlike boxing, classical pugilism has purr kicking and grappling. So yeah they are not only effectve but can also be more dangerous than modern striking martial arts. Daniel Mendoza used it to fight against three consecutive street brawls. Jack johnson once used it to beat the crap out of 4 street guys at once before going to his match. Classical pugilism works because these were more practical oriental martial arts unlike oriental ones like kung fu and karate which are for flash.

That looks similar to what Bart Doran taught in his book.

I want to see this against wing chun. It would be one of the coolest sparring matches ever.

I'm really curious how this compares to savate. I'd love to hear from someone actually proficient in Savate. :P

That's why I love MMA, it includes everything that works for sport and self-defense :).

19 th century fighters turned opponents face into squashed tomato: planted stance , knucks full force ... ignored midsection & just head hunted ... till loser’s eyes , nose & mouth re-arranged as he softened up

You can throw elbows as well in pugilism.

I find it very strange, in every videos I saw about pugilism, they barely rotate their hips, while this is a crucial part of the power of strikes, I wonder about the practical reason behind it.

Hi guys, I'm amazed by this display of punching power & speed. I want you to fly to Vegas and run a seminar for Floyd and Mike. Yours sincerely, D. King

Stance and punch similar to karate

Clean boxing is acceptable. If someone kicks or uses some dirty trick like eye gouging, finger twisting, etc., then it is escalated and you can use dagger, sword or even pistol.

Reminds me a lot of wing chun philosophy. Especially the structure and occupation of the center line.

On 8:54 that's really bad attempt of guillotine choke. Had he hold him with a proper guillotine, the other guy wouldn't be able to slip-off that easily from that position.

2:03 just punch with the heal of your palm

I think you guys just describe WC chain punching.

The parry and punch looks a lot like Krav Maga technique of block and punch at the same time surging forward.

Looks like chain punch from wing chun

no open palm strikes? and the awkward straight arm looks like it could really easily be hyperextended without the wrist turn. the research i've done on bareknuckle fighting makes me very skeptical of the effectiveness of these techniques

You know alot of martial arts experts get their asses handed to them in mma not because they lack the knowledge so much as they spend so much time practicing technique that they seem to slack on the conditioning. Conditioning makes all the difference.

Try to use this against a boxer and he will end you.

Best self defense tip ever - 'Use a pistol'

8:13 ah yes the ye olde technique known as 'sticketh and moveth'

You throw punches about how I imagine you’d throw a baseball 🤣🤣🤣🤣

Pretty good info here, but I've got to check the comments because that's where all the real experts live.

I couldn't do this... I'd accidentally defend myself :( .

I have to be honest, this seems actually applicable in the real world for average people, which I like.

I see a lot of similarities to wing chun and xing yi

Funny somehow looks to me more like a karate punch more than a boxing punch, hand pillow did change fighting

That first kick defence shown is also partly a military sabre slip/void. Additionally I heard not much can beat a good boxer.

5:20 -> Understanding that the "always" was too much in the previous sentence ? I find that having your weight on the backfoot makes it harder to jump back... There's interesting points in this video and I thank you for taking the time to make it and share it but I'd like to highlight some dangerous practices or more generally bad forms that you are showing in this video, for it can be really dangerous for non experimented people to actually train those moves. First of, it goes with leaning; leaning is (generally) a very bad practice for it breaks your balance and center line, offers your head for kicks/knees/grapple and thus reduce the overall strength of your blows. From my personal experience in sparring with different type of opponents, I'd recommend NOT to lean, just like in fencing, it would be a better solution to slightly move the front leg forward, lower your center of gravity and move that center forward, keeping your center aligned wit the ground. Also after that, you are mixing leaning and rotating your hips. You don't need to lean forward to use your bodyweight, you "just" have to rotate your hips. Actually, every time you lean in this video, lowering your bodyweight would have been a way more viable tactic. (Like for that stopping blow, for example). Secondary, you are speaking about proper wrist alignment but break it when you "hit" the chest, I'd avoid doing that since it less likely that your opponent would just stand like that, and if your wrist is weak while your opponent is evading it, or moving forward, you could break it really easily, it could also damage your elbow on some cases. I'm not saying that one should or shouldn't hit with all knuckles, or those and those knuckles. Let's let the people experiment, everybody has a different feeling regarding that matter, I have saw. At 5:40 your are NOT in distance, your arm is fully extended and barely touching him, therefore your secondary blow (which is the "real" one if I understood correctly), as we saw, is not landing "inside" your enemy face but barely "on it". Since you are saying later that you should strike through the opponent and not snapping, you are not practicing what you are advocating. I personally use both, depending on the opponent I'm facing as well as other conditions, but even if you wanted to snap, it does not seem to me like it would be effective in this demonstration. Also about that leaning forward, when you hit the shield, since you are far away you tend to lean, therefore if your opponent dodge that, you could be in a really dangerous situation. After that first feint-blow, I'd recommend to do a "half-step" keeping the backward foot on the back but just to align your center line with the ground, rotating your hips, using the movement momentum, it'll give to your blow a much more powerful impact. Also that step forward was a really good example of what bad footwork is. I'm not saying that stepping and crossing your legs is "evil", each move and form as its time but the way your are stepping is really heavy, not straightforward (doing an exterior half-circle) and you are clearly loosing balance when landing that foot. From pugilist to pugilist I'd also recommend to snap back your punches after they've landed/pushed or missed, that's an error we commonly see from beginners or more specifically in Asian martial arts (even from so-called "masters"), letting your arms floating like that could let your opponent grab them more easily, trap your arms, do some kind of locks, etc... and since your arm is fully extended they would be more "easy" to break at the elbow. (Note the quotes on "easy", we know that even if the arm stays extended, performing a lock or something of that nature is not easy in a "real" fight). Thank you for having reading me, English is not my mother tongue, therefore I hope it was understandable. Enjoy training ! Humbly, Wallendorff Arthur

Personally, I would never lean into a jab like that. I step into em.

I study boxing and I see some relations

Fist punching anywhere above the nose is a BAD idea. Use the palm, use the hammer fist, forearm, or best of all the elbow.......assuming you do not have a weapon in your hand.

I may be spoiled because I was a boxer for many years, won the Ringside World Championship, 43 fights, trained by a world champion, and I later trained others after I stopped; so I am a specialist, however, the info in this video is almost as bad as this sentence. I love your videos, don't get me wrong. I understand this is a different context than boxing, but you get many of the basics wrong; things which depend on human anatomy, kinetics, etc and are essentially beyond debate. Plus, you don't get amateur boxing. They changed their scoring system from the number of *effective* punches landed (love taps did not count, despite what you may think and say) to the basic 10 point must system. Essentially, who came off worst in the round loses the round. It all comes down to clean effective punches (emphasis on effective). Also, the white circles were meant to avoid slapping and to keep inexperienced amateurs (as it only existed in amateur boxing) from using improper form.

How and why has this system of fighting not been more mainstream? It's brilliant makes sense i definitely want to learn this method

So ... Um ...wing chun?

This looks like wing chun

*because old Savate is cool lol

Reminds me of wing chun

Sounds a lot like Wing Chun...

Except for the low hand it’s kind of a back leg muay thai stance

The "footwork" kinda sucks... strategically jumping back is not good either for self-defence [it is OK for sports and dueling matches] as gives away many advantages, not least of which enabling the opponent to get a weapon. In combat if you can't escape then close in and control the enemy, taking his balance, structure, spirit, mind, breath , vision etc.. closing him down and finishing him ASAP. Swapping punches from range is more a game than survival.

hmmm :/

It fairs really well against modern boxing. I bought "self defense for gentlemen and ladies" aswell by Mr. Monster. Me and a sparring buddy tried it out for a month testing it out. Its defense is beautiful, and it's obvious it was designed to protect the hands. It's great for takedown defense to. Punching with horizontal fists is alot more predictable and off balancing. People that bash this style of fighting dont understand what real combat is about. I know more guys that I have fingers on my right hand that have broken there hands in street fights or bouncing. Alot just resort to palm strikes now. This however is very interesting. Realistically, youd probably only get one good shot in before the guy really charged for you, but if a guy was good enough at keeping them back, this style could be really useful for self defense. Its hard getting use to trying to generate power the way described aswell, but after its proficiant, no doubt it could take a guys head off if practices enough. It's funny more guys in mma dont utilize it, however the reason that being is because it doesn't deal with aggressive chaos aswell. With gloves on your hands, train ing mma, you want your shot to be powerful and fast and unpredictable. Mma has almost made a new style of boxing. It is ironic though, if you start swinging with hooks to the top of a guys head full power in the street, your hands are gonna get wrecked unless you hit them in the jaw and nose every time. Lil hint (thank you bass rutten) when a guy puts his head down in a street fight, hit him behind the ear with palm strikes. Hel be tap dancing soon, and will allow you to take him down with mercy. I thi k if UFC is suppose to truly about combat testing, than make them lose the gloves. Let it be raw like vale Tudor back in the days. Than youl see real boxing and technique.

Classic pugilism is cool to learn about history and to understand where some things might come from. That being said, I would never ever try to convince any of my students to learn this as a method of self defense. Its plain ineffective against anyone who has at least a little glimpse of how fighting really works. Of course you have to take into account that the times were different. So, as many things in HEMA that seem completely useless, in their given context and time, they were not bad at all. Keep that in mind!

Not dissimilar to Connor McGregor

I practice kickboxing and grappling for 5 years and i can tell that this fighting style is just wrong. NO you CANT stop a takedown with a punch if the opponent knows how to fight. You CANT escape a guillotine by pushing (in fact this makes it worse). If your opponent is a kicker keeping distance is the worst advice I have ever heard, because you cant strike him and he can. The punches were 100% wrong when it comes to technic and no they were not powerfull for someone of his weight. I guess this style would be ok against a normal person but not against any striker or grappler. On the other hand HEMA is 100% legit and i like it :)

Wing chun and Xing Yi.

The pistol tip was hilarious. However, not being critical to pugilism as a historical discipline, most of this stuff is either well known, or even overcome. HEMA with swords is not, because noone does it, but fighting with fist just went on its merry way and has more relevant styles nowadays. This is still fascinating and definitely usefull against the tavern brawler type, which we still see in this day and age... but there are more effective systems out there nowadays, at least that is what common logic dictates.