Question 118: Horizontal v. Vertical fist

I’m confused by your saying that the vertical fist has more power since it provides fewer places in the arm for energy to “get lost”, while you also say that, due to the use of gloves, boxers needn’t worry about breaking their fists so they can afford to throw horizontal fist punches with more power than vertical punchers. First, you say the vertical punch has more power than the horizontal punch, and then you say that boxers can punch more powerfully with than horizontal punch than with the vertical punch. Whether the fist is vertical or horizontal has little to do with the possibility of injury to the fist, as long as the fist is held tight with the thumb tightly folded outside the fist.

Any power advantage gained from the mass of gloves would be the same for both vertical and horizontal punchers. Boxing gloves are primarily revenue builders; hand wraps do more for protecting the hands from serious injury than do the gloves. Hand wraps help hold all the fragile hand bones in place and pad the knuckles. Without gloves, there would be very little increase in hand injuries. Boxing gloves lessen the chances for cuts to opponents’ heads, which lessens the amount of blood flow in a match, which makes boxing more palatable to the public, which increases revenue for all involved. Gloves, by lessening outward injuries to heads, allow fighters to fight more often, which increases revenue. With the advent of gloves, boxing became a mainline, highly profitable, spectator sport. However, gloves allow a boxer to receive more punches to the head before becoming incapacitated, which means his or her brain gets rattled more times in a fight than it would in a bare-fistedfight. This means that many long–time boxers develop brain injuries latter in life, i.e. punch drunk.