Research and Discussion Forums

In bareknuckle pugilism, as practised predominantly in the UK and USA between 1700-1900, there appears to have been very little in the way of combination punching, certainly as it later developed under gloved boxing. The one-two seems to have been about the limit of it.

Similarly if you look at ...

Corey, would you classify wrestling as a martial art?

If so there is of course solid proof of it among modern hunter-gatherers (e.g. Amazonian tribes) and evidence of it among ancient hunter-gatheres (such as in the Aleutian islands, which is what Richard Rudgley was referring to - see earlier ...

Randall Pleasant wrote: Don't just read - THINK!

Thanks for the advice Randall, that had never occurred to me.

Rudgley's book, which is a good read, basically explores the evidence that a lot of things we consider to be the products of more recent "civilisations" have deep roots in the Stone Age: things like surgery (trepanning, etc), cosmology, writing, and so on.

It is hardly crazy stuff and certainly ...

Steering things back to the original post, what I was after was any knowledge of sources for bareknuckle combat or fist-fighting in the period after the ending of the Roman Games up to the advent of James Figg in the 18th century.

That's a huge period and there must be material about combat ...

Does anyone have information on the earliest references to Asian/Oriental martial arts in Western literature?
I am interested to know how Eastern MA were first perceived in the West and if they were compared and contrasted to existing European or other styles and techniques.

The Nature citation is in my original post. The New Scientist citation is the 50th Anniversary Special, 18 Nov 2006, p20.
No idea who the writer is - the story is not bylined - nor their contact info.

This story is in the latest edition of New Scientist magazine, which in turn cites Nature mag ...

This story is in the latest edition of New Scientist magazine, which in turn cites Nature mag as its source. I took this off the NS website but the story in the magazine itself is several paragraphs longer:


During the middle ages, the Muslims who fought crusaders with swords of Damascus steel ...

Dear ARMA members

About ten years ago we published a 250th anniversary reprint of Capt John Godfrey's "A Treatise Upon The Useful Science of Defence".

We recently discovered a couple of boxes left in our stockroom and are making them available for sale via Paypal on our website.

For those ...

Hi John

pp 61-63

Pete

John_Clements wrote:That's fascinating, thanks for sharing.
There are a few other similiar accounts of late 17th century English gladiatorial Prize fights.

Can you give us the page number for that material, please?

JC

It's a mini title or heading within the book.

I wonder how many of these itinerant "masters" there were like Old Chopping-block, wandering the country practising their dying art. A little like the displaced samurai of Japan in Kurosawa's The Seven Samurai. What tales they could have told ...

Allen

The book is published by Reword Publishers, website www.reword.co.uk

The extract I have quoted is the only bit inthe book relating to martial arts. The rest is snippets about life in Manchester in the 1700s, taken from old newspapers, manuscripts, etc.

Pete

Recently came across this in a small, locally published book, the wonderfully entitled Circumcisions by Appointment: Life in Eighteenth Century Manchester , by Roy Westall, and thought it might be if interest.

QUARTER-STAFF AND BROADSWORD PLAY
Thomas Barritt (1743-1820), a local antiquary ...

I think I've lost the hammerfist debate so I'll take it on the chin (or top of the head!)

Here's a few more for you that I'd be interested to find any mention of in the annals. A few years ago I was lucky enough to spend a lot of time with the late Bartley Gorman, who was one of the great old ...

I do see what you mean Jacob.

But I would like to posit the contrary view, based I admit largely on watching NHB fighters (and therefore by extension original pankrationists and realistic fighters of all eras), that realsitc fights don't see hammerfists much, if at all, because they are ...