Empire Attire

by: Nathaniel Cook

In the annals of sport history, the Olympics have long held a place of high esteem. It has long served as the ultimate international stage, where the limits of human performance and grace are put on display for the world to see. Just watching the Olympic Games lends an air of panache to arm chair athletes the world over, turning sport into art. However, people have always looked for alternatives to the pomp of the five rings, and turned to less “respectable”, though often more harrowing, sports and events. Of course, the most prominent modern day example just wrapped up, the X Games.

We here at Empire were curious what other alternatives existed before the X Games, or, more broadly, where the more extreme in nature went head to head in some more proletariat competitions. Something that seemed too lowbrow for the Olympics, but athletic and entertaining enough to bring out the crowds, and blow their collective minds. The first in our series is:

Bare-Knuckle Boxing

Boxing has been apart of the Olympic Games since the late 7th century. Back then, the sport was truly brutal, and, by todays standards, outside of mainstream acceptance. Long before padded gloves graced the ring, it was just two guys (sometimes more), beating the life out of one another, bare-fisted, for the amusement of the masses. At one point, the game was limited to standing in one place, exchanging headshots in turn, no dodging allowed, until someone died. Now that’s alternative!

The heyday of a tamer, if you can call it that, form of bare-knuckle boxing came in the 19th Century. Outside of the fact that these matches had no real rules, they would often last for hours, sometimes more than 60 rounds (compare to the 10-12 we have now). Not only did these athletes participate in one of the most brutal sports of all time, they, without fail, had names that only Dickens would dream up, after watching Nascar on acid. Also, there were an inordinate amount of Jems and moustaches.

There are countless reports of fighters dying in the ring, losing eyes, and myriad shattered bones/dreams, but the people loved it. Despite being illegal, events could easily bring in over 10,000 spectators. What makes this sport such a good facsimile for the modern X-Games is how truly underground it was. Events were often broken up by the police, most of the athletes either retired to compulsive gambling or brothel proprietorship, and the promoters would make Don King look like a soft spoken war hero.

However, as the march of “progress” went on, bare-knuckle brawls became rare, in favor a more controlled iteration of the sweet science. In truth, there is likely far more athleticism in the sport today, though it isn’t really the same. Sure, the gloves gave us Robinson, Frazier, and Louis, but I can’t help but imagine one of our more modern “tough guys” trying to bite the ear off of a guy who had his larynx partially crushed by an elbow the previous week. He wouldn’t end up in The Hangover, I’ll tell you that much.