TOO MANY RULES

Evening Post, Volume CXIX, Issue 128, 1 June 1935, Page 23

TOO MANY RULES

BOXERS AND EFFEMINACY

"Too many rules are making boxers nowadays almost effeminate." This was one of the verbal punches Hugh D. Mclntosh, the Australian, delivered at a luncheon to inaugurate the new National Sporting Club in London. Present-day boxing had too many "don'ts" about it, he said. He disapproved of the rules barring the kidney punch and.the blow with the heel of the glove. "Boxing is the art of self-defence," he told .the sporting writer of the "Sunday Express" afterwards. "If you defend your chin, why shouldn't you defend your neck or your back? Otherwise, the logical conclusion seems to be to pad yourself all over for protection, which is absurd." . NOT SO DANGEROUS. Mr. Mclntosh thinks far too much fuss is made about the dangers of kid-ney-punching. Doctors have told him a kidney-punch is not half as dangerous as a blow on the jaw or over the jugular vein. In forty years' experience of boxing, he has never known a man injured by a kidney-punch, but many that have had concussion after a jaw blow. . The use of the heel of the glove he considers no more dangerous than the knuckles. But his pet aversion is the six-round contest. Short fights, he says, cannot develop endurance. They help to breed a lady-like race of fighters who are harmful to boxing. English boxing, in his opinion, fails in its worship of the straight left. "Englishmen do not remember that there are other blows," he said. "Personally, I think that 'straight left' men are easy meat. Hookers are far more dangerous."