Early fighting had no written rules. There were no weight divisions or round limits and no referee, resulting in very chaotic fights. An early account of boxing was published in
Nottingham in 1713 by
Sir Thomas Parkyns, 2nd Baronet, a landowner in
Bunny, Nottinghamshire, who had practised the techniques he described. The article, a single page in his manual of wrestling and fencing,
Progymnasmata: The inn-play, or Cornish-hugg wrestler, described a system of headbutting, punching, eye-gouging, chokes, and hard throws that are not recognised in boxing today. Consequently, there were no round limits to fights. When a man could not come to scratch, he would be declared loser and the fight would be brought to a halt. Fights could also end if broken up beforehand by crowd riot, police interference or chicanery, or if both men were willing to accept that the contest was a draw. While fights could have enormous numbers of rounds, the rounds in practice could be quite short with fighters pretending to go down from minor blows to take advantage of the 30-second rest period. Even though the Broughton Rules attempted to make boxing more civilized, there were still many techniques in this era that are illegal in today's gloved boxing. However, there were also new revolutionary moves, still in-use today, that were formulated during that time. Grappling was allowed and many favored the use of cross-buttock throw and
suplexes, although grabs below the waist were prohibited. Clinching, known as chancery, were also legal and in-use. Fibbing, where a boxer grabs hold of an opponent by the neck or hair before pummeling him multiple times, were allowed. The traditional bare-knuckle boxing stance was actually designed to combat against the use of grappling as well as block punching. Kicking was also allowed in boxing at that time, with
William "Bendigo" Thompson being an expert in kicks during his fight with
Ben Caunt, and the Lancanshire Navigator using
purring kicks in his battle with
Tom Cribb. (left) vs
Tom Cribb in a re-match for the heavyweight championship of England, 1811. It was during classical pugilism where many famous boxing techniques were invented.
Samuel Elias was the first to invent a punch that later became known as the
uppercut. Tom Spring popularized the use of the
left hook and created a technique called the "Harlequin Step", where he would put himself just within reach of his opponent, then avoiding the instinctive punch while simultaneously delivering one himself; basically inventing the boxing
feint.
Daniel Mendoza also popularized the
outboxer-style of boxing.
Irish stand down The
Irish stand down is a form of traditional bare-knuckle fighting in which lateral movement and evasive maneuvering are minimized or eliminated, emphasizing sustained, close-range striking exchanges. Unlike conventional bare-knuckle boxing, which incorporates footwork and distance management, stand down fighting places participants in a fixed or near-fixed position, often described as "toe-to-toe," where fighters exchange punches with limited opportunity to disengage. In some accounts, the practice is associated with
strap fighting, in which the fighters' non-striking hands are bound together to restrict movement and enforce continuous engagement, though historical descriptions vary and such binding was not universal. Over time, it declined in popularity as more structured forms of combat emerged, first under bare-knuckle prizefighting conventions such as the London Prize Ring Rules and later under gloved boxing governed by the
Marquess of Queensberry Rules. The Irish stand down is also referred to as "strap fighting" or "toe-to-toe", although the terms are not always used consistently in historical sources. ==Modern bare-knuckle boxing==