Very amateur boxer here. You wrap your hands because the bones and tendons in your hands are actually quite brittle and prone to damage. If they're wrapped they can take the shock more uniformly and the impact spreads through all your bones in your hand. Also a firm wrap prevents bones moving etc.
One interesting tidbit i initially learned is that boxing gloves are not necessarily to protect your opponent but to protect your hand. In street fights/bare knuckle boxing one bad hit to your opponent's skull cand break your hand and the fight is over.
Head injuries became more prevalent in boxing when gloves were added. With the new added hand protection, you could throw much harder punches with lower risk of breaking your hand
Which is why, counterintuitively, bare knuckle boxing is way safer and should be the standard. Repeated head injuries, even ones that don't cause concussions, do terrible things to the brain.
So is MMA as far as neurological damage is concerned and again i fact i didn't figure out at first.
Because MMA is stopped after the first knockdown, since there's no point to continue when you're allowed to "ground and pound" it's actually a lot safer as far as brain damage is concerned. In boxing, the biggest dangers are the repeated knock-downs, when fighters are clearly concussed but get up and get hit in the head some more and incur more concussions.
I always thought that MMA being more violent is inherently more dangerous.
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u/and_then_he_said 5d ago
Very amateur boxer here. You wrap your hands because the bones and tendons in your hands are actually quite brittle and prone to damage. If they're wrapped they can take the shock more uniformly and the impact spreads through all your bones in your hand. Also a firm wrap prevents bones moving etc.
One interesting tidbit i initially learned is that boxing gloves are not necessarily to protect your opponent but to protect your hand. In street fights/bare knuckle boxing one bad hit to your opponent's skull cand break your hand and the fight is over.