I was appalled by a short video clip of a boxing competition that I saw, once, on Ryan Tubridy’s Late Late Show (a popular chat and entertainment show on Irish television) last night, 10th December, 2010. It showed the end of a match between two boxers, the victorious one of which was a guest on the show. I presume they were professional, because they were not wearing any head protection. One boxer was noticeably taller than the other. This was the closing sequence of the match and it depicted a relentless attack on the head of the taller boxer by the smaller boxer, which continued unabated until the referee intervened, when the taller boxer appeared concussed.
I am a mechanical engineer and that fact greatly informed what I saw. Technically, the fists and forearms of a boxer can be described as padded hammers. The upper arms of a boxer serve as, what people would usually describe as, hammer handles. Padded or soft-faced hammers are used in order to avoid localized damage owing to high-intensity stress. In the case of boxing gloves, the padding would reduce surface bruising by distributing the applied force over a relatively large area. They would also reduce tearing that might result in blood loss. To be more specific: an unpadded hammer with protrusions (such as the knuckles of a hand) could cause deep indentations wherein the skin and underlying tissue could be damaged by compression or stretched to tearing point; also, any blows that are oblique relative to the target surface could stretch the skin and tissue sideways, causing tearing. In boxing, padding of the hammers reduces the occurrence of gory injuries to the target, and to the hammers themselves. A mechanical engineer or a physicist would know that surface effects are only incidental to the purpose of a hammer.
