Championship Streetfighting: Boxing As A Martial Art by Ned Beaumont
Boxing has become more popular as its virtues as a demanding exercise regimen have become more widely known, but it remains generally neglected by students of self-defense and mixed martial arts. Too many people, almost all of whom who have never actually seen a boxing match, think of the later “Rocky” movies and believe boxing is just two guys wailing away on each other. Even those who are a little familiar with boxing come away beguiled by the more elaborate, dance-like moves of Asian martial arts. For those who don’t know any better, boxing has no practical application.
Of course, that is all hogwash, and one of the first things Beaumont dispels in his book Championship Streetfighting. Boxing might not be flashy, but it is imminently practical, very direct, and firmly grounded on scientific principles of leverage and inertia. Turning the sport into a practical streetfighting style is the real trick, but that is what Beaumont’s book is for.
Boiling Championship Streetfighting down to its essence, it addresses two main themes for turning from boxing into street warrior: how to train and how to adapt your punching. Part of Beaumont’s training advice is applicable to sport as much to street, since it emphasizes using your regimen to develop mental toughness as much as your technical skill. He also dwells on old time techniques for strengthening the hands, wrists and skin for bareknuckle contact.
The actual boxing-as-combat side looks at two major points. The first is how boxing worked back in the bareknuckle days, making the very valid point that if you go around throwing big power shots at cheek bones and foreheads, you are liable to break your hands. Beaumont emphasizes the jab even more so than conventional boxing does, and preaches measured, tactical aggression. The other point is how to convert the sport’s many fouls into effective street techniques.
On top of the practical advice for converting boxing into streetfighting, Beaumont explores the fundamentals of boxing, from stance to movement to defense to punching, in some detail. His style of writing and source material carries the reader back to the old school, and the text is as useful for working on the fundamentals of boxing for sport as it is for boxing for real.
The book is not without it’s flaws. For instance, it is woefully short on illustrations. Even so, I rate Ned Beaumont’s Championship Streetfighting as must-read material for any serious student of the Sweet Science.
