I was viewing a FaceBook feed on a friend’s computer in which a knowledgeable martial artist commented that the reason why boxers wear boxing wraps is that they don’t know how to punch and would break their wrists without them, and also that the boxing glove causes the punch to land incorrectly on the front knuckles, stressing the wrist and necessitating wraps.

A wrap is not a cast and does not prevent injury, but rather minimizes injury and treats it as it occurs with pre-applied compression.

The boxing glove, which is really a weapon developed from a training device, becomes a weapon system when paired with wrapped—or better yet, taped—hands. I have eaten pro quality punches from bare knuckles, MMA gloves, kenpo gloves, foam karate hands, bag gloves, and boxing gloves, and would have to say that the absolute worse is getting hit with a wrapped and gloved hand. It is like getting hit with a pugil stick. The shock compares to a karate kick, and I have eaten real pro karate kicks, having been launched up to10 feet into the third row of an open ring.

Cheap sparring gloves and some poorly designed ring gloves will demand an incorrect front knuckle punch, making the wrap or taping and absolute essential to minimize spraining. There is also a kind of jab that is thrown with the front knuckles, with its only purpose being to blind the opponent. Ali favored this ‘blind’ jab.

Most pros fight with gloves that are shockingly light, curved to permit a true knuckle landing—see the enlarged middle knuckle on top fighters like Roy Jones Junior. Punchers like Krusher Kovalev—this guy is a psycho the way he compresses his gloves in the dressing room like a serial killer sharpening his skinning knife—pack their gloves by pressing them against hard surfaces back stage, turning them into clubs.

The glove importantly allows the boxer to hit the skull without smashing his hand—although some guys still break their hands!—as, it is against the rules for a boxer to slap the head, which is what he typically does in a real altercation, and what bare knuckle and ancient boxers were known to do. The ability to contact the head with the glove—since the gloved hand cannot be slapped with, particularly not with the thumb-attached glove—enables the boxer to maintain target control without damaging his hands. Again, in a bare knuckle fight he slaps, checks, and cuffs, just like Ray Rice did to his wife, and does not let a hard punch go until the jaw or nose is open.

The purpose of the wraps or tape [gauze is used to pad the knuckles in competition] for competition and sparring are:

1. To assure a snug fitting glove

2. To prevent or minimize wrist sprains if the glove is poorly designed and or improperly prepared [like at an amateur meet were gloves are bagged and shared or at an MMA school with junky gloves]

3. Keeping the pinkie knuckle or first knuckle from separating from the rest of the knuckles if a one knuckle punch is accidentally landed, which happens, as things are rarely perfect in boxing. That dude is trying to move his brain out of the way after all.

In the gym the general purpose of wraps is to limit chronic wrist complaints from the act of striking hard objects thousands of times per night. This is done to develop intuitive targeting, with mistakes made—hopefully—on the bag and learned from, rather than in the ring. However, if one is not properly wrapping his hands those mistakes on the bag will cause lasting damage.

Once a new boxer has hit the bags at less than full power for six months or so, with wrists wrapped, he will have developed his wrist—having avoided and minimized injury through technique, attention to form, and the wrist wrap—well enough to permit harder hitting. Eventually a boxer will be able to hit the heavy bag without damaging his wrists without the wrap, although this is not advised as the bag spins. Use a board or matted wall to check your wrists.

Most people do not realize that the wrap is primarily a wrist conditioning aid. If you have bad form even a good wrap will not save your wrist. And, if you are a sloppy puncher your wrapping technique probably sucks too. Wrist conditioning is of great importance to the boxer, and his wrap is a training aid, not an injury prevention device or cast. The wrap on a boxer’s wrist is like the knee or elbow brace on a basketball player, a buffer and support system for an overused joint.

I use a specialized wrapping technique for bracing my flexor tendons—which are shot after stabbing scores of muscular men over thousands of rounds of sparring and competition—for stick and blunt knife fighting.

The primary purpose of wraps is for striking equipment, particularly the unnaturally shaped heavy bag, which is far more dangerous to the wrist than the human body.

The heavy bag is harder than any human body.

The heavy bag breaks and buckles—often on a chain suspension system—which sends a shock wave up into the wrist.

Cylindrical bags have an unnatural curve which will turn the wrist.

Heavy bags swing, imparting torque to the wrist of an intensity rarely encountered in sparring and fights.

Just like the human body has parts that should not be punched so does every bag. However, when a real fistfight starts one cannot be certain how the antagonist will move. Likewise, when tired, and pushing the pace, the boxer working the bag might catch it at a bad angle, and when that happens, having the wrist wrapped minimizes the damage. Where surviving an attack will only require one to five punches, and winning a pro fight will require 100 times that many, training for that fight requires tens of thousands of punches sunk into various dense targets.

Only a fool would push his wrists to this level without precautions. Indeed, in the *bare knuckle era, most boxers avoided hitting anything but each other because the bags were so damaging to the hand…until the warps were reinvented, for the ancient Greeks had used them, and they boxed for a thousand years.

*Billy Edwards complained in his 1882 boxing manual that the heavy bag was too damaging to the wrist because of the way it swung and buckled, and that most pros avoided it. That heavy bag only weighed 10 pounds!

If you are interested in how boxers actually ply their art, as opposed to the impressions people from other arts glean from watching an MMA workout, checkout American Fist at the link below.