2005, Jake Shannon, www.scientificwrestling.com

Compiled, Edited and Conceived by Jake Shannon

These two volumes are conceptually a single work. There is a nice brief history of boxing at the beginning of Volume Two, which is better than most of what has appeared in boxing histories released by mainstream publishers.

There are picture galleries, newspaper clippings, lists of champions, and excerpts from other media. However, the meat of this collection is the five boxing manuals published between 1820 and 1910, long out of print and having fallen into the ‘public domain’. Some of these are very rare, and I had to read them at a private library that is no longer open to the public. So Mister Shannon did us a huge service by finding and preserving these ancient documents.

My one complaint with this sourcebook [a role-playing term which really defines this work well] is a lack of attribution [dates, collection locations, publishing history, etc.] for the photos, and manuals. The author pretty much breaks every rule of scholarship there is. However, he is a wrestling coach, not some twerp from a university, so he gets a pass.

Thanks Jake, for taking the time and expense to put this thing together for us. It is an invaluable resource. I bought mine in 2006 through an ad in Black Belt Magazine. Try Mister Shannon’s scientific wrestling site for a reprint.