These simple strips of cloth are at the core of the sport—one of its ancient, silent mysteries. This appeared first in Jim Lommasson’s book Shadow Boxers in 2005.
Apro boxer of my acquaintance is attracted to street brawls. He always yanks his shirt off before jumping in, which is only sensible, he says, because the other guy could grab or choke him with it. Besides, he can whip the shirt around his left hand, grab it tight, and have some protection from the clash of bone against bone.
You see the same principle at work in every boxing gym. Some lean character in sweats snaps out two long coils of cloth and methodically wraps one around each hand. The ribbon is wound over the palm and back of the hand and up the wrist. The knuckles are thickly padded, but the fingers stay bare. Every boxer in the gym carefully swaddles both hands before starting work. Gloves are slipped on over the wraps for sparring or hitting the bag. At the end of the workout, the sweat-stained wraps are peeled and rolled neatly or wadded into gym bags headed for the laundry.
The core dilemma of fist fighting is that the human hand isn’t designed as a weapon. The metacarpal bones radiating from wrist to knuckles are too fragile to withstand a blow delivered with the full force of the body. Skin tears. Wrists and knuckles are wrenched apart. Bones snap.
The ancient Egyptians recognized the problem. Images of boxers on Egyptian urns from about 6,000 B.C. show men with hands wrapped well up the forearms. The Greek Olympians wrapped their hands, and added gloves.
Modern gym wraps are cloth strips two inches wide and nine or twelve feet long. They come in various colors and fabrics, some stretchy, some heavy cotton, some thin like gauze. Every trainer has his own method of wrapping, but the basic problem is always the same: cushion the knuckles, support the thumb and the thin metacarpals, and fuse the wrist in a straight line. Wrap it too tight and the circulation is cut off, making the hand numb. Too loose and it slips, leaving the hand vulnerable.
Even the best wrapping job doesn’t provide complete protection. Delicate hands can end a boxer’s career early and in pain. An amateur I once knew fought and won the National Golden Gloves while the bones of the back of one hand were buckled in a lump like a brooding tarantula beneath the skin. People always wanted to shake his hand, but he would offer only a limp clasp before pulling away. “A lot of guys, when they hear you’re a fighter, they want to give you the big macho squeeze to prove they’re tough,” he told me. “They can really hurt you.” Since then I’ve noticed that most boxers have gentle handshakes, and some avoid shaking altogether. Even a strong hand can get tender and arthritic from years of abuse.
That’s why, when you walk into a gym today, just as in ancient Greece, one of the first things you’re taught is to wrap your hands. A trainer does it at first, explaining as he goes, so you can learn to do it for yourself. For actual bouts the rules specify thin gauze wraps and surgical adhesive tape in precise lengths. The coach or trainer does the important wrapping for a fight. The boxer sits, usually straddling a chair, extending one hand at a time and responding to orders: “Spread your fingers more. Grip. Too tight?” It can take as much as half an hour to do the job properly.
Trainers use this quiet time to give last minute instructions and assurance. The intricate web of tape and gauze transforms a sensitive, dexterous and uniquely human organ into a bludgeon. It’s a meditative process, a ritual change of identity, repeated every time a boxer enters a gym or steps into the ring. Whatever brand of anxious mortal sits down in that chair, a fighter stands up.