Hypothesis: Boxing is More Dangerous With Padded Gloves

I tried (somewhat unsuccessfully) to persuade several people over the Christmas break that boxing is actually more dangerous because of the mandatory padded gloves boxers wear. It's all simple economics: how the role of incentives, and specifically how making a person safer may inadvertently put others at greater risk, affects behavior. Chalk this one up to another instance of the Peltzman Effect.

My theory is simple. Take two objects made from human bone and slam them against one another. Half the time, object A will break; half the time, object B will break. Now, take object A and change its shape into a dome. The geometry of a dome makes object A stronger and less likely to break when struck against object B, despite both A and B being made from the same hard substance (i.e., bone). Now, when B strikes A, B will break more often than A. This is the situation I suspect a person finds himself in when fighting bare-fisted. Head and face strikes are "expensive," in relative terms, because the person striking will more likely break his fist if he strikes his opponent's face or head. As such, he must do so rarely, and when he does so, he must use techniques that will minimize the likelihood of a broken fist. But on average, because his hands are unprotected, he cannot repeatedly strike the face or head without expecting to break his hand.

And this is a problem, because one of the ways a person can defeat his opponent is if he can cause a concussion in the opponent, which will happen if he strikes the face or head hard enough to jostle and bruise the brain. But, the force has to be very high. As such, he must be sparing in those strikes, because while they have a very high return, they also have a very high risk factor too. If he fails to cause the concussion before he breaks his fist, then his opponent will have the kind of advantage that will almost certainly guarantee he will be severely injured and ultimately lose the fight.

In comes padding for the hands (i.e., boxing gloves). Why do we pad the gloves? You might think it is to protect the opponent's head, but I suspect what it ultimately does is protect the striker's hands from the risk of fracture from a head-shot. Now, object A when hit with object B has the higher probability of breaking/concussion, because object B is padded enough to minimize that risk of fracture. But, what is the behavioral impact? By reducing the "price" of a head-shot (ie, lower risk, holding return constant), the boxer will strategically target the head and face more often with his punches. That is, padding the gloves results in more strikes to the head because of reduced risk of fracture of the striker's hand, and ultimately will lead to more concussions than would exist in a bare-fisted fight. This is of course a "longrun" result. When played out by two rational boxers, boxing gloves puts both boxers at more risk of longterm neurological damage.

This is at least my theory.