Talk:Marquess of Queensberry Rules

No hugging allowed? Really?
Every fight I've ever seen was about half hugging. Taco Deposit | Talk-o Deposit 01:46, Sep 24, 2004 (UTC)
 * Well no hugging is the text of the rules... the interpretation is left up to the referee, i suppose. Anyway, wikipedia attempts to convey only the text of the rules, not their application. So i don't see that anything should be done about this. Fudoreaper 04:08, July 18, 2005 (UTC)

I'd imagine we call this "clinching" today, and we still use the term "bear hug". Wschart (talk) 02:30, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

Marquess vs Marquis
An anoymous editor from 69.204.28.126 changed the word Marquess with Marquis. Also, doing a google search for 'marquess of queensberry rules' versus 'marquis of quessnsbury rules' reveals marquess to be the more auhtoritative.

The editor then went back and changed queensberry to queensbury. This is also incorrect, and i believe the editor was doing this out of malice, in order to poision the factual correctness of Wikipedia.

Therefore, i have reverted both series of edits. Fudoreaper 04:05, July 18, 2005 (UTC)


 * It's worth mentioning that in Perfect Dark, one of the cheat modes is called "Marquis of Queensbury Rules" - this would be the pop culture reference that familiarized me, personally, with this concept, and the spelling I originally searched for when I was looking this up. So it may not be entirely malicious. A redirect or something may be in order. --Myrkabah 20:02, 15 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Poisoning the factual correctness of Wikipedia? Really? (Also, I will see join you ITT Tech PR persons in Hell.) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Veecort (talk • contribs) 18:19, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

I came back to sign (with the four tildes) my comment. It has been "Autosigned by SineBot." (Also, I figured "see" is wrong because I imagined us burning in hell and we didn't have any eyeballs because they had been consumed by the eternal hellfire.)Veecort (talk) 19:21, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

'Marquess' is the standard term in modern English, as used for example by the House of Lords. It corresponds to the French 'Marquis', as in the Marquis de Sade. In medieval times spelling was fluid, and there are plenty of old English uses of 'Marquis', but by the late 19th century, which is the relevant time for Queensberry, 'Marquess' was standard. Curiously, the wife of a Marquess is called a Marchioness, maybe because 'Marquessess' would be a tongue-twister.86.180.93.158 (talk) 22:09, 16 January 2013 (UTC)


 * But it would be so much funnier. I'm glad this explanation is here. It should not be archived because the issue will come up perennially. Ileanadu (talk) 16:03, 10 March 2015 (UTC)

In a court of law
I have seen this term used in courts of law in cases that have nothing to due with boxing. For example the judge used the term in the Kitzmiller v. Dover trial though the court reporter misspelled it "Marcus of Queensbury". This term is almost certainly an analogy to the boxing rules though. If I understand it correctly from my Googling it basically says that even though the lawyers is supposed to do what they can for their client, there are limits to what they can do since they must live within the rules required of them as officers of the court. See this for example. If there is a lawyer around, this might be worth a look. MichaelSH 04:08, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

Popular Usage
To indicate "playing by the rules"?

See the following exchange in James Baker's memoirs:


 * President and Senator Clinton soon followed. He stopped on the way down, motioned me from my seat, and whispered, “You were good in Florida. Really good.”


 * After the ceremony, he stopped again. “I told those people that if they continued to play by the Marquess of Queensberry rules, you were gonna beat their brains out,” he said sotto voice (sic).

(Source: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,11069-2486989,00.html )

Dehbach 22:00, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

Sports Night Episode #34 - The Cut Man Cometh
This text was referred to in the excellent TV show Sports Night, Episode 34 (Season 2, Episode 11) titled 'The Cut Man Cometh'

Added by Mark A. Donohoe of Succasunna, NJ on 12/26/2005

Dates conflict in article
According to the artical as it stands, It appears that James Mace won a competition in 1861 under rules that were not devised until 1865 or published in 1867. Obviously, something is not correct. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by FletchB (talk • contribs) 22:31, 20 February 2007 (UTC).

Springs in the shoes?
One of the rules prohibits shoes with springs--can tsomeone explain what the heck that means? 16:25, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Does sound kind of odd, and I bet that if that rule weren't inplace we could have some very intertaining commentary. "And Buster Douglas is about to take Tyson out! but wait, Tyson is bouncing away like Tigger from Winnie The Pooh fame! Sproink, sproink, sproink" Seriously, to me that sounds kinda fishy, as there would be no basic assistance offered by a spring attached to the shoe; if anything, it would be a hinderance as it would make the fighter more apt to topple over from a lesser blow than it would normally take (Springs are squishy, you get a little off balanced and BLOP, down you go.) I'm going to see if there is a citation for the statement. I just checked thhis site out: http://iml.jou.ufl.edu/projects/Spring03/Bueneventura/rules.htm and it seems to be in full agreement with no spring powered boots or shoes. However, it seems like a verbatim quote of what is posted in the article, and could be a simple copy/paste job on the site from the article, the wording is very similar. My best guess; it isn't clever vandalism, and is most likely a real rule. Possibly sometime in the past a really heavy punch knocked a guy out while wearing some form of springs on his boots. The puncher ould most likely have knocked the guy out anyways, but the rule was made in the interest of fairness. I still see the losing fighter sproinking away from danger like Tigger, but that is just me.Rookie Rover 04:27, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

I believe it goes without saying that there are shoes with air in them. I have seen shoes with (what externally appear to be) springs in them. Perhaps the springs would aid in "bobbing and weaving" and "floating like a butterfly". Anyway, this appears to be an early form of a "no cyborgs" rule. (Also, stay strong my fellow victims of ITT ESI. There are more important things than money. Where'd that come from you ask.... It is all I think about. (I dream about it.) Every waking hour I ask, "How is it occurring so very, very, very, very, very (I believe the word is) blatantly." (No I don't know the answer.)))  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Veecort (talk • contribs) 19:50, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Jeremy Schaap, in Cinderella Man (Boston: Houghton, 2005, p.19) says that the rule reads "sprigs"; one sense of "sprig" in OED is "a small tapering tack with no head." I wonder if that's the correct reading. Tacks pointed outward would be a pretty insidious weapon in close quarters. Dropo59tx (talk) 01:02, 17 June 2008 (UTC)
 * If it really should read "sprigs", then the rule would actually be a prohibition on cleated or spiked athletic shoes. Such shoes would not only be a danger unto themselves, they would provide superior footing for throwing a hard, fight-ending punch. Austinmayor (talk) 16:02, 13 July 2009 (UTC)


 * It's not about external spikes or cleats (they're already forbidden specifically), it's about the way the boots are to be made. The boots must be sewn (or today, glued) together, rather than nailed (or screwed).
 * In Queensberry's day, many of the fighters would be physical labourers competing in what were basically their work clothes. Their boots would likely be heavy labourer's boots, with their soles nailed on (and possibly studded with hobnails). A worn sole wears down and allows the nails, or "sprigs" to protrude. There's no point in a rule forbidding deliberate spikes if boots can still develop injurious spikes through either accidental wear, or by covert use of cobbler's nails.
 * A "sprig" is a tapered nail without a head - still used for glazing. They're used for bootmaking because nails or tacks with heads become useless when worn enough for the thin head to come off a parallel shank. A tapered spring though still grips, no matter how shortened by wear. Andy Dingley (talk) 14:12, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

would we have any access to the original texts? because Sprigs sounds to be a more likely rule in all practicality, should we temporarily put in a citation that the rule could be no sprigs or omit the rule until it is verified? Aryeonos207.233.27.154 (talk) 21:04, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

Rule 9 states that a damaged glove should be replaced. Can this be done during the interval between rounds, thus extending the interval to the possible benefit of a boxer still recovering. Cooper's bout with Cassius Clay in which Clay's Second allegedly damaged his boxer's glove to give him more recovery time between rounds refers. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.243.41.180 (talk) 18:04, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

Why are the rules of modern boxing here? The text says "here's how the Marquess of Queensberry Rules differ from modern rules", but what follows isn't a comparison or list of differences; it's just a summary of modern boxing rules. Why should this summary be here, rather than on page about modern boxing? Andylatto (talk) 05:21, 24 November 2016 (UTC)