 Hi everybody! As we sometimes like to take a look at different historical events here at the Marshal Arts, I thought this would be a fun nugget to chew on. This is, uh, what is supposedly the oldest recorded footage of a boxing match, possibly even the oldest recording footage of a sporting event at all. This is actually a clip from a film from 1894, and the film was called Corbett and Courtney before the Kinetograph. So basically for those who are unaware, the Kinetograph is one of the earliest versions of the motion picture camera. Basically a camera which took pictures, but it took them in quick kinetic motion. To get a movie picture at the end. These films were played back in the Kinetoscope, which you've probably seen these in old time movies or whatever, but they're the boxes that had the little eye viewers that you'd stick your head in there, and you'd watch little like flip book movies or films that are about one minute long. So that's what this film was produced for. That's why it's called Corbett and Courtney before the Kinetograph. So first, let's just get this out of the way. Let's acknowledge the butt of the joke and turn the other cheek. This footage is actually a specially set up match between boxers James J Corbett and Peter Courtney. Now Corbett was a beloved box figure back in his day, while Peter Courtney wasn't that well known and he was the underdog in his match. But they set this up specifically for this project. So basically, since the Kinetoscope could only play back short clips, this project was set up in six different clips. So basically the match was set up as six rounds, one minute each round, and the movies were simply titled first round, second round, third round, etc. This film was produced by the Edison Manufacturing Company way back in the early days of film, well before Hollywood and the film industry moved over to California. This clip is what is surviving of the whole project. It is just a fragment from round one, and it is supposedly the only surviving piece of the project. Now, celluloid film does not last very long if it's not properly preserved or even sometimes restored. So it's actually amazing that we still have this much of the movie over 120 years later. That's pretty mind blowing. But you know, you come across this footage, there's so much old footage out there, especially with the martial arts. I find it interesting to go back and kind of look at it and see how things have changed. I mean, here we have this boxing clip, and you look at this boxing clip, and it's cool to go, oh wow, look how old that is, and acknowledge its historical relevance. But then you're like, look how much boxing has changed since then. I mean, I don't think any of you can argue that looking at this is very different than what boxing looks like today. And that fascinates me the most about this is that that time gap, how have we evolved, how have the martial arts evolved? Even boxing being a sport, just look at it. Look at their tactics are so different, it's much looser, it's less disciplined. I mean, compared to today, techniques are tighter, they're faster, they're more powerful. The techniques and the whole training is very, very different. And how does that compare to other martial arts and other sports altogether? So I look at projects like this, and it just amazes me at how we always find a way as a human race to always up our ability and push our boundaries. You go back 100 years with the Olympics, or look at the old black and white footage of the Olympics and see who was winning the gold medals. They wouldn't even qualify today. I mean, you know, acrobatic would do a flip or two, and that's it, they'd win the gold medal. But look what they do now. So over time, we always find a way to go that one step better, one step better, one step better. And it kind of begs the question is how far can we go? How far can we push ourselves? And it's the same thing in the martial arts. You look at the old martial arts footage compared to today, and you can usually see a difference. I know it came across this that it was something you guys would appreciate as we do a lot of historical elements here. And there's a lot of old films we want to look at, and this seemed like a good phone to start with. Thank you so much for watching. And we're in a whole new year, and we ask, please be sure to support us on Patreon. This will allow us to bring you better topics and stuff that we want to actually bring you instead of being a slave to the Google algorithm. Because we would rather focus on topics that you guys are asked for and want to see versus what YouTube says we should do for search results. So you guys have been great so far. Please help us bring more better material to you. Please like, subscribe, and we'll see you next week.