In the semi's we wore headgear, mouthpieces, shirts, and 12+ ounce gloves. It sucked.
In the pros, they go without headgear, mouthpieces, go shirtless, and use 6-8 ounce gloves, as I recall. Some use 4 ounce gloves, I think.
Headgear isn't the issue, at least not up front: it's the weight of the gloves.
The safest boxing is old style, rope ring w/sawdust, barefisted fighting...though it's too brutal and notoriously bloody. Lots of scarring, etc. Gruesome...but it's safer because you only punch hard enough to break your hand. Let a guy wrap a pillow around his hand...or fight with a 12 ounce, or 16 ounce glove...and he'll throw meatballs from the ground up.
I say - before examining making headgear the mandatory protective wear for pros - first mandate that all gloves for pros be 2-4 ouncers. It'll be like a piece of leather the thickness of corrugated cardboard over the fists. With that being the case, you can be reasonably sure that guys will punch and not swing like windmills, at least not without hurting themselves as well.
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