Long before fighters wore gloves as standard fare, boxers used makeshift protection ranging from a quartered orange to cotton to protect their teeth and lips. In the early-1890s, an English dentist named Woolf Krause fashioned a crude shield made from strips of gutta-percha (a rubbery sap) that was placed in a fighter's mouth and held in place by the fighter clenching his teeth.
In 1902, Jack Marles, another London dentist, improved upon Krause's creation by using a more durable rubber to create a reusable gumshield for boxers to wear during training sessions.
That brings the narrative to Ted "Kid" Lewis, arguably the best pound-for-pound fighter to come out of England. Lewis was snaggle-toothed. When he fought, the edges of his teeth frequently cut his lips. Some sources say that Lewis wore a mouthpiece in combat for the first time in 1913. Others place the day of reckoning on Aug. 31, 1915, when he dethroned world welterweight champion Jack Britton in Boston.
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Lewis and Britton fought each other an extraordinary 19 times between 1915 and 1921. Just prior to their final encounter, referee Dick Nugent was giving the fighters their instructions in ring center at Madison Square Garden when Britton's manager, Dan Morgan, objected to Lewis' use of a mouthpiece as an illegal foreign substance. The New York State Athletic Commission chief inspector concurred, and Lewis was forced to do battle without his mouthpiece en route to a 15-round unanimous-decision loss.
"It takes a while for these things to become accepted," boxing historian Mike Silver notes. "Initially, traditionalists opposed mouthpieces the same way they opposed the introduction of gloves."
As late as 1927, Jack Dempsey and Gene Tunney engaged in their historic "long count" bout with neither man wearing a mouthpiece. But by the 1930s, common sense had prevailed and mouthpieces were standard equipment in boxing.
A well-designed mouthpiece protects a fighter's teeth, lessens the danger to surrounding soft tissue, and helps guard against jaw fractures. Uppercuts, head butts, and elbows cause the most damage to a fighter's mouth. That's where the mouthpiece is of greatest service.
There's a school of thought that a well-fitted mouthpiece also guards against concussions by redistributing some of the force from a blow that would otherwise impact upon the brain. But that has yet to be proven by empirical data.
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If a fighter breathes through his nose like he's supposed to and exhales through his mouth, the mouthpiece won't interfere with breathing. If the fighter's nose is broken, things get more complicated.
A good mouthpiece covers all of a fighter's upper teeth as well as a portion of the upper gum and cradles the upper teeth. Occasionally, a fighter prefers a mouthpiece that covers his lower teeth as well, but experts believe that these mouthpieces offer no added protection.
Pat Burns trained Jermain Taylor from his first pro fight through two victories over Bernard Hopkins and has had extensive experience at every level of amateur and professional boxing.
"Every mouth is different," Burns says. "You shouldn't buy a mouthpiece off the shelf. It's not one size fits all. Or 10 sizes fit all. You go to a dentist who knows what he's doing and have him form-fit one to your teeth. First, he makes a mold like an orthodontist would when he's fitting you for braces. Then he pours a rubbery plastic into the mold, the fighter bites down on it, and it form-fits to the fighter's mouth. The dentist pulls it out, files away the rough edges, and cleans it up. The whole thing should cost under $200, and you can get replacement mouthpieces for $20 each. The fighter owns the mold so he should take it with him. I always tell my fighters to have at least three mouthpieces and they should never all be in the same bag.
"But some fighters, particularly amateurs, don't have the money to buy a good mouthpiece," Burns continues. "And it's like a lot of things that fighters and people in general do. They cut corners. So they buy a generic rubber mouthpiece off the shelf in a store for a couple of dollars, boil it, stick it in their mouth, and try to reshape it to fit. And then they pay a much bigger price."
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Trainer Freddie Roach concurs, noting, "When I trained Marlon Starling, he insisted on fighting with an 80-cent mouthpiece that he bought in some store. Probably, it would cost $3 today. It was crazy. But Marlon was too cheap to go to a dentist and get it done right. One time, he fought a title fight against Lloyd Honeyghan [in Las Vegas in 1989] and got hit hard in the mouth in the first round. After the round, I took his mouthpiece out and a tooth came with it. But Marlon won the fight and he never did get a good mouthpiece."
"I had one mouthpiece that I loved," Roach adds. "A dentist in Boston made it for me, and it fit better than any mouthpiece I ever had. I lost it after a fight for the New England title in Boston Garden. First I lost the fight to a kid from Rhode Island. And then the mouthpiece got lost in the post-fight shuffle of who had what. I felt like I'd lost my best friend."
There's virtually no state athletic commission regulation of mouthpieces. At best, in the dressing room before a fight, an inspector asks if the trainer has his fighter's mouthpiece and a back-up. A well-made mouthpiece should last through a year of fights and sparring in the gym. Most fighters opt for flesh-colored mouthpieces. Some like black, green-white-and-orange, or whatever. The one thing a fighter shouldn't do is have a red mouthpiece because, subconsciously, the judges might think that he's bleeding from the mouth.
People rarely notice a fighter's mouthpiece except when it's knocked out of his mouth or something else goes awry.
In 2003, Diego Corrales went into a fight against Joel Casamayor with a mouthpiece that didn't fit properly. By the end of Round 6, the rough edges combined with Casamayor's punches had caused a deep laceration on Corrales' lower lip, another laceration that went almost completely through his right cheek, and more cuts inside his mouth. Swallowing blood was the least of his problems. That would have resulted in nothing more serious than vomiting. Inhaling the blood could have caused temporary choking. More ominously, if the laceration on Corrales's lip had worsened, it might have resulted in a permanent deformity. Ring doctor Margaret Goodman stopped the fight.
Two years later, on May 7, 2005, Corrales was involved in what Showtime commentator Al Bernstein calls "the ultimate mouthpiece story."
Corrales was fighting Jose Luis Castillo at the Mandalay Bay Events Center in Las Vegas. By the middle rounds, Corrales' left eye was hideously swollen and he could no longer see right hands coming as the fighters traded horrific blows with abandon. Then, 25 seconds into Round 10, Castillo decked Corrales with a left hook. Diego's mouthpiece was knocked out by the blow. Twenty-three seconds after he hit the canvas, it was back in and the action resumed. Another left hook put him down for the second time. At that point, Corrales looked like a thoroughly beaten fighter. He removed his mouthpiece and got to his feet very slowly. "The first time it came out, it came out by itself," he later acknowledged. "The second time, I took it out to breathe."
In days of old, when a fighter's mouthpiece came out during a round, the action continued until the bell rang. Now the referee bends over, throws the mouthpiece toward the fighter's corner, and waits for a lull in the action to instruct that it be reinserted.
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Spitting out the mouthpiece as Corrales did has long been seen as a sign of surrender. But instead of ending the fight, referee Tony Weeks deducted a point from Diego and led him to his corner where trainer Joe Goossen reinserted the mouthpiece. Twenty-eight seconds after the knockdown, the action resumed.
Then everything changed.
"Castillo dropped his left hand to throw a right," Corrales said later, "and my right hand got there first. That set the whole thing off."
Corrales' right was followed by a barrage of punches. And suddenly, Castillo was back against the ropes, taking punches, glassy-eyed, his head wobbling like it was on a bobble-head doll. At 2:06 of the round, Weeks leapt between the fighters and stopped the fight.
Afterward, Bob Arum (Castillo's promoter) complained, "I never heard of a rule that, when you're knocked down and throw your mouthpiece away, the action stops. That's crazy. He pulled it out and threw it away to get more time. Either you disqualify him or you make him fight without the mouthpiece."
There are no optional timeouts in boxing. But Weeks let Corrales call one.
Two images of Muhammad Ali and mouthpieces linger in memory. One was very public. In Round 13 of Ali-Frazier III in Manila, a sharp right hand sent Joe Frazier's mouthpiece flying into the crowd. The other image was hidden from public view and dates to Ali's fight against Ken Norton in San Diego when Muhammad's jaw was broken in the second round.
Wali Muhammad (one of Ali's cornermen that afternoon) later recalled, "During fights, my job was, Angelo [Dundee] would take the mouthpiece out, hand it to me, and I’d wash the mouthpiece. That was particularly important if there was blood on it. A lot of fighters have their mouthpiece put back in without cleaning. Then if they get hit, they swallow their own blood. So I would always take the mouthpiece and wash it in good cold water, ice water. I’d leave a little water on it so it would be moist and then I’d give it back to Angelo. Against Norton, each round I was taking out the mouthpiece and there was more and more blood on it. I could see it was a lot of blood after each round because my bucket with the water and ice in it became red. In every other fight, between rounds I’d take the mouthpiece out and put it in the bucket and there was just slobber on it. But here, after each round, I had to shake the mouthpiece to get all the blood out of it into the water.”
There are also two indelible images of Mike Tyson where mouthpieces are concerned. The first is part of boxing lore: Iron Mike on the canvas groping for his mouthpiece as he was counted out against Buster Douglas. Seven years later, Tyson's mouthpiece was the subject of a more sordid chapter in boxing history when he spit it out in order to bite off part of Evander Holyfield's ear.
Los Angeles Times columnist Jim Murray called that incident "boxing's lowest moment" and observed, "There are many things wrong with the manly art of self-defense, but we always thought those mouthpieces were in there to protect the teeth of the wearer, not the ear of an opponent."
Thomas Hauser's new email address is [email protected]. His most recent book – Protect Yourself at All Times – was published by the University of Arkansas Press. In 2004, the Boxing Writers Association of America honored Hauser with the Nat Fleischer Award for career excellence in boxing journalism.