Friends who often watch fighting games or NBA games must have noticed that athletes on the court hold a colorful object in their mouths. Some people don’t know what it is. It is indispensable in high-intensity competitions. Equipment – sports mouthguards. I remember I saw a news some time ago. In an MMA competition “Wulin Cage Match”, Chinese player Asker Bai knocked out nine of his opponent’s teeth with a violent blow, and the teeth fell out together with the mouthguard. Down, such a powerful blow, such a bloody scene, people have to be shocked, if there is no protection of the mouthguard, the consequences are incalculable.
Mouthguard, commonly known as braces, is also called gutta-percha. It is a kind of protective equipment that is frequently used in high-risk and strong confrontation sports. In addition to boxing and other fighting games, it also exists in sports such as rugby, basketball and snow sports. Don’t look at this little thing, it has a history of at least 70 years since its invention. Regarding the origin of mouthguards, it is probably in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The oral protective equipment used by early boxers can be said to be of all kinds, some stuffed with cotton or sponge in the mouth, as well as biting glue strips or even a small piece of wood. These various “mouthguards” must be The feeling in the mouth is indescribable, and the protective effect is not satisfactory. Until 1890, in London, England, a general dentist named Woolf Krause invented a kind of mouthguard made of resin, which required the wearer to use it. It sticks tightly to the teeth and is not very comfortable in the mouth, but it does a great job of preventing cracked lips in boxers.
Dr. Woolf Krause has a son, an amateur boxer named Phillip Krause. With the experience of frequent actual combat, he made improvements on the basis of his father’s invention, and changed the material of the mouthguard to slightly hard rubber. The appearance of this mouthguard should count as truly reusable oral protective gear. The first professional fighter to use a rubber mouthguard was Phillip Krause’s friend Ted Lewis. In the 1921 welterweight title fight, Lewis used rubber for the first time. Quality mouthguards, but this kind of mouthguards did not get the attention of most people at that time. The time is 1927. In a boxing match, fighter Mike McTigue, who had been on the dominant side, had to give up the fight and voluntarily concede because his lips were cut and bleeding from a tooth. Since then, the mouthguard has been favored by more and more boxers, and it has really become popular since then.
