Mailbag! How do boxers drink with their mouthguards in?

Q. How do boxers drink while wearing mouthguards?

A. They usually take them out.

Especially in between rounds of a fight, the corner will pull the mouthguard out so the fighter can get back into this breathing rhythm and use the rest period to calm down.

Even keeping the mouthguard in doesn't generally present too much of a problem for drinking as many fighters use a single-mouthguard that fits onto the top teeth and allows you much more room to open your mouth than a double mouthguard.

Fighters shouldn't be drinking a lot in between rounds anyway - the water will rarely be absorbed quickly enough to make a difference in the fight and getting waterlogged in between rounds is generally a bad idea. Just "wetting the whistle" is generally enough to keep from getting cottonmouth which is just one more thing that could distract a fighter during a match.

You'll note that when a fighter drinks in between rounds, it's not out of a cup, but generally a cornerman squeezes the water out of a squeeze bottle, as it's awfully hard to grab something with those big gloves on.

This question actually came as a search term someone used to find the site. Got any questions for Sifu Z, Doc Dill or the rest of the WWNHH crew? Mail 'em in.

Flickr photo by nogoodreason