“And so… I used to box all the time till I got my ears beat down one time. I got up to win the Bantamweight Championship of the Three Falls Cities and then in a match. And then I thought no one could whip me, and a little boy from… Billy Frick from Huntington, West Virginia, like to killed me one night. So that taken it all out of me. But I’d had fifteen professional fights and won them all. So then, he sure fixed me on the other one though. Ha.” “The Resurrection Of Lazarus” (51-0729A).

 

“If I do a little whistling like while I’m speaking… All of you know that I used to be a pugilist. I used to box. I had three state championships. Never lost but one fight in my life. And I smiled at a guy one time when he—he hit at me and missed me, and he smacked me right in the mouth. And it knocked two teeth loose there, and broke the corner off one. And just the other day, I lost the filling out of it. So I—I do a little bit of whistling at times.” “And Thy Seed Shall Possess The Gate Of His Enemies” (61-0213).

 

“And I used to box. And there was a fellow named here in this city. The poor fellow drinks very bad now. One of his boys is on the police force. Smith, George Smith, they call him, “Six-second Smith.” He went to training me for boxing, when we had… ’fore the Golden Gloves started. We was out here at the government. And in that, why, he was the roughest person I ever seen. He’d just hit me, and I’d just go winding through the air. And I come back. I said, “You don’t have to be so rough about it. See?” I said, “You knock the breath out of me.”

He said, “I tell you, Billy,” said, “no matter how well trained you are, and how much athletic experience you have, and how strong you are, for your size, or anything like that,” said, “a lick stops the blood when hits like that.” [Brother Branham clapped his hands once—Ed.] And said, “You might hate me now, but when you get up there in the ring, yourself,” said, “you’ll appreciate it.” Said, “Your body builds up that, to come back quick. If you get hit, you’ll just fall over, and you lay there and take a count. But if your body is built and can stand the licks,” said, “then, when you hit it, hard lick hits you,” said, “then when you…you can come back quick,” said, “back to your feet again. Get knocked out of the ring, jump back in.” He had just got through knocking me plumb out of the ring. So he said, “You have to just do that. See?” And he liked to killed me. He was about thirty or forty pounds heavier than I was. And he could…He was a fighter and I was just a student, so he was almost killing me. He said, “But you’ll appreciate that when you get in the ring.” I found out that was the truth.” “Wisdom Versus Faith” (62-0401).

 

All of the above admissions of his are significant because they collide directly with the very “commission” he claimed to have received from the “Angel of the Lord” when he was seven years old in which he was specifically instructed to “never defile his body in any way”, as follows,

 

“But I was seven years old; I was packing water from a well, and a voice spoke to me out of a bush, as a whirlwind in a bush, said, “Don’t never smoke, or drink, or defile your body in any way. There’ll be a work to do when you get older.” “Gifts And Callings Are Without Repentance” (50-0300).
 

“I remember the time (many of you’ll read it in book and so forth), how the Angel of the Lord appeared to me down, told me never to smoke or to drink or defile my body in any way, that there’d be a work for me to do when I got older: appeared to me in a bush, and how they have misunderstood it.” “My Life Story” (50-0820A).
 

Without question, “boxing” is no less harmful and “defiling” to the human body than “smoking” and “drinking,” In fact, William Branham was likely to have suffered bruising and damage to his brain when he was hit in the head,

 

“When a boxer gets hit in the head the brain smacks against the hard skull, causing bruising and damage.”[3]

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In addition, he was susceptible to all of these most common injuries as a boxer:

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• Concussion

• Facial injuries: cuts, broken bones in the nose

• Wrist sprain

• Hand fractures

• Finger sprain

• Boxer’s knuckle

• Bennett’s fracture

• Dislocated shoulder

• Back pain

• Neck pain

• Achilles tendinopathy 

• Strain injuries in the shoulders, neck, back, knees, calves and feet.[4]

 

When he was a boxer in the 1920s, the “Golden Gloves” competition started being held.[5]

He admitted to fighting in that competition and winning “professional fights”, as follows,

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​“When I was a young boy, I was fighting in Golden Gloves, and then from that went into professional fighting, and won fifteen straight professional fights.” “From That Time” (60-0302).

 

Before the end of that decade, “head injuries” in the sport were so extensive that “about half of all professional fighters” like William Branham had them,

 

“The initial estimate was that about half of all professional fighters had brain injuries in 1928.”[6]

 

As a “professional boxer”, he was actually “much more at risk” of head injuries than “amateur boxers” for the following reasons,

 

“Professional boxers are much more at risk than their amateur counterparts. In professional boxing, athletes wear no protective head gear, fight significantly more rounds and experience harder hits. In a professional match, the goal is to knock you out, not score points.”[6]

 

He admitted to fighting more rounds as a “professional boxer”, as follows,

 

“And then I got to getting up to where I could fight eight and ten round fights. I won fifteen straight professional fights.” “Faith Without Works Is Dead” (50-0822).

 

Based on all of the above, it is abundantly clear that William Branham was subjecting himself to a variety of boxing-related injuries as a “professional boxer” and therefore could not have been following an “angel's” commission or instruction to not “defile his body in any way.”

 

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Footnotes:

[1]  WMB said, “And then I got to getting up to where I could fight eight and ten round fights. I won fifteen straight professional fights.” “Faith Without Works Is Dead” (50-0822). “And I used to be a boxer. I had the undefeated title of Bantamweight Championship of the three states, so—and know what grip is. “Expectation” (54-0220).

[2]  WMB said, “At the same time, I was training to be a boxer. Which, I did win the Bantamweight Championship, and was going up for the world championship, and I give it—and I give it up for the Gospel.” “My Life Story” (55-0626A).

[3]  Source: https://www.livestrong.com/article/541876-negative-effects-of-boxing/

[4]  Source: http://fittoplay.org/sports/boxing1/the-most-common-injuries/

[5]  “The Golden Gloves began in 1923 at a boxing event in the Chicago Stadium. William Branham would have been fourteen at the time, according to the birthdate that he used in his life stories. (Sixteen according to the birthdate his parents claimed, 1907).” Source: https://william-branham.org/site/blog/20151118_george_smith_-_fighting_for_blood

[6]  Source: https://www.livestrong.com/article/541876-negative-effects-of-boxing/

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