This will be something of a polemic addressed at the youtube generation who have yet to cease to amaze me with their ignorance. I think it’s fair to say that Aikido takes a bit of a bashing from these people; myths such as that Aikido teaches the catching of punches. This is a statement of astonishing ignorance.

At best boxing has been present in Japan for about 150 years and I think it’s fairly certain that it had zero influence on the classical martial arts of Japan; punching a heavily armed man in armour just isn’t a viable strategy. So the creators of Aikido’s parent arts were not especially concerned about being punched.
They were, however, concerned about being stabbed. I’ve quoted Bushido Shoshinbu in another article to the effect that Japan was awash with weapons; if someone were going to attack you, it would be with a weapon. Tsuki, therefore, is not a punch; it is a stab with a weapon, there is nothing in Aikido that can be called a punch as such. That being the case we obviously do not teach the catching of punches.

Related to this myth is the myth that therefore Aikido cannot deal with boxing punches or with strikers in general. At this point I point to an art with similar roots to Aikido, Brazilian Jiu-jitsu. BJJ doesn’t really have a response to boxing punches either; instead they just enter in and take the striker down. Aikido does exactly the same but with two differences. Aikido enters in for the upper body and BJJ enters in for the lower body and Aikido can therefore remain standing whereas BJJ forces its exponents to bend over and therefore tends to go to the ground.
The basic strategy of entering in, achieving a dominant position and then throwing or submitting has been the fundamental strategy of Japanese martial arts and their decedents since their inception, with the exception of Judo in my opinion. The strategy is a sound one, as demonstrated by BJJ.

In reality at the core of these myths about Aikido is the conflict between the strategy of ikken hitatsu or to kill with one blow or end things with one decisive attack which is the foundation of Japanese martial arts and the strategy of slowly grinding your opponent down as a boxer does. All of the western traditions like boxing, kickboxing, wrestling are all sports. An ikken hitatsu strategy makes for poor sports but is very suited to dealing with the real world where there may be more than one attacker and so the guy in front of you needs to be dealt with immediately, not within the next half hour.
　
Alex Lawrence, Nikyu no Zanshin Kai.