Boxing, amateur and professional, is a stylized form of
gloved fistfighting that is governed by international
rules. The primary division in the sport is between amateur and professional. What distinguishes both prizefighting and modern boxing from unarmed fighting
intended to maim is a code of rules under which no
blows may be inflicted below the waistline and none after the opponent has gone down.
History
“Boxing” is an Old English term that 600 years ago
meant fighting with the fists. Until the end of the 19th
century the real sport was prizefighting, using bare
knuckles, for money. Precepts from the sport have affected cultural practice in a way few sports have: fights
between enemies, fights between boys, have tended to
follow prizefighting rules. (The terms “boxing” and
“prizefighting” are now used synonymously.)
The first written rules of prizefighting were published by Jack Broughton (1704–1789) in London in
1743. Broughton taught gentlemen to box using the
“mufflers”(gloves) he is said to have invented, although
earlier boxing academies existed in nearby streets.
Most people would have learned the rules of boxing
from participation in the sport itself. The weekly newspaper Bell’s Life in London and Sporting Chronicle dominated and directed the sport from 1822 until the
1870s. Starting in 1841 the editors also published a
boxing yearbook called Fistiana, which soon modified
Broughton’s Rules.
Weight and bulk counted most when fighters were
in close, so the notion of science, which became part of
the sport in the late 18th century, was mainly concerned with punching or stopping a punch. Movement
of the feet, advance and retreat, linked skill to manliness, and international matches soon followed.
Thomas Molineaux, a black man from Virginia,
fought the best men in Britain between 1810 and 1815,
and his two losing battles with Tom Cribb (1781–1848)
for the English championship attracted unprecedented
public attention. Molineaux died in poverty in 1818.
Paris also adopted boxing. The country already
enjoyed savate, which had national and regional cham pionships and allowed blows with the feet (see Cudgeling), but boxing swept France in a few years immediately before World War I. British boxers started crossing the English Channel, and a cluster of African
American fighters, including the world heavyweight
champion, Jack Johnson (1878–1946), stayed to ply
their trade. The first major French fighter was Georges
Carpentier (1894–1975), who won all the way up to
heavyweight, but lost at that level to Jack Dempsey
(1895–1983) in 1921.
Boxing, as opposed to prizefighting, used rules
written by a Cambridge University athlete, John Graham Chambers (1843–1883) and published by Sir John
Sholto Douglas (1844–1900), a contemporary scholar
who was the eighth Marquis of Queensberry. These
brief rules, which appeared in 1867 and came to be
known as the Queensberry Rules, distinguished between boxing competitions and contests. According to
these rules, competitions were for amateurs as well as
professionals. These bouts were limited to three rounds
in about ten minutes and were usually decided on
points. Contests, in contrast, were tests of endurance
that continued until one man could no longer fight;
they were confined strictly to professionals. Only in the
latter code was it specified that new gloves of fair size
and best quality be used, so Queensberry Rules assumed the superiority of contests over competitions.
Amateurs sparred, professionals fought, and both
boxed sportingly according to Queensberry. Common
to both codes were timed rounds and one-minute rests
between rounds; gloves were to be used, and wrestling
was not allowed. The 10-second count ending a contest
was not referred to under competitions, and attempting to knock the opponent out while sparring was
frowned upon in amateur competitions.
Promoting prizefighting was never a safe business
proposition. The ropes and stakes and the rest of the
paraphernalia had to be transported to an unadvertised, and often remote, place to avoid interference
from hooligans or police. A prizefight was a breach of
the peace. The fewer people who knew where and when
the match was on, the better able were the organizers to
give the slip to magistrates and to collect the spectators’ money. By contrast, boxing under Queensberry
Rules, usually an indoor sport, was controllable. The
public house, music hall, or people’s palace had a door
at which everyone was obliged to pay to gain admission, and the enormous industrial boom that started in
the 1880s allowed male workers to join the queue for
leisure time and sport especially.
Between the two world wars, the sport of boxing expanded in two ways. First, professional boxing made
unheard-of profits, and second, both amateur and professional boxing became popular in Europe and the
United States. Meanwhile, the ubiquitous color bar in
professional rings began to be relaxed. When Joe Louis
(1914–1981), an African American, won the world
heavyweight title in Chicago in 1937 the sport’s desegregation process had just started. Black men were not
permitted to win British professional championships
until 1948. (The amateur ranks had dropped their social class barrier back in 1880 and never seem to have
bothered with a racial one.)
Rules and Play
Boxing matches take place in a roped-off, elevated area
(the ring) surrounded by spectators. Contestants wear
protective gear, including helmets and gloves. The traditional boxing stance consists of the fighter turning
his or her left side toward the opponent with both fists
raised, the left fist advanced and the right covering the
chin. To move around the ring, the boxer steps forward
with the left foot. The right foot follows without overtaking the left, thus preserving the original, highly stable stance. To move back, the boxer simply reverses this
order. The body should be bent slightly forward from
the hips. Boxers around the world use the same rules,
positions, and movements, except for a minority of lefthanders called “southpaws,” who box right side first.
Contestants are classed by weight, from flyweight to
heavyweight.
Amateur and professional boxing remain distinct.
Amateur boxing organizations will not tolerate boxers
competing for money, but modern professional boxers
were invariably introduced to the sport as amateurs.
The professional level of the sport has always attracted
greater public interest.
Professional Boxing
Britain and the United States traded domination in the
early days of organized professional boxing. In the
1880s bare-knuckles prizefighting had refused to give
way to boxing with gloves, but the contest between the
new and old styles was decided in 1891, when Englishborn Bob Fitzsimmons (1862–1917) knocked out Kildare-born “Nonpareil” Jack Dempsey (1862–1895) under Queensberry Rules in New Orleans for the world
middleweight championship.
Immigrants from countries with a boxing culture
brought the sport to the United States. England, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa all contributed their customs, as did Central European Jewish immigrants, from the earliest days until after World
War II. One of the most famous boxers from this background was Benjamin Leiner, who as Benny Leonard
fought over 200 contests and reigned as world lightweight champion from 1917 to 1925. Italian immigrants contributed the legendary Rocky Marciano
(1923–1969), the heavyweight who never lost a professional fight. African Americans have done equally well
in the professional fighting arena, dominating the
weights since Louis’s 1937 victory.
Poverty was (and still is) the common denominator
that impelled many athletes into professional boxing.
Boxing generally thrives where the living is not easy.
From the mid-20th century, boxers from less-developed countries began to replace white men. From Mexico to South Korea, poorer countries have produced
more and more boxers, especially at the lighter weights.
Later, cinema and radio further increased the popularity of boxing even more without commanding
great sums of money from advertising.With the advent
of television, particularly during the reign of heavyweight Muhammad Ali (born Cassius Clay in 1942, he
rejected this name on his conversion to Islam in the
early 1960s), the rewards for successful professional
boxers (except fly and bantamweight) have skyrocketed. Ironically, the quality of much televised boxing, in
which the focus on knockouts has driven the artistry
out of the sport, has declined.
Amateur Boxing
The first championships for amateurs were contested
at three weights (light—under 140 pounds [52 kilograms, or 10 stone in the older British system of
weight]; middle—under 158 pounds [59 kilograms];
and heavy) in 1867 at Lillie Bridge, a London stadium.
The Queensberry Rules were written for this occasion,
but boxing was only part of a two-day open-air program of general athletics, bicycling, and wrestling for
gentlemen from newly formed London sports clubs
and the universities of Oxford and Cambridge. The organizing committee excluded “riffraff,” so laborers, artisans, and tradesmen were not able to compete. Subsequently, six of the boxers and the editor of a weekly
newspaper, the Referee, met to form the Amateur Boxing Association (ABA), which allowed blue-collar
workers to enter its annual championships each spring.
The ABA competitions, held first in 1881 with an extra
weight division (the “feather” class at 126 pounds [47
kilograms, or 9 stone]), proved such an attraction for
spectators that the Lillie Bridge event was soon discontinued. The real amateur sport developed, not among
the comfortably off, but in boys’ clubs in the uglier
parts of cities, near factories, docks, and railway arches.
In the United States the social integration of
wealthy clubs with the hoi polloi came much later. The
Golden Gloves tournament was started by the Chicago
Tribune in 1926 and became annual a few years later.
However, the spread of the sport to the rest of the world
was erratic. The Olympic Games program first included boxing at St. Louis in 1904, when U.S. boxers
won all seven titles (the British made a clean sweep at
the London Games four years later). Boxing was
dropped for the 1912 Games, but returned in 1920 and
has been retained ever since.
International Amateur Boxing
The organization of international amateur boxing began in 1920 with the formation in Paris of the Fédération Internationale de Boxe Amateur. Only five countries were represented, and the elected president was
an Essex man, John Herbert Douglas (185?–1930).
World War II ended the introductory phase of international amateur boxing. When the sport resumed after
the war, countries were split into two hostile camps:
capitalist and communist. The communists eschewed
professional sport as degrading and subsidized their
amateurs with state funds. Amateur boxing in capitalist countries largely lacked government support, but
compensated with television fees and sponsorship
from industry and business. In both systems excellence
at sport was considered vital for national prestige. In
market economies, professional boxing siphoned off
gifted amateurs.
Africa, Asia, and the Middle East became involved
in boxing through the amateur version. The International Amateur Boxing Association was formed in London in 1946. Tournaments organized by the Arab Boxing Union involve associations from Iraq to Algeria;
and the Oceanic Federation, which includes Australia,
has successfully staged its championships in the tiny
mid-Pacific island of Tahiti.
The World Amateur Boxing Championships were
first held in Havana, Cuba, in 1974. They bridged the
four-year gap between Olympics and tapped the huge
television fees available for supposedly amateur athletics. Boxers get medals, pride, and satisfaction, but no
cash unless they turn professional. Scoring changed for
international tournaments after chauvinistic judging
and crowd misbehavior brought disgrace to the sport at
the 1988 Olympics in Seoul, South Korea. Five ringside
judges, equipped with computers, had to register points
as they saw them scored, but only those points signified by a majority within a second of each other were
counted toward the final result. The new system, hated
initially, has rapidly gained devotees since it was tried
at the Barcelona Olympics in 1992, and the increased
impartiality, with its low, measured scores is adjudged a
triumph in the management of amateur boxing.
Boxing and the Body
The physical dangers of boxing have long been known.
At the National Sporting Club in London, the selfstyled home of modern boxing, four boxers died within
41 months at the turn of the century. Amateur fights
have produced far fewer fatalities, presumably because
their bouts are shorter. Boxing’s governing bodies and
medical associations inevitably disagree about
whether punches to the head cause cumulative brain
damage. This debate has become more urgent as the
focus of the sport leans more toward raw power. Even
so, the headguards in amateur fights, obligatory since
the late 1980s, are generally unpopular with both boxers and spectators. Argument rages about the guards’
value in reducing concussions, but they have lessened
the number of cut eyes and detached retinas.
Despite these dangers, boxing is unsurpassed at developing and maintaining physical fitness. In recent
years some women have appreciated this and taken to
the sport. In addition, boxing can test character, determination, and valor. Boxing feints, the movement of the
feet, the skill in a rally, are all elements that can be appreciated by the aesthete, inside or outside the ring. Indeed, ABA rules published in 1880 state that style
should be a factor in judges’ decisions. Many boxing
fans believe that the sport should heed the spirit of
these rules and remember that the goal is not to maim,
but to hit, stop blows, and avoid being hit. For boxing to
prosper, the slide from artistry toward power must be
reversed in the ring and appreciated by those outside.
—STAN SHIPLEY
Bibliography: Fleischer, Nat, and Sam Andre. (1980) A Pictorial History of Boxing. London: Hamlyn. Gorn, Elliott J.
(1986) The Manly Art: Bare-Knuckle Prize Fighting in
America. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Hartley,
R. A. (1988) History & Bibliography of Boxing Books. Alton, Hampshire, UK: Nimrod Press. Shipley, Stan. (1993)
Bombardier Billy Wells: The Life and Times of a Boxing
Hero. Tyne and Wear, UK: Bewick.