London Prize Ring rules (1743)
The beginnings of the modern right cross demonstrated in Edmund Price’s The Science of Self Defense: A Treatise on Sparring and Wrestling, 1867
Records of boxing activity disappeared after the fall of the Roman Empire. The sport would later resurface in England during the early 18th century in the form of bare-knuckle prizefighting. The first documented account of a bare-knuckle fight in England appeared in 1681 in the “London Protestant Mercury,” and the first English bare-knuckle champion was James Figg in 1719. This is also the time when the word “boxing” first came to be used.
Early bare-knuckle fighting was crude with no written rules. There were no weight divisions, round limits and no referee. Modern rules banning gouging, grappling, biting, headbutting, fish-hooking and blows below the belt were absent.
The first boxing rules, called the London Prize Ring rules, were introduced by heavyweight champion Jack Broughton in 1743 to protect fighters in the ring where deaths sometimes occurred. Under these rules, if a man went down and could not continue after a count of 30 seconds, the fight was over. Hitting a downed fighter and grasping below the waist were prohibited. Broughton also invented “mufflers” (padded gloves), which were used in training and exhibitions.
In 1838, the London Prize Ring rules were expanded in detail. Later revised in 1853, they stipulated the following:
- Fights occurred in a 24-foot-square ring surrounded by ropes.
- If a fighter was knocked down, he had to rise within 30 seconds of his own power to be allowed to continue.
- Biting, headbutting and hitting below the belt were declared fouls.
This guide is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia.
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