Boxing techniques utilize very forceful strikes with the hand. There are many bones in the hand, and striking surfaces without proper technique can cause serious hand injuries. Today, most trainers do not allow boxers to train and spar without hand/wrist wraps and gloves. Handwraps are used to secure the bones in the hand, and the gloves are used to protect the hands from blunt injury, allowing boxers to throw punches with more force than if they did not utilize them.

Headgear, used in Olympic boxing, protects against cuts, scrapes, and swelling, but does not protect very well against concussions. Headgear does not sufficiently protect the brain from the jarring that occurs when the head is struck with great force. Also, most boxers aim for the chin on opponents, and the chin is usually not padded. Thus, a powerpunch can do a lot of damage to a boxer, and even a jab that connects to the chin can cause damage, regardless of whether or not headgear is being utilized.

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia.

Professional boxing match between Luis Ramon Campas and Amin Asikainen

Professional bouts are far longer than Olympic bouts (ranging from four to twelve rounds), headgear is not permitted, and boxers are generally allowed to take much more punishment before a fight is halted. At any time, however, the referee may stop the contest if he believes that one participant can not intelligently defend him or herself due to injury. In that case, the other participant is awarded a technical knockout win, which appears on the boxer’s record as a knockout win (or loss). A technical knockout would also be awarded if a fighter lands a punch that opens a cut on the opponent, and the opponent is later deemed not fit to continue by a doctor because of the cut. For this reason, fighters often employ cutmen, whose job is to treat cuts between rounds so that the boxer is able to continue despite the cut. If a boxer simply quits fighting, or if his corner stops the fight, then the winning boxer is also awarded a technical knockout victory.

If a knockout or disqualification does not occur, the fight must go to the scorecards. Professional fights have three judges each, and each of the judges must use the 10 point must system: Under this system, each time a boxer wins a round in the judges’ eyes, the judge gives that boxer 10 points, and the other 9 or less. If the judge deems the round to be a tie, he or she may score it 10-10. When the fight reaches its scheduled distance, all scores are added, round by round, to determine who won on each judges’ cards. When all three judges have the same boxer as the winner, this is an unanimous decision. When two judges have one boxer winning the fight and the other one has it a tie, this is called a majority decision. When two judges have one boxer winning the fight and the other judge has the other boxer winning, this is called a split decision. When one judge gives his or her vote to one boxer, another one gives it to the other boxer, and the third judge calls it a tie, this is a draw. It is also a draw when two judges score the fight a tie, regardless of who the third judge scored the bout for.

In the United Kingdom, the bout is only scored by the referee, except when a title is at stake, in which case it is scored by three judges.

If a fight can not go on because of an injury caused to one of the competitors by a headbutt, there are different rules: If the fight has not reached the end of round three, (in some places, round four), the fight is declared a technical draw or a no contest. If it has reached beyond the end of round three (or four), then the scorecards are read and whoever is ahead, wins by a technical decision.

Evolution of professional boxing

In 1891, the National Sporting Club (N.S.C.), a private club in London, began to promote professional glove fights at its own premises, and created nine of its own rules to augment the Queensberry Rules. These rules specified more accurately the role of the officials, and produced a system of scoring that enabled the referee to decide the result of a fight. The British Boxing Board of Control (B.B.B.C.) was first formed in 1919 with close links to the N.S.C., and was re-formed in 1929 after the N.S.C. closed.

In 1909, the first of twenty-two belts were presented by the fifth Earl of Lonsdale to the winner of a British title fight held at the N.S.C. In 1929, the B.B.B.C. continued to award Lonsdale belts to any British boxer who won three title fights in the same weight division. The “title fight” has always been the focal point in professional boxing. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, however, there were title fights at each weight. Promoters who could stage profitable title fights became influential in the sport, as did boxers’ managers. The best promoters and managers have been instrumental in bringing boxing to new audiences and provoking media and public interest. The most famous of all three-way partnership (fighter-manager-promoter) was that of Jack Dempsey (Heavyweight Champion, 1919-1926), his manager Jack Kearns, and the promoter Tex Rickard. Together they grossed US$ 8.4 million in only five fights between 1921 and 1927 and ushered in a “golden age” of popularity for professional boxing in the 1920s. They were also responsible for the first live radio broadcast of a title fight (Dempsey v. Georges Carpentier, in 1921). In the United Kingdom, Jack Solomons’ success as a fight promoter helped re-establish professional boxing after the Second World War and made the UK a popular place for title fights in the 1950s and 1960s.

In the first part of the 20th century, the United States became the centre for professional boxing. It was generally accepted that the “world champions” were those listed by the Police Gazette. After 1920, the National Boxing Association (N.B.A.) began to sanction “title fights”. Also during that time, Ring Magazine magazine was founded and it listed champions and awarded championship belts. The N.B.A. was renamed in 1962 and became the World Boxing Association (W.B.A.). The following year, a rival body, the World Boxing Council (W.B.C.), was formed. In 1983, another world body, the International Boxing Federation (I.B.F.) was formed. By the end of the 20th century, a boxer had to be recognized by the three separate bodies to be the “Undisputed World Champion”. Regional sanctioning bodies such as the North American Boxing Federation, the North American Boxing Council and the United States Boxing Association also awarded championships. Ring Magazine also continued listing the World Champion of each weight division, and its rankings continue being of the most appreciated by fans.

Although women fought professionally in many countries, in the United Kingdom the B.B.B.C. refused to issue licences to women until 1998. By the end of the century, however, they had issued five such licenses. The first sanctioned bout between women was in November 1998 at Streatham in London, between Jane Couch and Simona Lukic.

Length of bouts

For decades, from the 1920s to the 1980s, world championship matches in professional boxing were scheduled for fifteen rounds, but that changed after a November 13, 1982 WBA Lightweight title bout ended with the death of boxer Duk Koo Kim in a fight against Ray Mancini in the 14th round of a nationally televised championship fight on CBS.

Exactly three months after the fatal fight, the World Boxing Council reduced the number of their championship fights to 12 rounds. The World Boxing Association even stripped a fighter of his championship in 1983 because the fight had been a 15-round bout, shortly after the rule was changed to 12 rounds. By 1988, to the displeasure of many boxing purists, all fights had been reduced to a maximum of 12 rounds only, partially for safety, and partially for television, as a 12-round bout could take one hour to broadcast, while a 15-round bout could require 90 minutes to broadcast.

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The Olympic flame at Beijing during the 2008 Summer Olympics.

The Queensberry Amateur Championships continued from 1867 to 1885, and so, unlike their professional counterparts, Olympic boxers did not deviate from using gloves once the Queensberry Rules had been published. In the United Kingdom, the Amateur Boxing Association (A.B.A.) was formed in 1880 when twelve clubs affiliated. It held its first championships the following year. Four weight classes were contested, Featherweight (9 stone), Lightweight (10 stone), Middleweight (11 stone, 4 pounds) and Heavyweight (no limit). (A stone is equal to 14 pounds). By 1902, American boxers were contesting the titles in the A.B.A. Championships, which, therefore, took on an international complexion. By 1924, the A.B.A. had 105 clubs in affiliation.

Boxing first appeared at the Olympic Games in 1904 and, apart from the Games of 1912, has always been part of them. From 1972 through 2004, Cuba and the United States have won the most Gold Medals, 29 for Cuba and 21 for the U.S. Internationally, Olympic boxing spread steadily throughout the first half of the 20th century, but when the first international body, the Federation Internationale de Boxe Olympic (International Olympic Boxing Federation) was formed in Paris in 1920, there were only five member nations. In 1946, however, when the International Amateur Boxing Association (A.I.B.A.) was formed in London, twenty-four nations from five continents were represented, and the A.I.B.A. has continued to be the official world federation of Olympic boxing ever since. The first World Amateur Boxing Championships were staged in 1974.

In the late 19th and early 20th century, Olympic boxing was encouraged in schools, universities and in the armed forces, but the champions usually came from among the urban poor.

Women’s boxing first appeared in the Olympic Games at a demonstration bout in 1904. For most of the 20th century, however, it was banned in most nations. Its revival was pioneered by the Swedish Amateur Boxing Association, which sanctioned events for women in 1988. The British Amateur Boxing Association sanctioned its first boxing competition for women in 1997. The first event was to be between two thirteen-year-olds, but one of the boxers withdrew because of hostile media attention. Four weeks later, an event was held between two sixteen-year-olds.

The A.I.B.A. accepted new rules for Women’s Boxing at the end of the 20th century and approved the first European Cup for Women in 1999 and the first World Championship for women in 2001. Women’s boxing will be an exhibition sport at the 2008 Olympics, but it won’t become an official Olympic sport until the 2012 Olympics.

A new scoring system was invented for Olympic boxing: using a computer, judges must press a button every time they think a boxer landed a punch. When three or more of the five judges press the button within a second of each other, the punch counts as a “point” for the fighter that landed it. Punches to the head or face of an opponent usually score the most points for a competitor. At any point of the fight in which a fighter is leading by twenty points (or sometimes more), the referee is indicated and the fight is stopped, the leading fighter winning by “mercy”, and credited with a knockout.

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Olympic (or Amateur) boxing is found at the Olympic Games and Commonwealth Games. Olympic boxing prizes point scoring rather than physical damage or knockouts. Bouts comprise four rounds of two minutes in Olympic and Commonwealth and three rounds of two minutes in a national ABA (Amateur Boxing association) bout each with a one minute interval between rounds.

Competitors wear protective headgear and gloves with a white strip across the knuckle. A punch is considered a scoring punch only when the boxers connect with the white portion of the gloves. Each punch that lands on the head or torso is awarded a point. A referee monitors the fight to ensure that competitors use only legal blows (a belt worn over the torso represents the lower limit of punches – any boxer repeatedly landing “low blows” is disqualified). Referees also ensure that the boxers don’t use holding tactics to prevent the opponent from swinging (if this occurs, the referee separates the opponents and orders them to continue boxing. Repeated holding can result in a boxer being penalized, or ultimately, disqualified).

Referees will stop the bout if a boxer is seriously injured, if one boxer is significantly dominating the other or if the score is severely imbalanced.

This guide is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia.

Headgear is mandatory in Olympic boxing

In 1867, the Marquess of Queensberry rules were drafted by John Chambers for Olympic championships held at Lillie Bridge in London for Lightweights, Middleweights and Heavyweights. The rules were published under the patronage of the Marquess of Queensberry, whose name has always been associated with them.

There were twelve rules in all, and they specified that fights should be “a fair stand-up boxing match” in a 24-foot-square ring. Rounds were three minutes long with one minute rest intervals between rounds. Each fighter was given a ten-second count if he was knocked down and wrestling was banned.

The introduction of gloves of “fair-size” also changed the nature of the bouts. An average pair of boxing gloves resembles a bloated pair of mittens and are laced up around the wrists. Gloves protected the hands of both fighters but their considerable size and weight made knock-out victories more difficult to achieve. Resultantly, bouts became longer and more strategic with greater importance attached to defensive maneuvers such as slipping, bobbing, countering and angling.

The English case of R v. Coney in 1882 found that a bare-knuckle fight was an assault occasioning actual bodily harm, despite the consent of the participants. This marked the end of widespread public bare-knuckle contests in England.

The first world heavyweight champion under the Queensberry Rules was “Gentleman Jim” Corbett, who defeated John L. Sullivan in 1892 at the Pelican Athletic Club in New Orleans.

With the gradual acceptance of formalised rules, two distinct branches of boxing emerged; Professional and Olympic. The boxing rules enforced by governing bodies worldwide today at the local, national and international level are all derived in some way from the Marquess of Queensberry Rules.

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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.

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Youths boxing in a Minoan fresco on the Greek island of Santorini

Earliest evidence suggests that boxing was prevalent in North Africa during 4000 BC and the Mediterranean in 1500 BC.

A Greek ruler named Thesus, who ruled around 900 B.C., was entertained by men who would be seated in front of each other and beat another with their fists until one of them was killed. In time, the fighters fought on their feet and wore gloves (not padded) and wrappings on their arms below the elbows, but were otherwise naked when competing. First accepted as an Olympic sport (the ancient Greeks called it Pygme/ Pygmachia) in 688 BC, participants in the ancient games trained on punching bags (called a korykos). Keeping their fingers free, fighters then wore leather straps (called himantes) on their hands, wrists, and sometimes lower arms, to protect them from injury.

In Ancient Rome, fighters were usually criminals and slaves. They hoped to become champions and gain their freedom. However, free men also fought. Eventually, fist fighting became so popular that even aristocrats started fighting, but that was banned by the ruler Augustus. In 500 A.D., the sport was banned by Theodoric the Great.

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Professional boxing bout featuring Ricardo Dominguez (left) vs. Rafael Ortiz.

Boxing, also called pugilism, prizefighting (when referring to professional boxing) or the sweet science (a common nickname among fans) is a sport where two participants of similar weight fight each other with their fists in a series of one to three-minute intervals called “rounds”. In both Olympic and professional divisions, the combatants (called boxers or fighters) avoid their opponent’s punches while trying to land punches of their own. Points are awarded for clean, solid blows to the legal area on the front of the opponent’s body above the waistline, with hits to the head and torso being especially valuable. The fighter with the most points after the scheduled number of rounds is declared the winner. Victory may also be achieved if the opponent is knocked down and unable to get up before the referee counts to ten (a Knockout, or KO) or if the opponent is deemed too injured to continue (a Technical Knockout, or TKO). For record keeping purposes, a TKO is counted as a knockout. On boxers’ records, only KO’s are mentioned. Technical knockouts are usually only mentioned in contemporaneous news articles.

Resources

• Death Under the Spotlight: The Manuel Velazquez Boxing Fatality Collection
• Godfrey, John “Boxing” from Treatise Upon the Useful Science of Defense, 1747
• Price, Edmund The Science of Self Defense: A Treatise on Sparring and Wrestling, 1867
• Scully, John Learn to Box with the Iceman

References

Anasi, Robert (2003). The Gloves: A Boxing Chronicle. North Point Press. ISBN 0-865-47652-7
Fleischer, Nat, Sam Andre, Nigel Collins, Dan Rafael (2002). An Illustrated History of Boxing. Citadel Press. ISBN 0-806-52201-1
Fox, James A. (2001). Boxing. Stewart, Tabori and Chang. ISBN 1-584-79133-0
Halbert, Christy (2003). The Ultimate Boxer: Understanding the Sport and Skills of Boxing. Impact Seminars, Inc. ISBN 0-963-09685-0
Hatmaker, Mark (2004). Boxing Mastery : Advanced Technique, Tactics, and Strategies from the Sweet Science. Tracks Publishing. ISBN 1-884-65421-5
McIlvanney, Hugh (2001). The Hardest Game : McIlvanney on Boxing. McGraw-Hill. ISBN 0-658-02154-0
Myler, Patrick (1997). A Century of Boxing Greats: Inside the Ring with the Hundred Best Boxers. Robson Books (UK) / Parkwest Publications (US). ISBN 1-861-05258-8.
Silverman, Jeff (2004). he Greatest Boxing Stories Ever Told : Thirty-Six Incredible Tales from the Ring. The Lyons Press. ISBN 1-592-28479-5
U.S. Amateur Boxing Inc. (1994). Coaching Olympic Style Boxing. Cooper Pub Group. 1-884-12525-5

Links

• All the World’s boxing websites
• Amateur International Boxing
• Asssociation of Boxing Commissions-North America
• Boxing Record Archive
• Boxing Search Engine & Index
• Boxing News, provides boxing news around the world
• Brother teams in professional boxing
• Canadian Amateur Boxing Association
• Fightnews.com
• Federation quebecoise de boxe olympique
• FightNews.ca – Canadian boxing news
• Kronk Boxing Gym
• La Zone de Boxe – French canadian boxing news website
• Rival Boxing Gear – Boxing equipment manufacturer
• The Boxing Times
• JabMax – Boxing News
• Tips On Collecting Boxing Memorabilia
• Tips and articles on Boxing techniques
• How to develop a knockout punch
• Heavyweight History
• Ring Magazine
• The Sweet Science
• The Boxing Report
• The International Olympic Boxing Association
• Listing of Current World Champions
• The World Boxing Association
• The World Boxing Council
• The International Boxing Federation
• The International Boxing Organization
• North American Boxing Council
• The World’s Top Professional Boxing Officials
• Prime Boxing News and more
• SecondsOut.com Boxing news, results and features from around the world
• SecondsOut.tv Broadband Boxing news, interviews, PPV and archive fights
• World Boxing Scoop Boxing podcast with interviews and insights into boxing
• Boxing4Free.com, provides free Boxing tutorials and techniques Online Gym

This guide is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia.

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