TripleA

I want to know how many of us know when the first recorded boxing matches were and anything related to them? I was surprised when I first found out years ago.

ninikins

about 5000 years ago or so, i believe?

Word2Action

I'm sure there is an official recorded beginning to boxing but I'd say that boxing has existed ever since the first Neanderthal attempted to impress the opposite sex. I think that its sense of timelessness is a big plus for boxing. It feels like its been around forever and that it will be around forever.

pollux

Boxing was known to the ancient Greeks and was part of their olympics, which began in 776 B.C. Footraces were in the early games, boxing and wrestling and the almost no-holds-barred pancration were added later. These sports kept boys and men of the Greek city states trained for war. Contrary to what we have heard, wars among the Greeks did not stop during their games.

The type of boxing done by the Greeks was almost wholly confined to head
blows. There were no rounds and the combatants fought until one could no longer go on or was dead. A bout could last for hours in the sunlight. At least at first, the fights were barefisted. Later, the Romans wound leather straps around the fists with metal studs or spikes. These coverings were called cestuses.

My username, pollux, is the name of a character from the Greek myth of Jason and the Argonauts, who went searching for the golden fleece. They came to the land ruled by King Amycus, whose father was Poseidon, the Greek god of the sea. Amycus challenged each man who was a newcomer to a boxing match. If the ruler won, his opponent would be his slave. The king never lost a fight until Pollux defeated him. As Amycus lay on the ground, bloody and battered, Pollux made him swear to renounce slavery.

Boxing was revived in Britain in the late seventeenth century. It became popular among the upper class gentlemen, many of whom sponsored prizefighters. Some even became fighters themselves.

TripleA

PULLOX YOU GET THE GOLD STAR. Boxing was first offically recorded in the greeks olympic games. The rules where a little diffrent but it was boxing all the same. The rules or lack of them made it a more deadly sport with many recorded deaths.

pollux

Triple A,
Thanks for the compliment about my post. However, my further research has revealed that the Greeks wore fist coverings that were strips of leather over the knuckles. But the cestus was a Roman invention. In an ancient Greek match, a finger held up was a sign that the fighter was giving up. But because quitting in athletics resulted in so much shame, that probably didn't happen often. Clinching was "strictly forbidden" I have read.

According to the Encyclopedia Britannica Macropedia, there was a recorded boxing match in London in 1681. Who was in it, I don't know. Prizefights became popular within seventeen years. In 1719, James Figg became the first barefisted fighting champion in Britain. Jack Broughton was his pupil and he wrote the first set of rules for boxing in 1743. In 1867, John Graham Chambers wrote the rules to which John Sholto Douglas, the Marquis of Queensberry gave his name in order to make the sport more acceptable to the upper class spectators. Boxing gloves were allowed
under these regulations. The last bare-knuckled professional match was between John L. Sullivan and Jake Kilrain in Mississippi in 1889.

pollux

I was wrong about Jack Broughton reviving boxing in Britain in the late seventeenth century. He was born in either 1704 or 1705, according to the encyclopedias. He was a boxing pupil of James Figg. Figg became the first barefisted fighting champion of Britain in 1719, when he was about twenty-three. He held the title until his death in 1734. He weighed 185 pounds, which today would make him a cruiserweight, although there were no weight divisions at that time. In Figg's school for self-defense he also taught wrestling, which was allowed in boxing matches then. Maybe if we watched a fight in the late seventeenth or early eighteenth century, it would have resembled a UFC bout.

Broughton would also be the British champion in the early 1700s. As I wrote, he was the author of the first set of rules for boxing in 1743. They still permitted wrestling, but no holds beneath the waist. Hairpulling and striking a man while he was down were also banned. Mufflers, or the first boxing gloves, were introduced. These rules were further refined by the London Prize Ring Rules in 1838, that were revised in 1853. The revision had the first measurements for a boxing ring. They also forbade biting, gouging, headbutting and low blows. But a round only ended when a boxer was knocked down. He could be helped to his corner by his attendants and had thirty seconds to recuperate and eight seconds to get to scratch, which was a line or mark in the center of the ring.

Fourteen years later these regulations were replaced by the Queensberry Rules. Under these regulations, a downed fighter had to get up unaided.
Also, while the Queensberry rules came into effect in the late 1800s weight classes for boxers began.

Because their requirement for boxing gloves was considered cowardly by some, the rules were not accepted everywhere for awhile. The Encyclopedia Britannica Macropedia article on boxing had an interesting point about gloves. When the Broughton Rules introduced mufflers, or the forerunner of boxing gloves, it was to make the sport less injurious. But when fighters fought barefisted, they would tend to often use bodyblows which would be less damaging to their hands than hitting heads. When gloves
encouraged fighters to hit to the head because their hands would be protected, there was more of a potential for brain damage. There is a debate
about whether or not professional fighters should wear headgear, as do the
amateurs. But when a fighter gets a blow to the head, would the combination
of the glove and the headgear knocking against the skull be an improvement?

As for guarding a fighter's genitals, the invention of the athletic supporter in
1874 was a major advance. Perhaps boxers wore jockstraps with some added underwear. That changed after the heavyweight title fight between Jack Sharkey and Max Schmeling in June 1930. Sharkey was ahead on points when
he accidentally landed a punch on Schmeling's crotch. After falling to the canvas and writhing in agony, Schmeling was awarded the decision. It was the first time a fight was won on a foul.

It was in that year, I read in a newspaper article, that an enterprising man decided to prevent another such mishap. His name has been forgotten by me, but the article told me this is what he did. He designed a leather groin protector or protective cup. To test it, he went into barrooms with a baseball
bat. There he offered to pay any man there ten dollars if he would hit him with the bat as hard as he could while he wore the protector he had designed. That was the beginning of the protective cup, or as the British call it, the foul protector.

pollux

The first Greek Olympics were in 776 B.C., not when I first wrote that they were. I have edited the previous message to show the correction. The games at Olympia were among four festivals held to honor the gods.

Grace

The date for the first olympics - WOW!!

TripleA

When pollux does homework, pollux really does homework. I am impressed.