Boxing, sport, both amateur and professional, involving attack and defense with the fists. Boxers usually wear padded gloves and generally observe the code set forth in the marquess of Queensberry rules. Matched in weight and ability, boxing contestants try to land blows hard and often with their fists, each attempting to avoid the blows of the opponent. A boxer wins a match either by outscoring the opponent—points can be tallied in several ways—or by rendering the opponent incapable of continuing the match. Bouts range from 3 to 12 rounds, each round normally lasting three minutes.
Boxing first appeared as a formal Olympic event in the 23rd Olympiad(688 BCE), but fist-fighting contests must certainly have had their origin in mankind’s prehistory. The earliest visual evidence for boxing appears in Sumerian relief carvings from the 3rd millennium BCE. A relief sculpture from Egyptian Thebes (c. 1350 BCE) shows both boxers and spectators. The few extant Middle Eastern and Egyptian depictions are of bare-fisted contests with, at most, a simple band supporting the wrist; the earliest evidence of the use of gloves or hand coverings in boxing is a carved vase from Minoan Crete (c. 1500 BCE) that shows helmeted boxers wearing a stiff plate strapped to the fist.
The earliest evidence of rules for the sport comes from ancient Greece. These ancient contests had no rounds; they continued until one man either acknowledged defeat by holding up a finger or was unable to continue. Clinching (holding an opponent at close quarters with one or both arms) was strictly forbidden. Contests were held outdoors, which added the challenge of intense heat and bright sunlight to the fight. Contestants represented all social classes; in the early years of the major athletic festivals, a preponderance of the boxers came from wealthy and distinguished backgrounds.
The Greeks considered boxing the most injurious of their sports. A 1st-century-BCE inscription praising a pugilist states, “A boxer’s victory is gained in blood.” In fact, Greek literature offers much evidence that the sport caused disfigurement and, occasionally, even death. An amazingly bloody bout is recounted by Homer in the Iliad (c. 675 BCE):
“Sons of Atreus, and all you other strong-greaved Achaians,
we invite two men, the best among you, to contend for these prizes
with their hands up for the blows of boxing. He whom Apollo
grants to outlast the other, and all the Achaians witness it,
let him lead away the hard-working jenny [female donkey] to his own shelter.
The beaten man shall take away the two-handled goblet.”
