The History of Boxing

Boxing is a sport loved by millions of people around the world, it is a sport that has been closely watched since ancient history. Though not many people know the story of how boxing came into being, it is fascinating to discover that this is not a short lived sport. As a matter of fact there are ancient drawings and carvings of boxing dating back to 3000 B.C.! Boxing is a sport that has been enjoyed for thousands of years by cultures all around the world.

The first known cases of boxing as a sport, rather than simply two guys punching each other is found in the ancient Greek culture. At the time it wasn't known as boxing, rather it was called pugilism and it was a bit less organized. Back then they did not have rounds or time limits, they didn't have weight categories or anything like that. In pugilism it was simply a fist fight until someone was either knocked out or was killed. Instead of gloves they would use a sort of hard leather wrapped around their hands to protect their fists. So, as you can see it was a far more primitive version of what we have today. However some may find that to be even more exciting, today's Ultimate Fighting which is similar to what Pugilism was is very popular now.

After the fall of the Roman Empire boxing kind of fell out of the main scene, although a few other small instances of the sport were reported there wasn't anything quite as large as pugilism had been. A few Asian cultures mentioned instances of boxing a little bit later, though this form of boxing had a martial arts twist to it. Throwing and special pressure point moves were allowed as well.

It wasn't until the early 18th century that boxing came back into popularity in London. It had a couple of different names then, it was known as Bare-Knuckle Boxing and Prizefighting, now despite the new names there were still very little rules. They still lacked the weight divisions and rounds, however there were new rules that began to surface. For example they formed rules that were directed at protecting the fighters from dying during the fight.