The earliest known instances of fist fighting as a type of sport date back to around 4000
– 3000 BC, but these historical fights don’t resemble the boxing we know today.
They seem to have leaned more toward the “anything goes” method of unarmed fighting.
The modern form of more regimented bouts didn’t begin until the early 18th century.
At this time, boxing matches had no mandated boxing ring, no gloves, no referee, and no
scantily clad women announcing the next round.
Spectators tended to crowd around the fighters in a roughly circular ring, which may or may
not have been drawn out on the ground before the match.
In 1713, Sir Thomas Parkyns described a typical match as including eye-gouging, choking, punching,
head-butting and other such street fighting tactics.
This all changed when Jack Broughton developed the first set of formalized rules for boxing
in 1743, with the goal of making boxing more of a civilized competition.
The impetus for these rules came, in part, from Broughton’s defeat of George Stevenson,
who suffered severe injuries and died a few days after the pair’s fight.
Saddened by the death of his competitor, Broughton wrote the “Broughton Rules” to minimize
the harsher aspects of the sport, like forbidding striking below the belt, not allowing hitting
a competitor when he was down and giving him 30 seconds to recover and continue the fight,
lest he be declared the loser.
While it has been suggested that Broughton insisted on a squared off area to replace
the ring of spectators, adoption of the official roped off square boxing ring didn’t appear
until about a century later.
This particular innovation was designed to protect the boxers from the fans who would
often get too close to the fight and occasionally interfere in the old drawn circle rings.
Broughton Rules loosely governed most boxing matches for nearly a century before they were
replaced by the London Prize Ring Rules in 1838.
Notable to the topic at hand, among these new rules can be found the following:
That the ring shall be made on turf, and shall be four-and-twenty feet square, formed of
eight stakes and ropes, the latter extending in double lines, the uppermost line being
four feet from the ground, and the lower two feet from the ground.
That in the centre of the ring a mark be formed, to be termed a scratch; and that at two opposite
corners, as may be selected, spaces be enclosed by other marks sufficiently large for the
reception of the seconds and bottle-holders, to be entitled ‘the corners.’
Although by these rules the boxing ring was no longer circular, the term ‘ring’ was
so ingrained in boxing vernacular that it remained after the ring became square, sometimes
being referred to as the “squared circle.”
The London Rules were further improved upon about three decades later by John Graham Chambers
with his proposal in 1867 of the “Marquess of Queensberry Rules” (named in honor of
boxing enthusiast John Douglas, the ninth Marquess of Queensberry) from which modern
boxing rules are directly based.
The primary changes from the London Rules revolved around requiring opponents to wear
padded gloves, forbidding attacking and opponent with anything but one’s hands, requiring
any competitor who was downed to get back up within 10 seconds or forfeit the match,
and setting the rounds at three minutes with a one minute break in between.
As with the London Rules, the new rules continued to refer to the roped off area as a “ring”
despite its actual shape.
The longest known boxing fight in history took place in New Orleans on Apr. 6, 1893,
between Andy Bowen and Jack Burke.
The fight was for the lightweight world title and lasted 111 rounds!
After seven hours of brutal fighting, when the bell sounded for the 111th round, both
fighters – dazed and exhausted- refused to come out of their corners and the referee
ruled the bout as a no contest.
So yes, after 111 rounds of using their bodies as punching bags, the contest ended in a tie.
Jack Marles, a London dentist, introduced the first mouth guard for boxers in 1902.
At first, the safety measure to protect a fighter’s teeth and mouth was used only
in training sessions.
It wasn’t until 1913 that the first boxer wore one in an official fight.
It didn’t take long for mouthpieces to catch on among boxing to reduce injuries to the
teeth and mouth.
Until the mid-1700s, boxing was mostly of the bare-fisted variety.
When Jack Broughton designed boxing gloves in the mid 1700s, he introduced them at his
gym as training tools to reduce injuries to boxers’ hands and faces prior to official
fights.
While many think that the introduction of boxing gloves made the sport safer, the opposite
is true.
Since the head is pretty much the hardest part of the body, punching it with a bare
fist with extreme force is likely to cause damage to the fist.
As such, bare-fisted fighters tended to concentrate on landing punches to softer parts of the
body, thus sparing the head from being knocked around.