Boxing

more...

Home
Baseball-MLB
Baseball-Minors
Baseball-Negro Leagues
Basketball-NBA
Basketball-WNBA
Boxing
Graded
Non-Graded
College Trading Cards
Football-CFL (Canadian)
Football-NFL
Golf-LPGA
Golf-Other
Golf-PGA
Hockey-Minors
Hockey-NHL
Olympics
Other
Racing-Indy Racing
Racing-NASCAR
Racing-Other
Soccer
Storage, Display Supplies
Tennis
Wrestling-WWE
etopps

Boxing, also called prizefighting (when referring to professional boxing) or the sweet science (a common nickname among fans) or the gentlemans sport(used mainly in England), is a sport and martial art in which two participants of similar weight classification 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 usually counted as a knockout when calculating the total knockouts. A TKO can occur at any time.

Origins

Boxing most likely was invented in various cultures independently and had their origins in prehistorical periods. Archaeological evidence suggests boxing existed in Africa as early as 4000 BC with the earliest visual evidence for boxing appearing in Sumerian relief carvings from the 3rd millennium BC. The earliest evidence for it in the Mediterranean was around 1500 BC.

A mythical Greek ruler named Theseus, said to have lived around the 9th century BC, allegedly invented a form of boxing in which two men sat face to face and beat each other with their fists until one of them was killed. In time, the boxers began to fight while standing and wearing gloves (with spikes) and wrappings on their arms below the elbows, although otherwise they competed naked.

First accepted as an Olympic sport (the ancient Greeks called it Pygme/ Pygmachia) in 688 BC, participants trained on punching bags (called a korykos). Fighters wore leather straps (called himantes) over their hands, wrists, and sometimes breast, to protect them from injury. The straps left their fingers free.

In China in the Zhou Dynasty 12th Century B.C., Jiao li, a form of wrestling that included boxing, was recorded in the Classic of Rites. This combat system included techniques such as strikes, throws, joint manipulation, and pressure point attacks..

Read more at Wikipedia.org