Boxing

Boxing was contested at the Ancient Olympic Games and many other sporting festivals in Ancient Greece. Boxing was then an even more brutal sport, as the combatants wore leather thongs on their hands. Originally, the thongs were simple straps of leather, but later they were reinforced with sharp pieces of metal, and the glove was called a cestus. The first known Ancient Olympic boxing champion was Onomastos, of Smyrna, who won in 688 BCE. The last known was Varasdates, of Armenia, in 369 CE, who was one of the last known champions of the Ancient Olympic Games. Professional boxing has been around since the early 18th century, with a recognized list of professional champions dating from the late 1700s.

Boxing made its first Olympic appearance at St. Louis 1904. All the entrants were Americans and the event doubled as the AAU Championships for that year. Boxing was again contested at the 1908 Olympics in London. In 1912, boxing could not be on the Olympic Program because the sport required special permits in Sweden at that time. Since 1920, boxing has been on the program of every Olympic Games.

The United States was originally the premier nation in Olympic boxing. However, in the last 30 years, it was surpassed, by first the Soviet Union and, more recently, by Cuba. However, the USA still leads the medal table with 117 medals and 50 golds, followed by Cuba, with 78 medals and 41 golds.

Three male boxers have won three Olympic gold medals: László Papp, of Hungary, and Teófilo Stevenson and Félix Savón, of Cuba. Great Britain’s Nicola Adams and American Claressa Shields lead the women’s classification, both with two golds.

A number of Olympic boxers have gone on to become professional World Champions, notably Cassius Clay (Muhammad Ali), George Foreman, Joe Frazier, Sugar Ray Leonard, Floyd Mayweather, Jr., Volodymyr Klychko, Oscar De La Hoya, and Lennox Lewis.

Amateur boxing is governed by the International Boxing Association (IBA), which was originally called the Association Internationale de Boxe Amateur (AIBA), founded on 29 and 30 November 1946. Although the change happened in 2007, the association still used the acronym AIBA until December 2021, when it was rebranded to IBA. As of 2022, the IBA has 205 member federations.

AIBA succeeded the Fédération Internationale de Boxe Amateur (FIBA), that was founded on 24 August 1920 in Antwerpen, during the Olympics, with eleven founding members: Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Great Britain, the Netherlands, Norway, South Africa, Switzerland, Sweden, and the United States. Before having its own organization, boxing was governed together with tug-of-war, weight throwing, weightlifting, and wrestling in the Amateur Athleten Weltunion (1905-1907) and later in the Internationaler Weltverband für Schwerathletik (1913-1920).