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 B.C. The last known was Varasdates of Armenia, in 369 A.D., who is also the last known champion 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 in 1904 at St. Louis. 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 boxing 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, it has been surpassed in the last 30 years, by first the Soviet Union and, more recently, by Cuba. Three boxers have won three Olympic gold medals, László Papp of Hungary, and Teófilo Stevenson and Félix Savón of Cuba. 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.

Olympic boxing has been contested in 12 weight classes, but in 2004 and 2008 only 11 classes were contested. Amateur matches are currently four rounds of two minutes each with a one-minute rest between rounds, although until 2000 they were three rounds of three minutes each. There are five judges who score the match. Scoring is now done by a complicated system in which the judges register successful punches. If three of the five judges register a punch within one second, that scores one point for the boxer who lands the punch. Decisions are made only by the punches landed point score. At the Olympics, all weight classes are conducted by single-elimination tournaments. There is currently no match for third place, with both losing semi-finalists receiving bronze medals. There have been many controversial judging decisions at the Olympics, and because of the difficulty judging the sport, the IOC has told the boxing federation that they had to solve the problems to stay on the Olympic Program. In August 2009, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) approved women’s boxing to be added to the Olympic Program. Women first competed at the Olympics in three weight classes in London in 2012.

Amateur boxing is governed by the International Boxing Association, which was originally called the Association Internationale de Boxe Amateur, although it still uses the acronym AIBA, which was founded on 29/30 November 1946. As of 2018 the AIBA has 203 members. 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).