The great history of boxing, the Noble Art
The great history of boxing, the Noble Art
Hand-to-hand combat has long been considered a violent action that served to vent, but now it is beginning to be seen as an essential part of the series of exercises to get in shape.
The ancient boxing ring where the first matches took place: the Colosseum.
To understand all this well, here are some facts about the history of boxing .
Boxing emerged in the 6th century BC, when man began to use punches and kicks as natural weapons.
It was practiced in Ancient Greece and in the Roman Empire. Back then, it was a mere fight, a primitive form of boxing: the fight often ended with the death of one of the fighters. It was about boxing called boxing and pankration .
In boxing , the blows were only caused to the head, so you had to be constantly on your guard. On the contrary, in the pankration the fighters could strike anywhere on the body. All the blows were dealt with bare hands (without protections) and any blow was worth any blow.
In 408 BC, Polidamas de Escotusa participated in the Olympic Games and was champion in the pankration mode. Like all legends of antiquity, it had a rather tragic ending.
Later, for fourteen centuries, boxing was forgotten because the Roman emperor Theodosius I banned gladiator fights in AD 392… And that was until the seventeenth century.
James Figg (1695-1734) was the first boxer to fight without weapons, mixing boxing, wrestling and fencing.
Since fighting caused many deaths, his successors codified this new sport. Noteworthy is Jack Broughton (1704-1789), who wrote the first universal English boxing rules in 1743: the London Prize Ring Rules .
English boxing was marked throughout the 19th century by violence, corruption and cheating. In 1866, boxing gloves were established as mandatory, as well as the dimensions of the ring. For its part, fights on the ground were prohibited.
It was specified that from the first round to the last, competitors must be able to recover, so each round had to last three minutes.
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English boxing was not authorized until 1891. At the same time, French boxing or savate (a mixture of fencing and boxing with punches and kicks, as well as hand-to-hand fighting) developed in France.
It is the beginning of the golden age of boxing: the 20th century, when champions went from crime to being famous internationally.
Baltasar Sangchili was the first Spanish boxer to become world champion by defeating Panamanian Alf Brown. IBU version bantamweight world champion was proclaimed.
Here you have the Spanish boxing champions .
There is a long list of WBA (World Boxing Association) and WBO (World Boxing Organization) champions: Mohamed Ali (1942-2016), Mike Tyson, Floyd Mayweather Jr., Rocky Marciano, Manny Pacquiao, Jake LaMotta, Georges Foreman, Joe Grazier, Wladimir Klitschko, etc.
