BOXING, the art of attack and defence with the fists pro tected by padded gloves, as distinguished from pugilism, in which the bare fists, or some kind of light gloves affording little moder ation of the blow, are employed (M.E. box, a blow, probably from Dan. bask, a buffet). The ancient Greeks used a sort of glove in practice, but, although far less formidable than the terrible caestus worn in serious encounters, it was by no means so mild an implement as the modern boxing-glove, the invention of which is traditionally ascribed to Jack Broughton (1705-89), "the father of British pugilism." In any case gloves were first used in his time, though only in practice, all prize-fights being decided with bare fists. Broughton, who was for years champion of Eng land, also drew up the rules by which prize-fights were for many years regulated, and no doubt, with the help of the newly invented gloves, imparted instruction in boxing to the young aristocrats of his day. The most popular teacher of the art was, however, John Jackson (1769-1845), called "Gentleman Jackson," who was champion from 1795 to 180o, and who is credited with im parting to boxing its scientific principles, such as countering, accurate judging of distance in hitting, and agility on the feet. Tom Moore, the poet, in his Memoirs, asserted that Jackson "made more than a thousand a year by teaching sparring." Among his pupils was Lord Byron, who, when chided for keeping com pany with a pugilist, insisted that Jackson's manners were "in finitely superior to those of the fellows of the college whom I meet at the high table," and referred to him in the following lines in Hints from Horace:— "And men unpractised in exchanging knocks Must go to Jackson ere they dare to box." His rooms in Bond street were crowded with men of birth and distinction, and when the allied monarchs visited London he was entrusted with the management of a boxing carnival with which they were vastly pleased. In 1814 the Pugilistic Club, the meeting place of the aristocratic sporting element, was formed, but the high-water mark of the popularity of boxing had been reached, and it declined rapidly, although throughout the country consider able interest continued to be manifested in prize-fighting.
The sport of modern boxing, as distinguished from pugilism, may be said to date from the year 1866, when the public had become disgusted with the brutality and unfair practices of the professional "bruisers," and the laws against prize-fighting began to be more rigidly enforced. In that year the "Amateur Athletic Club" was founded, principally through the efforts of John G. Chambers (1843-83), who, in conjunction with the 8th marquess of Queensberry, drew up a code of laws (known as the Queens berry Rules) which govern all glove contests in Great Britain, and were also authoritative in America until the adoption of the boxing rules of the Amateur Athletic Union of America. In 1867 Lord Queensberry presented cups for the British amateur cham pionships at the recognized weights.
Boxing is the art of hitting without getting hit. The boxers face each other just out of reach and balanced equally on both feet, the left from 1 o to loin. in advance of the right. The left foot is planted flat on the floor, while the right heel is raised slightly from it. The left side of the body is turned a little towards the opponent and the right shoulder slightly depressed. When the hands are clenched inside the gloves the thumb is doubled over the second and third fingers to avoid a sprain when hitting.
The general position of the guard is a matter of individual taste. In the "crouch," affected by many American professionals, the right hip is thrust forward and the body bent over towards the right, while the left arm is kept well stretched out to keep the opponent at a distance. For speed and the use of a straight left, the basis of the classic style, the upright pose is decidedly more effective. Some boxers stand with the right foot forward, a practice common in the i8th century. which gives freer play with the right hand but is rather unstable. A boxer should stand lightly on his feet, ready to ad vance or retreat on the instant, using short steps, advancing with the left foot first and retreating with the right. Attacks are either simple or secondary. Simple attacks consist in straight leads; i.e., blows aimed with or without preliminary feints, at some part of the opponent's body or head.
All other attacks are either "coun ters" or returns after a guard or "block." A counter is a lead carried out just as one is attacked, the object being to block (parry) the blow and land on the opponent at the same time. Coun ters are often carried out in connection with a side-step, a slip or a crouch. In hitting a boxer seeks to exert the greatest force at the instant of impact.
Blows may be either straight, with or without the weight of the body behind them ("straight from the shoulder" hits) ; jabs, or stabbing blows (delivered with either hand at close quarters) ; hooks, or side-blows with bent arm; upper cuts (short swinging blows from beneath to the adversary's chin) ; chops (short blows from above); or swings (round-arm blows, usually delivered with a partial twist of the body to augment the force of the blow). Of the dangerous blows, which often result in a knock-out, or in seriously weakening an adversary, the following may be men tioned :—On the pit of the stomach, called the solar plexus, from the sensitive network of nerves situated there ; a blow on the point of the chin, having a tendency to destroy the sense of equilibrium ; a blow under the ear, painful and often resulting in partial helplessness; and one directly over the heart, kidney or liver. As a boxer is allowed ten seconds after being knocked down in which to rise, an experienced ring-fighter will drop on one knee when partially stunned, remaining in that position in order to recover until the referee has counted nine.
Guarding is done with the arm or hand, either open or shut. If a blow is caught or stopped short it is called blocking, but a blow may also be shoved aside, or avoided altogether by slipping; i.e., moving the head quickly to one side, or by ducking and allowing the adversary's swing to pass harmlessly over the head. Still another method of avoiding a blow without guarding is to bend back the head or body so as narrowly to escape the op ponent's glove.
The rules of the Amateur Boxing Association (founded 1884) contain the following provisions. "An amateur is one who has never competed for a money prize or staked bet with or against a professional for any prize, except with the express sanction of the A.B.A., and who has never taught, pursued or assisted in the practice of athletic exercises as a means of obtaining a liveli hood." The ring shall be roped and between 12 and 24ft. square. No spikes shall be worn on shoes. Boxers are divided into the following classes by weight :—Fly-weight, not exceeding 8st.; Bantam, not exceeding 8st. 6 lb. (118 lb.) ; Feather, not exceeding 9st. (526 lb.) ; Light, not exceeding lost. (14o lb.) ; Welter, not exceeding iost. 7 lb. ; Middle, not exceeding 11 st. 6 lb. (16o lb.) ; Light-heavy or Cruiser, not exceeding 12st. 61b.; and Heavy, any weight above. There shall be two judges, a referee and a time keeper. The votes of the judges decide the winner of a bout, unless they disagree, in which case the referee has the deciding vote. In case of doubt he may order an extra round of two minutes' duration. Each match is for three rounds, the first two lasting three minutes, and the 'bird four, with one minute rest between the rounds. A competitor failing to come up at the call of time loses the match. When a competitor draws a bye he must box for a specified time with an opponent chosen by the judges. A competitor is allowed one assistant (second) only, and no advice or coaching during the progress of a round is per mitted. Unless one competitor is unable to respond to the call of time, or is obliged to stop before the match is over, the judges decide the winner by points, which are for attack, comprising successful hits cleanly delivered, and defence, comprising guard ing, slipping, ducking, counter-hitting and getting away in time to avoid a return. When the points are equal the decision is given in favour of the boxer who has done the most leading; i.e., has been the more aggressive. Fouls are hitting below the belt, kick ing, hitting with the open hand, the side of the hand, the wrist, elbow or shoulder, wrestling or "roughing" on the ropes; i.e., un necessary shouldering and jostling.
The boxing rules of the American Amateur Athletic Association differ slightly from the British. The ring is roped but must be from 16 to 24ft. square. Gloves must not be worn more than 8oz. in weight. The recognized classes by weight are: Bantam, 105 lb. and under; Feather, 115 lb. and under; Light, 135 lb. and under; Welter, 145 lb. and under; Middle, 138 lb. and under; and Heavy, over 158 lb. The rules for officials and rounds are identical with the British, except that only in final bouts does the last round last four minutes. Two "seconds" are allowed. The rules for points and fouls coincide with the British. The amateur rules are very strict, and any one who competes in a boxing contest of more than four rounds is suspended from membership in the Athletic Association.
Around him, and two provincial instructors who came to Paris about this time with similar ideas, there grew up a large number of sportsmen, who between 1845 and 1855 brought French boxing to its highest development. Among others who gave public ex hibitions was Lecour's brother Hubert, who although rather under sized, was quick as lightning, and had an English blow and a French kick that were truly terrible. Charles Ducros was another whose style of boxing, more in the English fashion, but with low kicks about his opponent's shins, made a name for himself. Later came Vigneron, a "strong man," whose style, though slow, was severe in its punishment. About 1856 the police interfered in these fights, and Lecour and Vigneron had to cease giving public exhibitions and devote themselves to teaching. Towards 1862 a new boxer, J. Charlemont, was not only very clever with his fists and feet, but an excellent teacher, and the author of a treatise on the art. Lecour, Vigneron and Charlemont may be said to have created la boxe francaise, which, for defence at equal weights, the French claim to be better than the English.
See Georges d'Amoric, The French Method of the Noble Art of Self Defence (1898) ; J. Charlemont, L'Art de la boxe frantaise et de la canne (1899).
The adoption of boxing as a recognized form of physical train ing in the Services for officers and men alike, while millions of men were being called to the colours as the World War ran its course, has been the principal factor in a revival of intelligent interest, which has not only increased the number of amateur boxers in Great Britain, but has also raised the status of the professional. Though it has not quite succeeded in throwing off its disreputable adherents, boxing is now generally admitted, ex cept by a very few Puritanical moralists, to deserve the praise given to it in a letter to Tommy Burns, for a time the world's heavyweight champion, from the late Father Bernard Vaughan, who said "Boxing is an education—you learn self-control, to give and to take, to punish and be punished, smiling all the time." The average professional glove fighter is now almost always a decent citizen, and for such experts as Driscoll, Basham, Wells, Sum mers, Britt, Frank Moran, Mc Farland, Tom Gibbons, Gene Tunney, to name only a few out of many, those who knew them well had a real regard and no little respect.
Douglas, who had the best of a private trial with Burns when the latter was still champion, and John Hopley, the Cambridge University heavy-weight, would certainly have attained the highest honours, if they had made boxing their profession. Hopley's hitting power and other physical gifts for the game were equal to those possessed by any holder of the world's heavy-weight championship, with the exception of Jeffries. The Amateur Boxing Association championships were sometimes made stepping-stones to a professional career, and several of those who adopted this plan did very well indeed in the professional ranks, even winning British championships. The short amateur contests, in which not a moment could be wasted, were an excellent preparation for an intensive style of boxing in professional matches.
But, generally speaking, the best professional boxers of the period, especially as regards the heavier divisions, were not quite as good as those of the previous generations. Jeffries, Fitzsim mons, Corbett, Sharkey and Ruhlin were a quintette of great heavy-weights, especially Jeffries, each of whom combined un usual skill with extraordinary punching power and the real fighting temperament. They were succeeded by four very formidable coloured fighters, Johnson, Langford, McVea and Jeannette, of whom the first-named was not much inferior to Peter Jackson— though the Jeffries he beat at Reno, in a fight that proved a provocation to racial riots all over U.S.A., was only the husk of the former world's champion.
Johnson lost his title to Wil lard in the contest at Havana. It is a debatable point whether Dempsey, who knocked out Wil lard, when the latter was un trained and past his prime, in three rounds, was the equal of any of the great heavy-weights mentioned above. Comparisons are unsatisfactory because the modern heavy-weight adopts a more intensive style than his predecessors, attempting to ob tain a decision from the first, instead of using the preliminary rounds to test his opponent's methods and get an insight into his plan of campaign. But, whenever he was held for three or four rounds, Dempsey relapsed into mediocrity. Dempsey, owing to a long period of inactivity, was not the fast and resolute fighter he had been when he was beaten by Gene Tunney—a boxer rather than a fighter—on points in contests for the world's heavy-weight championship at Philadelphia and at Chicago in 1926 and 1927.
It is only in the lighter divisions that British and French boxers have reached the American standard, even in a period when, as has been suggested, championship form on the American side of the Atlantic showed a certain falling off. Wells, the most inter esting and popular of the British heavy-weights, lacked the well-fortified physique and fighting temperament which are re quired for success, and was easily beaten by two second-rate Americans.
Among the little men, however, Great Britain and France have held their own fairly well. Ledoux, a pocket Hercules and Criqui, a glove fighter of genius handicapped by wounds received in the War, were two French boxers who were, for a time, in the world's championship class. Britain has had in Driscoll and Wilde, two real prodigies who were for years supreme at their weights. Driscoll was by general consent the perfect stylist, the boxer's boxer, in fact, whose method in its graceful effectiveness, severity and economy of exertion, will always be remembered as a classic model. Wilde, on the other hand, was an eccentric genius, who made the most of a physique which, like that of Fitzsimmons, seemed expressly invented to get the maximum hitting punch for the minimum weight. In America, the melting pot of racial types, such freaks of physique are far more common than in the European countries, where the human body is more or less standardized, and they are scientifically utilized for securing extraordinary results in various feats. That is yet another reason why America produces so many men with a special aptitude for pugilism. Hill and Teddy Baldock, despite an unexpected defeat incurred by the latter, look like becoming worthy successors of Driscoll and Wilde, both of whom could keep their Welsh tem peraments on ice, so to speak.
It was then that Tex Rickard offered a purse of $20,000, pro vided the contest took place in Goldfield, Nev. He held that huge profits could be made by staging bona-fide championship con tests in open-air arenas constructed for the purpose, and mak ing such arrangements that every ticket-holder would be sure of his (or her) seat, and an uninterrupted view of the boxing, while at the same time there would be no danger of a disturbance at the conclusion of a contest which had aroused the passions of the spectators.
At Rickard's first promotion, the contest between Joe Gans and Battling Nelson, which was a fight to a finish, lasting 42 rounds, the gate money amount ed to nearly $70,000 and the pro moter's net profit exceeded $10, 000. The Johnson-Jeffries fight at Reno in Nevada (1910) brought gate receipts of $270, 755, Dempsey v. Willard at Toledo in Ohio and these huge figures were greatly exceeded when world's heavy-weight championships could be staged in, or within easy reach of, the greatest American cities. Dempsey v. Carpentier at Jersey City (1921) brought in $1,626,580 and the million dollar total was also exceeded in the case of Dempsey v. Firpo in New York (1923). It was generally thought that the limit had now been reached: but it was exceeded by Tunney v. Dempsey at Philadelphia, and the record was broken at their second meeting at Chicago, when the huge sum of $2,750 000 was taken in gate money, the winner's remuneration being nearly a million dollars ! It is possible the limit has not yet been reached.
C. B. Cochran's Promotions.—In England, though the remua. neration of the successful boxer has greatly increased since 1910, nothing approaching the higher American figures has yet been recorded. In the boxing boom which followed the World War, C. B. Cochran, who in 1914 had staged the Welsh-Ritchie match at Olympia and who was one of the bidders for the Carpentier Dempsey contest, became a serious rival to the National Sporting Club. A consummate showman, he conceived the idea, and cer tainly realized it, of giving boxing shows which should be as well conducted as a theatrical performance. In his book of remi niscences entitled The Secrets of a Showman (1925) he gives the full financial details of some of these ventures. The contest between Wilde and the American bantam-weight Moore, which was won by the former of ter anamazing display of skill, hitting power and stamina, was perhaps the most interesting of his pro motions, which were never mere money-making affairs.
The Cochran boxing shows, some of which were watched by the Prince of Wales, might al most be described as social func tions, and they recalled the great days of the old prize ring, when men f ought with the naked fists for 5o or i oo guineas a side in the presence of all the social celebrities of the day. At these well-conducted modern spectacles a small proportion, never more than i%, were women. In France, where purses have never yet ap proached the English maximum, the number of women attending a contest in which a popular favourite, such as Carpentier or Criqui in their prime, is engaged, is apt to be very large. The same phenomenon has been noticed in Italy and Spain, and the Latin-American countries. It is all largely a question of national temperament, and the horror of seeing bloodshed, which is thought to be a characteristic of northern races, is not likely to prevent women, who are in the habit of attending bull fights, from watching boxing matches.
The many failures of British boxers, when meeting American champions in the ring, have been the result, in nine cases out of ten, of their intellectual inferiority, and the lack of moral self discipline that goes with it as a general rule. More than once England has had heavy-weight champions who had every physical requisite for the game, yet failed to make the most and best of themselves owing to their inability to learn from bitter experience, much less from experimental work in the gymnasium, or their unwillingness to keep fit between one special preparation for a fight and the next. The old bruiser type, whose chief asset was an insensitiveness to pain, still survives in England, but he has long since been scrapped as useless in America.
Large purses, it would seem, bring into the ring young men of brains as well as brawn, who are capable of perfecting their technique by taking thought to it and have the mental resources that enable them to endure with patience the tedious regime of training and practice year after year. But, once a championship has been achieved, they do not fight often enough to develop their gifts to the fullest extent. A world's champion finds it now so easy to make a large income by exhibition work on the music hall stage, by film acting, etc., that he will not risk the loss of his title until he is compelled to do so by the force of public opinion. The no-decision contest, which is so popular in America, enables him to keep up his form, but the practice of choosing opponents whom he is certain of beating tends to prevent any improvement in technique.
The Latin physique, perhaps in consequence of frugal eating and a racial preference for wines rather than malted liquors, is ad mirably adapted for a sport that requires a high degree of stamina.
No oriental boxer has, as yet, reached the highest class, though Indians, Japanese and Chinese are occasionally seen in minor contests, and a Filipino, Villa, has actually held the world's fly weight championship, but there seems no reason why the Eastern races, which have produced so many fine wrestlers, should not learn to excel in the sister-art in course of time. India has sent us some very skilful amateur boxers.
A proof that boxing is rapidly becoming popular in the Latin countries is found in the way renderings, often comical in appearance, of English technical terms have been adapted into the French, Italian and Spanish languages. Outside the British Isles, there are few amateur boxers of merit. Even in America those who take up the game for the game's sake are vastly inferior, both in quality and quantity, to the increasing multitude of British amateurs. There is no annual competition there comparable with the British Ama teur Boxing Association championships, and there is nothing equivalent to the flourishing boxing clubs at Oxford and Cambridge in the great American universities. If the American athlete thinks he can excel in such an exacting man-to-man game, nine times in ten he adopts it as a professional vocation. And in France, though the brilliant victories of Carpentier gave rise to a temporary craze for what was significantly styled "Byronic Boxing," fencing has now regained its old position as the gentleman's art of self defence, an indispensable accomplishment.
In the Scandinavian countries, however, and in Germany, there is a real enthusiasm for amateur boxing. Denmark produces ex cellent amateurs, and her representative teams have done very well in matches against teams selected by the Amateur Boxing Association. Such amateur international matches are a new de velopment and are certain to become more numerous and more popular as spectacles in the near future. The impetus to boxing in Germany was given by returned prisoners of war who had acquired the rudiments of the game in concentration camps. Two sailors, Breitenstraeter and Prenzel, who were captured at the be ginning of the World War and learned to box fairly well in the internment camp at Douglas, Isle of Man, were the pioneers of professional boxing in Germany. They started travelling boxing booths, and whenever demonstrations of the art were given, ex prisoners of war attended in large numbers, and local clubs were formed. The popular impression that the excellence of the British soldier as a fighting man was due to his training in boxing greatly helped the new form of athletic propaganda, and Blucher's approval of pugilism was a stock quotation in many favourable newspaper articles. Professional boxing shows have become very popular, especially in Berlin where they are rigorously controlled by a boxers' union, the Verband Deutscher Faustkiimpfer, and a promoters' association, the Verband der Boxkampf Unternehmer. For a few appearances on a Berlin stage with sparring partners Dempsey received $50,000 and all the travelling expenses of him self and his camp from London. To-day amateur boxing clubs exist in every German city and town and when the problem of obtaining competent instructors is solved, there can be little doubt that skilled exponents will be produced.