Where Did Boxing Originate From?

[sonship]

Boxing is now a very big sport,but where is the place that boxing originated from?

[QueensburyRules]

- -Fighting is endemic in every culture, hence boxers being called fighters.

In general it originates in primative form in N Africa and Greece to expand from there. The first recorded fight and seduction of a man by a woman that instigates that unarmed fight is in the Epic of Gilgamesh that starts 5000 yrs ago in Summeria.

[Heavyhands420]

The modern boxing we know today originated in ancient greece. Fighters fought bare knuckle and eventually developed leather hand wraps to protect the hands. Also they typically fought naked. It ended up being an olympic sport along with pankration a form or greek mma or martial art that included kicks and grapples.

As previously mentioned by another poster fighting has been associated with humans since our appearance in history therefore you can assume people have been participating in fisticuffs probably before we even became **** sapien sapiens.

[Willie Pep 229]

The modern boxing we know today originated in ancient greece. Fighters fought bare knuckle and eventually developed leather hand wraps to protect the hands. Also they typically fought naked. It ended up being an olympic sport along with pankration a form or greek mma or martial art that included kicks and grapples.

As previously mentioned by another poster fighting has been associated with humans since our appearance in history therefore you can assume people have been participating in fisticuffs probably before we even became **** sapien sapiens.

You just got to love a PC filter that disallows you to use the word H-O-M-O in any context.

[Marchegiano]

Nice attempt boys.

686 BC

1743

1910

you decide.


I'll give you the real history first and then the made up mytho BS that's also interesting I think.


If boxing is to mean fist fighting our first or oldest bit of evidence comes from the Aegean islands and Corfu. That's Greece for those not so good with the geography.

As martial art it starts in Sparta. It's military training for Spartan soldiers because Spartans do not wear helmets. Sparta does not produce helmets. Usually when you see a helmeted Spartan their helm is Corinthian and they are from a later date with different ideas about war. When boxing was invented Spartans did not wear helmets. Boxing was skull thickening and sword and shield practice. Nothing more.

Anyway, boxing as a martial art grows throughout Greece. It pops up all over the middle east and northern africa. There is no direct connection, these could be independent or influenced by Sparta, we don't know.

Boxing as a sport is special to Greece and Greece alone. No Summerains, no Hittites, no Egyptians, nada. These cultures do not value individualism and are actively against any form or organized glorification of any individual citizen not in power. The king, country, or tribe is who is put over. They 'box' like how Tyson Fury 'boxes' in the WWE. The home team wins, and, it's a team, no singular greatness. The Hittites were especially guilty of this which is ironic because the first Greek boxing champion is from Anatolia.

War turned from chaotic group battles a singular man could win, or shine in, to formation fighting that really behooved soldiers to stick together and fight together rather than a group of individuals fighting another group like two big gangs. Boxing continued to be a military martial art but would be seperated from the sport version and forgotten over time.

Once the Greeks begin boxing as a sport the Spartans quit the sport. Spartans to not surrender, the rest of the Greeks thought a beat man refusing to surrender was cowardly. The Spartans decide to go their own way with it and have local games. Female boxing being one of them. Unique to Sparta and Sparta alone, the rest of Greek boxing couldn't even be watched by females.

Also, boxing as a sport or martial art does not get defined rules until the first boxing Olympia in 686. A man named Onomastos won, he wrote the rules. Prior to that there was just loose ideas really.

Boxing is fine from Greece to Rome, there are plenty of changes but nothing really of interest in an origin story.

Rome become Christian. Boxing is made illegal in all of Christendom. Two things:

(1.) Boxing is a ritual in honor of Apollo, I'll explain more once we get to the mythos portion
(2.) Man is made in the image of God and to disfigure that image is heresy.


There is boxing during this period. In the form of duels, by this time military boxing is totally lost. There is no organized sport though and no prize fighting. You don't get money or a crown for dueling. Russia also had its own form of boxing in the dark ages.


The renaissance and enlightenment happen. You know, that point in history when the English thought it was super cool to dig up Greek stuff and recreate it....like democracy. Boxing was just one of those things dug up Guy named Richard Dover recreated the olympics in England in the 1600s. By the 1720s the premier duelist on England decided he quite liked Greek boxing, Dover's boxing, and toured all of England claiming he could whoop anyone. He lost only once and avenged his loss.

Boxing was still figuring itself out though, and one round of it was sword fighting, another was cudgel, and then the third bare fist.

When this duelist, named James Figg, retired he, like most fighters, opened up a training facility. He trained the next 6 or 7 guys who would claim champion of england in boxing. Of those guys the last two to be trained directly by Figg had a disagreement over who was champion and who could make rules. They fought, Jack Broughton won, he then wrote the first rules since Onomastos in 686 BC.

The Pugilistic Club formed out of the backers and former champions to continue to create and adjust rules. They write the LPRR and revision, and are still around as the BBBoC

The PC controls everything pretty outright until in the 1840s Police Gazette pops up to serve as ye old Ring and then in 1910 the IBU forms and we have a real sanctioning body, rules, ranks, belts, mandos, etc.

That's the real boxing history from origin to us, now let me drop that Apollo myth:



he ancient Greeks thought that the first Games in Olympia were organized by heroes and gods. In his first Olympic Ode, dated to the fifth century BC, Pindar tells us about Pelops, the founder of the Games. Pelops, the son of Tantalus, came from Asia Minor to participate to a chariot race organized by Oinomaos, the king of Pisa in the Peloponnese. Oinomaos was told of an oracle according to which the marriage of his daughter Hippodameia would cause his death. Thus, he ordered his people to kill all the suitors who came to participate in the game. However, Pelops insidiously killed Oinomaos during the race and ended up marring Hippodameia. As king of the area, he was the first to organize the games to purify himself or, according to another version, to thank the gods for his victory. The organization of the chariot race was illustrated in the eastern pediment of the temple of Zeus in the 5th century BC. In the same way, Hippodameia instituted the Heraean games for the same reason. These were running games, conducted every four years and restricted uniquely to maidens.The Idaean Heracles is another heroic figure associated to the first Games. Heracles came with his brothers Kouretes from Crete, defined the length of the stadium at Olympia, organized a foot race with his brothers and crowned the victor with a wreath of wild olive leaves. Pindar also records that it was Theban Heracles, the son of Zeus who brought the wild olive from the Hyperborean countries, founded the foot race, introduced the cult of Zeus and determined the boundaries of the Sacred Altis. The historian Strabo reports that the descendants of Heracles (the Herakleidai) first organized the games, after the spread of the Aitolian and Dorian groups to Pisa. According to this interpretation, the Aetolian groups who conquered Pisa settled there under their leader Oxylus in the Late Mycenean period, ca. 1200-1100 BC. This occupation led to conflicts with the indigenous people, as indicated by the later antagonism between Eleans who migrated from Aetolia, and Pisatans. According to an Elean myth, Zeus took control of the sanctuary and founded the games.

Pausanius "With regard to the Olympic games, the Elean antiquaries say that Kronos first reigned in Heaven, and that a temple was made for him by the men of that age, who were named the Golden Race. When Zeus was born, Rhea entrusted the guardianship of her son to the Dactyls of Ida, who are the same as those called Curetes. They came from Cretan Ida—Heracles, Paeonaeus, Epimedes, Iasius and Idas.

Heracles, being the eldest, matched his brothers, as a game, in a running-race, and crowned the winner with a branch of wild olive, of which they had such a copious supply that they slept on heaps of its leaves while still green. It is said to have been introduced into Greece by Heracles from the land of the Hyperboreans, men living beyond the home of the North Wind.

Olen the Lycian, in his hymn to Achaeia, was the first to say that from these Hyperboreans Achaeia came to Delos. When Melanopus of Cyme composed an ode to Opis and Hecaerge declaring that these, even before Achaeia, came to Delos from the Hyperboreans.

And Aristeas of Proconnesus—for he too made mention of the Hyperboreans—may perhaps have learnt even more about them from the Issedones, to whom he says in his poem that he came. Heracles of Ida, therefore, has the reputation of being the first to have held, on the occasion I mentioned, the games, and to have called them Olympic.

Some say that Zeus wrestled here with Cronus himself for the throne, while others say that he held the games in honor of his victory over Cronus. The record of victors include Apollo, who outran Hermes and beat Ares at boxing. It is for this reason, they say, that the Pythian flute-song is played while the competitors in the pentathlum are jumping; for the flute-song is sacred to Apollo, and Apollo won Olympic victories."


Pindar "Then the mighty son of Zeus, having gathered together all his host at Pisa and all the booty, measured a sacred grove for his sovereign father. Having fenced round the Altis he marked the bounds thereof in a clear space, and the plain encompassing it he ordained for rest and feasting. He set apart the choicest of the spoil for an offering from the war and sacrificed, and he ordained the fifth year feast with the first Olympiad and prizes of victory.".


According to myth, Apollo invented boxing when he defeated and killed Phorbas, a fighter who forced travelers to Delphi to compete with him. Apollo defeated Ares in the first Olympia.

Phorbas vs Apollo

Philostratus: " This river, my boy, is the Boiotian Kephisos, a stream not unknown to the Mousai; and on its bank Phlegyans are encamped, barbarian people who do not yet live in cities. Of the two men boxing you doubtless see that one is Apollo, and the other is Phorbas, whom the Phlegyans have made king because he is tall beyond all of them and the most savage of the race. Apollo is boxing with him for the freedom of the road. For since Phorbas seized control of the road which leads straight to Phokis and Delphi, no one any longer sacrifices at Pytho or conducts paians in honour of the god, and the tripod's oracles and prophetic sayings and responses have wholly ceased. Phorbas separates himself from the rest of the Phlegyans when he makes his raids; for this oak-tree, my boy, he has taken as his home, and the Phlegyans visit him in these royal quarters in order, forsooth, to obtain justice. Catching those who journey toward the shrine, he sends the old men and children to the central camp of the Phlegyans for them to despoil and hold for ransom; but as for the stronger, he strips for a contest with them and overcomes some in wrestling, outruns others, and defeats others in the pancratium and in throwing the discus; then he cuts off their heads and suspends these on the oak, and beneath this defilement he spends his life. The heads hang dank from the branches, and some you see are withered and others fresh, while others have shrunken to bare skulls; and they grin and seem to lament as the wind blows on them. To Phorbas, as he exults over these ‘Olympian’ victories, has come Apollo in the likeness of a youthful boxer. As for the aspect of the god, he is represented as unshorn, my boy, and with his hair fastened up so that he may box with girt-up head; rays of light rise from about his brow and his cheek emits a smile mingled with wrath; keen is the glance of his eyes as it follows his uplifted hands. And the leather thongs are wrapped about his hands, which are more beautiful than if garlands adorned them. Already the god has overcome him in boxing, for the thrust of the right hand shows the hand still in action and not yet discontinuing the posture wherewith he has laid him low, but the Phlegyan is already stretched on the ground, and a poet will tell how much ground he covers; the wound has been inflicted on his temple, and the blood gushes forth from it as from a fountain. He is depicted as savage, and of swinelike features the kind that will feed upon strangers rather than simply kill them. Fire from heaven rushes down to smite the oak and set it afire, not, however, to obliterate all record of it; for the place where these events occurred, my boy, is still called ‘Heads of Oak.’"





We are all heathenous Apollo worshippers. Satanic in fact

[Willie Pep 229]

Thanks for posting. --- I was expecting it. Now I just need to light up a blunt and read! BTW just how far back am I about to go? LOL

[Marchegiano]

Thanks for posting. --- I was expecting it. Now I just need to light up a blunt and read! BTW just how far back am I about to go? LOL

like 5k years but I like to think I brought it to 1910 pretty quickly.

[billeau2]

Nice attempt boys.

686 BC

1743

1910

you decide.


I'll give you the real history first and then the made up mytho BS that's also interesting I think.


If boxing is to mean fist fighting our first or oldest bit of evidence comes from the Aegean islands and Corfu. That's Greece for those not so good with the geography.

As martial art it starts in Sparta. It's military training for Spartan soldiers because Spartans do not wear helmets. Sparta does not produce helmets. Usually when you see a helmeted Spartan their helm is Corinthian and they are from a later date with different ideas about war. When boxing was invented Spartans did not wear helmets. Boxing was skull thickening and sword and shield practice. Nothing more.

Anyway, boxing as a martial art grows throughout Greece. It pops up all over the middle east and northern africa. There is no direct connection, these could be independent or influenced by Sparta, we don't know.

Boxing as a sport is special to Greece and Greece alone. No Summerains, no Hittites, no Egyptians, nada. These cultures do not value individualism and are actively against any form or organized glorification of any individual citizen not in power. The king, country, or tribe is who is put over. They 'box' like how Tyson Fury 'boxes' in the WWE. The home team wins, and, it's a team, no singular greatness. The Hittites were especially guilty of this which is ironic because the first Greek boxing champion is from Anatolia.

War turned from chaotic group battles a singular man could win, or shine in, to formation fighting that really behooved soldiers to stick together and fight together rather than a group of individuals fighting another group like two big gangs. Boxing continued to be a military martial art but would be seperated from the sport version and forgotten over time.

Once the Greeks begin boxing as a sport the Spartans quit the sport. Spartans to not surrender, the rest of the Greeks thought a beat man refusing to surrender was cowardly. The Spartans decide to go their own way with it and have local games. Female boxing being one of them. Unique to Sparta and Sparta alone, the rest of Greek boxing couldn't even be watched by females.

Also, boxing as a sport or martial art does not get defined rules until the first boxing Olympia in 686. A man named Onomastos won, he wrote the rules. Prior to that there was just loose ideas really.

Boxing is fine from Greece to Rome, there are plenty of changes but nothing really of interest in an origin story.

Rome become Christian. Boxing is made illegal in all of Christendom. Two things:

(1.) Boxing is a ritual in honor of Apollo, I'll explain more once we get to the mythos portion
(2.) Man is made in the image of God and to disfigure that image is heresy.


There is boxing during this period. In the form of duels, by this time military boxing is totally lost. There is no organized sport though and no prize fighting. You don't get money or a crown for dueling. Russia also had its own form of boxing in the dark ages.


The renaissance and enlightenment happen. You know, that point in history when the English thought it was super cool to dig up Greek stuff and recreate it....like democracy. Boxing was just one of those things dug up Guy named Richard Dover recreated the olympics in England in the 1600s. By the 1720s the premier duelist on England decided he quite liked Greek boxing, Dover's boxing, and toured all of England claiming he could whoop anyone. He lost only once and avenged his loss.

Boxing was still figuring itself out though, and one round of it was sword fighting, another was cudgel, and then the third bare fist.

When this duelist, named James Figg, retired he, like most fighters, opened up a training facility. He trained the next 6 or 7 guys who would claim champion of england in boxing. Of those guys the last two to be trained directly by Figg had a disagreement over who was champion and who could make rules. They fought, Jack Broughton won, he then wrote the first rules since Onomastos in 686 BC.

The Pugilistic Club formed out of the backers and former champions to continue to create and adjust rules. They write the LPRR and revision, and are still around as the BBBoC

The PC controls everything pretty outright until in the 1840s Police Gazette pops up to serve as ye old Ring and then in 1910 the IBU forms and we have a real sanctioning body, rules, ranks, belts, mandos, etc.

That's the real boxing history from origin to us, now let me drop that Apollo myth:



he ancient Greeks thought that the first Games in Olympia were organized by heroes and gods. In his first Olympic Ode, dated to the fifth century BC, Pindar tells us about Pelops, the founder of the Games. Pelops, the son of Tantalus, came from Asia Minor to participate to a chariot race organized by Oinomaos, the king of Pisa in the Peloponnese. Oinomaos was told of an oracle according to which the marriage of his daughter Hippodameia would cause his death. Thus, he ordered his people to kill all the suitors who came to participate in the game. However, Pelops insidiously killed Oinomaos during the race and ended up marring Hippodameia. As king of the area, he was the first to organize the games to purify himself or, according to another version, to thank the gods for his victory. The organization of the chariot race was illustrated in the eastern pediment of the temple of Zeus in the 5th century BC. In the same way, Hippodameia instituted the Heraean games for the same reason. These were running games, conducted every four years and restricted uniquely to maidens.The Idaean Heracles is another heroic figure associated to the first Games. Heracles came with his brothers Kouretes from Crete, defined the length of the stadium at Olympia, organized a foot race with his brothers and crowned the victor with a wreath of wild olive leaves. Pindar also records that it was Theban Heracles, the son of Zeus who brought the wild olive from the Hyperborean countries, founded the foot race, introduced the cult of Zeus and determined the boundaries of the Sacred Altis. The historian Strabo reports that the descendants of Heracles (the Herakleidai) first organized the games, after the spread of the Aitolian and Dorian groups to Pisa. According to this interpretation, the Aetolian groups who conquered Pisa settled there under their leader Oxylus in the Late Mycenean period, ca. 1200-1100 BC. This occupation led to conflicts with the indigenous people, as indicated by the later antagonism between Eleans who migrated from Aetolia, and Pisatans. According to an Elean myth, Zeus took control of the sanctuary and founded the games.

Pausanius "With regard to the Olympic games, the Elean antiquaries say that Kronos first reigned in Heaven, and that a temple was made for him by the men of that age, who were named the Golden Race. When Zeus was born, Rhea entrusted the guardianship of her son to the Dactyls of Ida, who are the same as those called Curetes. They came from Cretan Ida—Heracles, Paeonaeus, Epimedes, Iasius and Idas.

Heracles, being the eldest, matched his brothers, as a game, in a running-race, and crowned the winner with a branch of wild olive, of which they had such a copious supply that they slept on heaps of its leaves while still green. It is said to have been introduced into Greece by Heracles from the land of the Hyperboreans, men living beyond the home of the North Wind.

Olen the Lycian, in his hymn to Achaeia, was the first to say that from these Hyperboreans Achaeia came to Delos. When Melanopus of Cyme composed an ode to Opis and Hecaerge declaring that these, even before Achaeia, came to Delos from the Hyperboreans.

And Aristeas of Proconnesus—for he too made mention of the Hyperboreans—may perhaps have learnt even more about them from the Issedones, to whom he says in his poem that he came. Heracles of Ida, therefore, has the reputation of being the first to have held, on the occasion I mentioned, the games, and to have called them Olympic.

Some say that Zeus wrestled here with Cronus himself for the throne, while others say that he held the games in honor of his victory over Cronus. The record of victors include Apollo, who outran Hermes and beat Ares at boxing. It is for this reason, they say, that the Pythian flute-song is played while the competitors in the pentathlum are jumping; for the flute-song is sacred to Apollo, and Apollo won Olympic victories."


Pindar "Then the mighty son of Zeus, having gathered together all his host at Pisa and all the booty, measured a sacred grove for his sovereign father. Having fenced round the Altis he marked the bounds thereof in a clear space, and the plain encompassing it he ordained for rest and feasting. He set apart the choicest of the spoil for an offering from the war and sacrificed, and he ordained the fifth year feast with the first Olympiad and prizes of victory.".


According to myth, Apollo invented boxing when he defeated and killed Phorbas, a fighter who forced travelers to Delphi to compete with him. Apollo defeated Ares in the first Olympia.

Phorbas vs Apollo

Philostratus: " This river, my boy, is the Boiotian Kephisos, a stream not unknown to the Mousai; and on its bank Phlegyans are encamped, barbarian people who do not yet live in cities. Of the two men boxing you doubtless see that one is Apollo, and the other is Phorbas, whom the Phlegyans have made king because he is tall beyond all of them and the most savage of the race. Apollo is boxing with him for the freedom of the road. For since Phorbas seized control of the road which leads straight to Phokis and Delphi, no one any longer sacrifices at Pytho or conducts paians in honour of the god, and the tripod's oracles and prophetic sayings and responses have wholly ceased. Phorbas separates himself from the rest of the Phlegyans when he makes his raids; for this oak-tree, my boy, he has taken as his home, and the Phlegyans visit him in these royal quarters in order, forsooth, to obtain justice. Catching those who journey toward the shrine, he sends the old men and children to the central camp of the Phlegyans for them to despoil and hold for ransom; but as for the stronger, he strips for a contest with them and overcomes some in wrestling, outruns others, and defeats others in the pancratium and in throwing the discus; then he cuts off their heads and suspends these on the oak, and beneath this defilement he spends his life. The heads hang dank from the branches, and some you see are withered and others fresh, while others have shrunken to bare skulls; and they grin and seem to lament as the wind blows on them. To Phorbas, as he exults over these ‘Olympian’ victories, has come Apollo in the likeness of a youthful boxer. As for the aspect of the god, he is represented as unshorn, my boy, and with his hair fastened up so that he may box with girt-up head; rays of light rise from about his brow and his cheek emits a smile mingled with wrath; keen is the glance of his eyes as it follows his uplifted hands. And the leather thongs are wrapped about his hands, which are more beautiful than if garlands adorned them. Already the god has overcome him in boxing, for the thrust of the right hand shows the hand still in action and not yet discontinuing the posture wherewith he has laid him low, but the Phlegyan is already stretched on the ground, and a poet will tell how much ground he covers; the wound has been inflicted on his temple, and the blood gushes forth from it as from a fountain. He is depicted as savage, and of swinelike features the kind that will feed upon strangers rather than simply kill them. Fire from heaven rushes down to smite the oak and set it afire, not, however, to obliterate all record of it; for the place where these events occurred, my boy, is still called ‘Heads of Oak.’"





We are all heathenous Apollo worshippers. Satanic in fact

Apollo was the first fighter to rely on technique, as opposed to savagery and brutishness, at least it sounds that way.

[Rusty Tromboni]

Boxing and Wrestling originated in the British Isles. It's that simple, and pretty ridiculous that anyone would object to that fact. Sure, martial arts emerge independently in pretty much any society, particularly Wrestling, but out modern sports are direct descendants of landrace systems in use in Ireland and Britain. Again, not a ****** question, but this should be pretty obvious.

*Where it gets fuzzier is where you trace lineage from there. It's obvious that Boxing existed on both islands. While the Irish began to more definitively dominate and relocated the sport's epicenter to America, the English became more invested in claiming the sport's history. Rounders is the Irish sport that evolved into baseball. Hockey is Irish, but was also being played in England before settlers reached America. While Football is mostly English but somewhat Irish. Cricket, polo, soccer, tennis, these are English sports.

Ridiculous things like linking it to Greco-Roman combat. Or even claimining James Figg to be Father of the Sport are betond ridiculous, and don't appeal to anyone with a High School diploma.

But those tales definitely appeal to creep people with Asperger's.

[Marchegiano]

Boxing and Wrestling originated in the British Isles. It's that simple, and pretty ridiculous that anyone would object to that fact. Sure, martial arts emerge independently in pretty much any society, particularly Wrestling, but out modern sports are direct descendants of landrace systems in use in Ireland and Britain. Again, not a ****** question, but this should be pretty obvious.

*Where it gets fuzzier is where you trace lineage from there. It's obvious that Boxing existed on both islands. While the Irish began to more definitively dominate and relocated the sport's epicenter to America, the English became more invested in claiming the sport's history. Rounders is the Irish sport that evolved into baseball. Hockey is Irish, but was also being played in England before settlers reached America. While Football is mostly English but somewhat Irish. Cricket, polo, soccer, tennis, these are English sports.

Ridiculous things like linking it to Greco-Roman combat. Or even claimining James Figg to be Father of the Sport are betond ridiculous, and don't appeal to anyone with a High School diploma.

But those tales definitely appeal to creep people with Asperger's.

It's clear to anyone who read my post you didn't. All your bull**** is already addressed, you're just wrong.