The earliest record of boxing, or fighting with the fists, is from about 6000 years ago in what we now call Ethiopia. The earliest records of people fighting with gloves appears around 1500 BCE in the Minoan civilization in Crete.

These records depicted fighters wearing metal plates on their hands and helmets on their heads which surely must have been a devastating type of glove! Barefisted fighting played only a small part in Greek boxing. Hands were covered with leather thongs, most likely to protect the fighters hands and wrists. Over time, fighters experimented with various types of hand coverings, moving towards a harder leather which made them more dangerous.

The Romans went one step further and added studs of iron or brass to the thongs, which they called a caestus. A popular name for both the soft and sharp thongs was the myrmex, or "ant"; a name given for their ability to bite.

Boxing was added to the Olympics in Greece in the year 688 BCE. What we know of the rules of the contest comes from pictures of vases and walls of the fighting contests. The fights had no rounds, and the fight continued until a figher raised his finger to show defeat, or he was knocked out. Clinching was absolutely forbidden.

There are pictures of referees holding sticks and harrassing a fighter when he clinched. Fighting took place in a ring, the size of which was based on keeping fighters close together so they had to keep engaging in their fight.

The techniques of early boxing were quite different than they are today. Fighters would hold out their left hand as a guard, and attempt to lunge forward with their guarding arm and them follow through with a punch from their other arm to hurt their opponent. Fighters would stand on their toes and shift from foot to foot and try to evade the blows of their opponents.

When Christianity began to spread through Europe, boxing dissappeared almost completely. Eventually boxing resurfaced in the late 17th Century in England. At the time boxing was a combination of wrestling and fist fighting, and fighters could throw their opponent to the ground and hit them when they were down.

A gentleman names James Figg opened a boxing school in London in 1719 and introduced counter attacking techniques into boxing. One of his students, Jack Broughton, developed the first formal rules for boxing in 1743, called Broughton's Rules. His rules stated that there should be a 3 foot by 3 foot aquare in the middle of the ring and that when a fighter was knocked down he had 30 seconds to get him standing on one side of the square. Since each knockdown meant that the fight was paused for 30 seconds, this really meant the first division of a fight into rounds.

Fighters were not allowed to grab below their opponents waist, but wrestling holds above the wait were still permitted. He also developed the first set of boxing gloves, which he called mufflers, though they were used primarilyy for practice sparring and not for actual fights.

In 1838 new rules were developed called the London Prize Ring Rules, which required a ring to be 24 feet square and enclosed by two ropes. When a fighter was knocked down the round was considered to have ended, and fighers were given a 30 second rest. At the end of the 30 seconds fighters were given 8 seconds to come unaided into the center of the ring.