Boxing Album An Illustrated History

This first nationwide study of boxing regulations in the United States offers an historical overview of the subject, from the earliest attempts at regulating the sport to present-day legislation that may create a national boxing commission. It examines the disparity of regulations among states, as well as the reasons for some of these differences. The work features interviews with boxing officials, analysts and boxers, and includes the results of a national survey of state athletic commission personnel. In-depth case studies of boxing regulations in Nevada and Kansas provide a close look at different states' methods, and Argentina's centralized system of regulation is presented as a comparison to the U.S. approach.

Updated by Nigel Collins, author of "Boxing Babylon", this classic "bible of boxing" has been continuously in print since 1959. Here in one stunning volume is the vast panorama of the "sweet science", from bare-knuckle fighting through the rise of Lennox Lewis. Photos throughout.

Boxing is one of the oldest sports in the world, reaching back to the Ancient Greeks, although it has become popular only in the past century or so. But, in some ways, it is a rather complicated sport since – to avoid unnecessary harm – it has been endowed with rules to keep it clean, referees to see the rules are obeyed, and organizations to regulate the sport. Boxing was once largely amateur, although the professional bouts attracted the most attention, but now it is also an Olympic sport. And, over the years, there has been one champion after another who symbolized what boxing was all about, such Joe Louis, Mohammad Ali and Cassius Clay. Naturally, these champions are the focus of the Historical Dictionary of Boxing as well, and they have the biggest entries in the dictionary section, but they had to fight against someone and there are dozens and dozens of other boxers with smaller entries. More of these boxers come from the United States than elsewhere, but there are others from Europe, Asia and Latin America, and there are also entries on the major boxing countries as well. Plus entries on the rules, on the organizations, and on the technical terminology and jargon you have to know just to follow the bouts. The introduction provides a broad view of boxing’s history while the chronology traces events from 688 B.C. to 2012 A.D. Not all that much has been written on boxing that is not ephemeral, but much of that literature can be found in the bibliography. This book is an excellent access point for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about the sport of boxing.

Throughout history, potters, sculptors, painters, poets, novelists, cartoonists, song-writers, photographers, and filmmakers have recorded and tried to make sense of boxing. From Daniel Mendoza to Mike Tyson, boxers have embodied and enacted our anxieties about race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality. In her encyclopedic investigation of the shifting social, political, and cultural resonances of this most visceral of sports, Kasia Boddy throws new light on an elemental struggle for dominance whose weapons are nothing more than fists. Looking afresh at everything from neoclassical sculpture to hip-hop lyrics, Boddy explores the ways in which the history of boxing has intersected with the history of mass media. Boddy pulls no punches, looking to the work of such diverse figures as Henry Fielding and Spike Lee, Charlie Chaplin and Philip Roth, James Joyce and Mae West, Bertolt Brecht and Charles Dickens in an all-encompassing study that tells us just how and why boxing has mattered so much to so many.