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In 1867 the first amateur boxing championships took place under the Queensberry rules. In 1880 the Amateur Boxing Association (ABA), the sport’s first amateur governing body, was formed in Britain, and in the following year the ABA staged its first official amateur championships.
The Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) of the United States was formed in 1888 and instituted its annual championships in boxing the same year. In 1926 the Chicago Tribune started another amateur competition called the Golden Gloves. It grew into a national competition rivaling that of the AAU. The United States of America Amateur Boxing Federation (now USA Boxing), which governs American amateur boxing, was formed after the 1978 passage of a law forbidding the AAU to govern more than one Olympic sport.
Amateur boxing spread rapidly to other countries and resulted in several major international tournaments taking place annually, biennially, or, as in the case of the Olympic Games, every four years. Important events include the European Games, the Commonwealth Games, the Pan American Games, the African Games, and the World Military Games. All international matches are controlled by the Association Internationale de Boxe Amateur (AIBA), formed in 1946.
Although the Soviet Union did not permit professional boxing, it joined the AIBA in 1950, entered the Olympics in 1952, and became one of the world’s strongest amateur boxing nations, along with such other communist countries as East Germany, Poland, Hungary, and Cuba. Cuba, which had produced many excellent professional boxers before professional sports were banned by Fidel Castro’s government, became a dominating force in international amateur boxing. The Cuban heavyweight Teófilo Stevenson won Olympic gold medals in 1972, 1976, and 1980, a feat that was duplicated by his countryman Felix Savón in 1992, 1996, and 2000. African countries advanced in boxing after acquiring independence in the 1950s and ’60s, and by the end of the 20th century Nigeria, Ghana, Tanzania, Egypt, and South Africa had excellent amateur boxing programs.
In the late 20th century boxing began attracting participants from the general public—especially because of its conditioning benefits—and by the early 1990s the sport’s popularity among white-collar professionals had given rise to a new form of amateur boxing known as white-collar boxing. While many of the matches were held for charity and featured no decisions, several regulatory groups were formed, and they established rules, sanctioned events, and ranked competitors.
Intercollegiate boxing
Intercollegiate boxing has a venerable tradition in Great Britain. By the early 1800s many British aristocrats thought boxing to be a required skill for a well-rounded gentleman, and soon thereafter pugilism was encouraged as an appropriate exercise for young college men (though only at the amateur level). The first varsity match between the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge was held in 1897, and it was considered a privileged “full blue” sport: an athlete who has represented Oxford is permitted to wear a dark blue blazer and a Cambridge athlete a light blue one. To be a boxing blue for either of these universities is a great honour.
The first American national intercollegiate boxing tournament was held in 1932, but boxing had existed as an intramural sport in the United States since the 1880s. Intercollegiate boxing formally emerged after World War I, when the officers responsible for armed forces training programs returned to college campuses imbued with the belief that boxing should be included in higher education because of its value in both physical conditioning and character building. Initially used to qualify collegians for Olympic tryouts in 1932 and 1936, the national tournament became an annual National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) championship event in 1937 and continued through 1960 with the exception of years 1944–46, when it was suspended because of World War II.
During the heyday of NCAA boxing, officials insisted that their sport disassociate itself from professional boxing and what many saw as the sordid blood, gore, and brutality of the prize ring. Physical conditioning, skill, “science,” and sportsmanship were emphasized. The foremost concern was the safety of participants; therefore, well-padded gloves, protective headgear, and mandatory standing nine counts (in which the action is stopped and a boxer who has been hurt but not knocked down has until the count of nine to respond to the referee’s satisfaction or loses the fight as a technical knockout) were required. To compensate for the stress of ring combat, coaches often arranged for opponents to socialize before and after bouts, creating a fraternal spirit and many lasting friendships. Some famous participants in NCAA boxing were Alabama Governor George Wallace, U.S. Senators William Proxmire and Warren Rudman, and President Gerald Ford, who was a boxing coach for a time at Yale University. The Universities of Idaho, Virginia, and Wisconsin, Syracuse University, and Idaho, Louisiana, Michigan, Pennsylvania, San Jose, and Washington State universities had leading programs. One hundred institutions had teams in the late 1930s, and attendance at boxing matches was second only to that for football on many American campuses.
Although the NCAA rules attempted to prevent more-experienced boxers from competing, a number of institutions did give scholarships to former champions of such organizations as the Amateur Athletic Union (AAU), Golden Gloves, and the armed forces. This led to bouts featuring some highly skilled contestants and intense action, although it sometimes created lopsided contests. Even during peak participation years, however, few collegians turned professional.
Efforts to humanize the sport, maintain it on a high plane, and differentiate it from professional boxing could not mitigate its essentially violent nature, nor could boxing overcome the longtime opposition from educators who claimed that its objective was to hurt an opponent. In 1960 the ring-related death of University of Wisconsin boxer Charles Mohr, as well as a general waning of interest in the sport, contributed to the end of “big time” intercollegiate boxing, and boxing is unlikely ever to regain NCAA status. However, it continues today at a college club level with 20 to 25 institutional teams involved each year in national tournaments of the National Collegiate Boxing Association (NCBA). Seeking to teach fundamentals to novices in a safety-oriented and structured environment of balanced competition, the NCBA bars persons who have participated in noncollegiate bouts after age 16. Almost since its inception and the first tournament in 1976, NCBA boxing has been dominated by the U.S. Air Force Academy, which has won over a dozen team titles. Other U.S. military academies, such as those at West Point and Annapolis, also have strong traditions in intercollegiate boxing.
E.C. WallenfeldtMilitary boxing
Boxing has been considered excellent training for soldiers, at least since the time of ancient Greece and Rome. The British army has long trained its personnel in boxing, believing that it developed fitness and, more important, character. The American military followed that lead, and soon after World War II a large number of armies from nations in Europe and Asia incorporated boxing into their military training.
Although few armies currently include boxing in basic training, amateur boxing still features heavily in military sports. The German army (Bundeswehr), British army, and U.S. military all have extensive boxing programs, and their boxers compete at the Olympics as well as at the Military World Games organized under the auspices of the Conseil International du Sport Militaire (CISM). Leon Spinks, Ray Mercer, and Ken Norton are among the prominent boxers who learned their trade in the U.S. military.