Boxing is a combat sport in which two people, usually wearing protective gloves, throw punches at each other for a predetermined set of time in a boxing ring.

Amateur boxing is both an Olympic and Commonwealth Games sport and is a common fixture in most international games—it also has its own World Championships. Boxing is supervised by a referee over a series of one- to three-minute intervals called rounds. The result is decided when an opponent is deemed incapable to continue by a referee, is disqualified for breaking a rule, resigns by throwing in a towel, or is pronounced the winner or loser based on the judges' scorecards at the end of the contest. In the event that both fighters gain equal scores from the judges, the fight is considered a draw-what in other sports would be referred to as a tie-(professional boxing). In Olympic boxing, because a winner must be declared, in the case of a draw - the judges use technical criteria to choose the most deserving winner of the bout.

While humans have fought in hand-to-hand combat since the dawn of human history, the earliest evidence of fist-fighting sporting contests date back to the ancient Middle East in the 3rd and 2nd millennia BCE.^[2] The earliest evidence of boxing rules date back to Ancient Greece, where boxing was established as an Olympic game in 688 BC.^[2] Boxing evolved from 16th- and 18th-century prizefights, largely in Great Britain, to the forerunner of modern boxing in the mid-19th century with the 1867 introduction of the Marquess of Queensberry Rules.