New York once allowed prizefights only between members of the same private club
In 1900 New York's Lewis Law banned prizefights except bouts held in private athletic clubs between members. Announcers got around it by introducing fighters as both members of this club, a phrase the painter George Bellows borrowed for the title of one of his canvases.
Modern professional boxing took shape in London. From 1891 the private National Sporting Club staged glove fights and added nine rules of its own to the Queensberry code, clarifying officials' roles and giving referees a scoring system to decide results. The British Boxing Board of Control, formed in 1919 with close ties to the club, was re-formed in 1929 after the club closed. The fifth Earl of Lonsdale presented the first Lonsdale Belt in 1909, and the board later awarded one to any British boxer winning three title fights in the same division.
Early bouts could be ordeals. In 1887 Jack McAuliffe, widely seen as lightweight champion, met the Birmingham bricklayer Jem Carney in a dim barn for more than five hours before the fight was stopped after 74 rounds, with each camp alleging unfairness. James Corbett, often called the father of modern boxing for his emphasis on technique and training, fought Peter Jackson to a 61-round draw in 1891 and took the title from John L. Sullivan in 1892.
The sport also broke racial barriers well ahead of others. Canada's George Dixon won the bantamweight title in 1892, making him the first Black world champion of any sport, Joe Gans became the first Black American boxing champion on 12 May 1902, and on 26 December 1908 Jack Johnson beat Tommy Burns in Sydney to become the first Black world heavyweight champion, a victory that challenged the era's white supremacist thinking.
Fans followed big fights in saloons where keepers read out blow-by-blow updates from ticker machines; Harpo Marx, at fifteen, took in a 1904 title fight that way. In the 1920s Jack Dempsey, his manager Jack Kearns and the promoter Tex Rickard grossed US$8.4 million from five fights between 1921 and 1927 and arranged the first live radio broadcast of a title bout, Dempsey against Georges Carpentier in 1921. Today most professional fights last four to twelve rounds without headgear, fought for a purse split by contract.
Source: Professional boxing
