Boxing Betting Tips

Boxing is a combat sport where two people punch each other in a boxing ring. Boxing is a brutal sport which is considered barbaric to some and highly technical and exciting to others.

Boxing is incredibly popular as a spectator event. Ringside seats are highly prized and usually very expensive, with most people watching on television in pubs and clubs or at home on pay-per-view.

Fist fighting contests have been around since the birth of humanity, with the earliest evidence of boxing rules attributed to Ancient Greece where boxing was an Olympic game in 688 BC.

Boxing was a popular spectator sport in Ancient Rome with fights until death. During the Roman gladiator period, boxing was abolished due to excessive brutality. 

Boxing virtually disappeared as a sport until the late 16th century in London. Modern boxing evolved in Great Britain with the 1867 introduction of the Marquess of Queensberry Rules.

Throughout the 17th to 19th centuries, boxing was motivated by money with fighters competing for prize money, promoters controlling the gate and spectators betting on the result.

Supervised by a referee, fighters usually wearing protective gloves with boxing matches featuring a number of rounds from one to three minutes. 

The result is decided when a referee deems a boxer unable to continue, disqualified for breaking a rule, resigning or “throwing in the towel”, or by the judges' scorecards at the end of the contest.

If the match goes the distance and both fighters have equal scores from the judges, the fight is considered a draw or a tie. In Olympic boxing a winner must be declared with the judges using technical criteria to choose the winner.

Amateur boxing is an Olympic and Commonwealth Games sport and has its own World Championships. 

There are different types of boxing styles such as outside fighter, counter puncher, brawler and inside fighter. Different stances include upright stance, the semi-crouch and full crouch. The four basic punches in boxing are the jab, cross, hook and uppercut.

Defensive manoeuvres include slipping, bob and weave, duck or break, blocking (with the arms), cover-up (with the gloves), clinching, footwork, pulling away, sway or fade. 

Less common strategies such as "rope-a-dope" made famous by Muhammad Ali against George Foreman in the  1974 "Rumble in the Jungle".

Some of the most famous boxers in the past century include Muhammad Ali, George Foreman, Larry Holmes, Floyd Mayweather Jr., Mike Tyson, Sugar Ray Leonard, Vitali & Wladimir Klitschko, Lennox Lewis, Oscar de la Hoya, Sugar Ray Robinson, Evander Holyfield, Rocky Marciano, Sonny Liston and Manny Pacquiao.

Fighters are classed into different weight classes or divisions such as super heavyweight, heavyweight, middleweight, welterweight, lightweight, featherweight, bantamweight and flyweight.

The main governing bodies for boxing include the British Boxing Board of Control (BBBofC), European Boxing Union (EBU), Nevada State Athletic Commission (NSAC).

The major sanctioning bodies are the International Boxing Federation (IBF), World Boxing Association (WBA), World Boxing Council (WBC), World Boxing Organization (WBO) and International Boxing Association (AIBA).

There are many different ways to bet on boxing which is explained in our "Guide to Understanding Boxing Betting Markets". In summary, the main markets are focused on the different possible results.

These include a knockout or KO, technical knockout (TKO), decision (D), technical decision (TD) and disqualification (DQ).