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. Boxing is supervised by a referee over a series of one- to three-minute intervals called rounds.

While humans have fought in hand-to-hand combat since before the dawn of history, boxing as an organized sport may have its origin in the ancient Greeks as an Olympic game in 688 BC. 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. The earliest known depiction of boxing comes from a Sumerian relief in Iraq from the 3rd millennium BCE.[2] Later depictions from the 2nd millennium BC are found in reliefs from the Mesopotamian nations of Assyria and Babylonia, and in Hittite art from Asia Minor.