Boxing dates back thousands of
 years.  Today's bouts resemble
 those held at the ancient Olympic
 Games, where boxers wore
 leather straps wrapped around
 their hands to protect them. 
 Boxing was introduced in the
 Olympics in 686 BC, but eventually
 the sport became too brutal -- the
 Romans developed violent
 versions of boxing which often
 ended in bloody deaths.

By the late 1600s, boxing had
 become a professional sport in
 Europe, with money prizes going
 to the winners.  Toward the end
 of the 19th century, Americans
 became interested in amateur
 boxing.  The sport was practiced
 almost exclusively in the US and
 Britain at the turn of the century.  It
 is no wonder that the US took
 every boxing medal at the 1904
 Olympics -- all the competitors
 were American. 

In Olympic-style boxing, there are
 12 different weight classes,
 ranging from 106 lbs. to 201+ lbs. 
 Only men participate in Olympic
 Boxing.  The list of Olympic Boxing
 Gold Medal winners who went on
 to become heavyweight
 champions includes Cassius Clay,
 later to become Muhammad Ali, 
 Floyd Patterson, George Foreman
 and Joe Frazier. But the greatest
 Olympic boxer ever, never turned
 pro.  Cuban Teofilo Stevenson
 won Gold three times, in 1972,
 1976 and 1980, and probably
 would have won a 4th medal if
 Cuba hadn't boycotted the 1984
 Los Angeles Games.  

While the US and Cuba have
 produced many, many Gold Medal
 winners (the US alone has won
 nearly 100 Boxing medals), great
 boxers have come from many
 countries on every continent
 through the years.  

The introduction of computerized
 scoring, which instantly tallies
 results and maintains databases to
 keep track of the judges' scoring
 patterns, has been designed to
 detect potential inconsistencies or
 biases, a not uncommon problem
 in Olympic Boxing events.