The modern boxing glove was invented in 1743, the brainchild of Englishman Jack Broughton. But Broughton’s gloves, or mufflers as they were then known, were at the time only used for sparring; Broughton used to instruct men in self-defence, at an arena he erected on the Tottenham Court Road, and he used his mufflers to ‘effectively secure pupils from the inconvenience of black eyes, broken noses and bloody jaws’.
It is thought that Broughton based the design for his mufflers on the ancient Greek ‘cestus’, a type of studded gauntlet sported by gladiators and used in hand-to-hand combat. The main difference, though, lay in the padding – either lamb’s wool or horsehair – Broughton incorporated into his gloves to soften blows.
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It was not until October 1818 that Broughton’s style of gloves were used in a competitive fight, between two unnamed English boxers at Aix-la-Chapelle in France. A French newspaper reported: ‘The two champions were built like Hercules…they entered the ring with their hands guarded with huge padded gloves.’
Gloves became mandatory when the Marquis of Queensbury Rules were drafted in 1865, and officially adopted in 1892. Mostly the gloves would be skintight rather than padded, and only weighing two ounces. Skintight gloves remained popular until the turn of the century – the last two-ounce bout took place on 22 May 1903, between Jimmy Briggs and Tony Daly.
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The fighter who did the most to popularise gloves was American heavyweight John L Sullivan, who fought the first ever gloved heavyweight championship contest, against James J Corbett on 7 September 1892 (he also fought the last ever bareknuckle heavyweight bout, against Jake Kilrain in 1889). Sullivan and Corbett both wore five-ounce gloves for the contest, which Corbett won by knockout in the 21st round.
Today, the weight of gloves has increased, for safety reasons, and now varies between eight and 10 ounces. In 1983 Luis Resto, a journeyman junior-middleweight, proved how dangerous fighting with an unpadded glove could be when he adminstered a terrible beating to the previously undefeated Billy Collins. After the fight it was discovered, by Collins’s father, that Resto’s trainer, Panama Lewis had removed much of the padding from his charge’s gloves with a tweezer. Lewis served 2 years of a six-year sentence for assault, conspiracy, tampering with a sports contest and criminal possession of a deadly weapon (Resto’s fists).
The biggest-name brand remains Everlast, whose gloves have been worn by many a boxing legend, including Muhammad Ali, Sugar Ray Robinson, Mike Tyson and Joe Louis.
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