For thousands of years, people have enjoyed watching fighters slug it out. Ancient Egyptian heiroglyphics show an early form of fighting took place between soldiers, dating the origins of boxing back to 4000BC.

In ancient Greece 'pancratium' developed, a mixture of wrestling and fist-fighting, and competitors were allowed to use any means to defeat their oppenents. However, it didn't become an Olympic sport until 688BC, at the 23rd Olympiad, when a form of bare-knuckle boxing was introduced.

Boxing began to evolve when 'The London Prize Rules' were drawn up in 1743 by a man called Jack Broughton but it was the introduction of the 'Queensbury Rules' in 1867 which shaped the sport into the one enjoyed by millions today. Padded gloves became regulation, as did the three-minute round, the banning of wrestling holds, the point score system and the different weight categories.

Amateur boxing has been a consistently popular event in the Commonwealth Games since 1930 and is bound to draw a lot of interest in 2002.