The development of pugilism and modern boxing in Britain has always been closely associated with London and its people. From Jack Broughton, a former waterman from Wapping who formulated the first written rules in 1743, through to Aldgate's Daniel Mendoza, arguably the first great ‘star’ of the ring in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, and post-war champions such as Henry Cooper and Frank Bruno, Londoners have played a central role in the history and culture of the sport. So too have famous London venues such as Broughton's boxing academy off Tottenham Court Road, the National Sporting Club in Covent Garden and, more recently, York Hall in Bethnal Green. Few would doubt Stan Shipley's assessment that London was Britain's boxing ‘capital’ for most of its modern history; nor, as Kasia Boddy's cultural history of the sport shows us, that many of the popular representations of British boxing in television, film, literature and art relate to its metropolitan subculture (Shipley 1989, 94; Boddy 2008).

For much of its history boxing has been portrayed as a sport in crisis and decline. Such concerns prompted nostalgic reflections and a search for the essence of the sport in its past. In the interwar years the perceived dangers of Americanisation, corruption and commercialisation led boxing columnists to fondly recall encounters from the prize-ring and the earliest gloved fights.