The Bruising Business: Pugilism, Commercial Culture, and Celebrity, 1700 – 1750

Numerous writers have explored boxing's roots, and the sport's most successful performers during the eighteenth century - James Figg, Jack Broughton, Daniel Mendoza, amongst others - are names that consistently reappear throughout these texts. This chapter explores the manner in which myths were constructed, distributed and disseminated. The aim of this chapter is to place pugilism and its promotion into the wider social, cultural and economic context of the early eighteenth century. The chapter sketches the social and economic changes that were taking place in London and England in the first half of the eighteenth century. It then analyses the relationship between pugilism and advertising in greater detail. The shift from bear gardens to boxing amphitheatres offers an illuminating case study to track the growing commercialisation of leisure and their forms of promotion. The arrival of boxing amphitheatres and the celebrities they fostered were the consequences of the radical changes in society, in the economy and politics.