Anonymous snapshot, Gift of Peter J. Cohen, 2019.305

In the United States, boxing was one of the first sports to modernize through forces such as corporate sponsorship, regulation, commercialization, and mass spectatorship. As prizefighting evolved from a working-class sport to a form of entertainment for the middle and upper classes, reports or representations of matches reiterated the two-fisted sparring iconography that began with black-figure amphorae in ancient Greece. The simplification of a series of unpredictable, chaotic movements into an easily recognizable gesture has allowed the pugilist pose to take on a host of associations beyond the sport itself, from national conflict to social tensions over race, class, and gender.