Awesome Old-Timey Photos Show What Boxing Was Like 100 Years Ago

Boxing has fallen a long way over the past 100 years.

At one point it was the the country's national pasttime. Now it's a disorganized niche sport that's quickly leaking fans to UFC.

The Library of Congress has a jackpot of boxing photos from the early 1910s that perfectly capture the strangeness and simplistic beauty of the bygone sport.

We've been scrolling through them all day, and they're so, so awesome.

Gunboat Smith prepares to fight Arthur Pelkey in San Francisco on Jan. 1, 1914

Gunboat knocked him out

Mike Donovan sparring with his father in the early 1910s

Frau Rose Edwards, wife of boxer Joe Edwards, fights an opponent

Matt Wells' Lightweight Championship Belt in 1911

Flint fights Zacek inside in July of 1914

Jack Johnson fights Jim Flynn in New Mexico in 1914. Police stopped the fight after Johnson won the first nine rounds

Johnson training for the Flynn fight

Members of the amateur boxing association in England in the early 1910s

Adolph Wolgast fighting Tommy Murphy in February 1913

New Jersey boxer "Kid Smith" in the early 1910s

French lightweight Louis de Ponthieu with an American heavyweight and middleweight

Adolph Wolgast fighting Tommy Murphy in February 1913

George Chip and "Fighting" Billy Murray fighting in San Francisco in 1914

English featherweight Charley White

The belts were intricately detailed back then

A fighter and his trainer

Unknown fighter Gilbert Gallant

Joe Edwards training young fighters in Berlin

Canadian fighter Fred McKay posing for a picture with his brother

Crowds in New York city wait for Jack Johnson to arrive

Now check out what other sports looked like 100 years ago

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