by Shane Tucker

Created on: June 18, 2009

Boxing is an exciting and very popular sport which is practiced throughout the world. The object of a boxing bout is for one competitor to assert his or her dominance using combinations of punches to ideally knock their opponent unconscious. If the bout goes the full number of scheduled rounds, three judges' round-by-round scores are tallied to determine a winner, or whether the fight was considered a draw.

In order to make the competition as fair as possible, several weight classes have been instituted so that competitors are approximately the same size when they have their official weigh-in. This is to ensure that bouts are between fighters that have roughly the same speed and power. Of course there are exceptions to the rule; every weight class has one or two fighters that may have incredible punching power or blindingly fast hand speed. The majority, however, are somewhere in the average range.

The sheer number of weight classes that have been established over the last century has actually caused some criticism from many boxing fans, traditionalists, and boxers themselves. The old joke, "There are so many weight classes and organizations in boxing that every boxer has a belt" refers to how many individual championships are available when taking into consideration the alphabet soup of associations such as the World Boxing Association (WBA), World Boxing Council (WBC), International Boxing Federation (IBF), World Professional Boxing Federation (WPBF), International Boxing Organization (IBO), World Boxing Union (WBU), and the International Boxing Association (IBA).

However, the establishment of the numerous classes have helped to ensure increased participation, exciting, evenly matched bouts, and most importantly, improved fighter safety.

The professional boxing weight classes, which differ somewhat from Olympic boxing weight classes, are as follows: (information obtained from Wikipedia)

Strawweight or mini-flyweight- This weight class consists of boxers who weigh no more than 105 lbs (46.7 kilograms). The major sanctioning bodies in boxing introduced the Strawweight division between 1987 and 1990.

Light Flyweight- Boxers who weigh no more than 108 pounds (49 kilograms) fall into this category. This weight class has been in existence at varying times since 1920. One of the most famous fighters of this weight class was Michael Carbajal.

Flyweight- If a boxer weighs between 108 lbs. and 112 lbs. (51 kilograms), this

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