Maximilian Adolph Otto Siegfried Schmeling was a German boxer who was heavyweight champion of the world between 1930 and 1932. His two fights with Joe Louis in 1936 and 1938 were worldwide cultural events because of their national associations. Schmeling is the only boxer to win the world heavyweight championship on a foul.
Max Schmeling in March 1930
Max Schmeling with his mother Amanda Schmeling (née Fuchs) in 1931
Wedding of Schmeling and Czech actress Anny Ondra in 1933. The couple remained married until Ondra's death in 1987.
Louis vs. Schmeling, 1936
Boxing is a combat sport and a martial art in which two people, usually wearing protective gloves and other protective equipment such as hand wraps and mouthguards, throw punches at each other for a predetermined amount of time in a boxing ring.
Two Royal Navy men boxing for charity (1945). The modern sport was codified in England in the 19th and early 20th centuries.
A painting of Minoan youths boxing, from an Akrotiri fresco circa 1650 BC. This is the earliest documented use of boxing gloves.
A boxing scene depicted on a Panathenaic amphora from Ancient Greece, circa 336 BC, British Museum
A boxer and a rooster in a Roman mosaic of first century AD at the National Archaeological Museum, Naples