There was a sport in ancient Rus called Fistfight, when men lined up, marched into battle against each other in a solid wall.  The history of boxing in the Soviet Union takes its origin from the first club, organised in Moscow by Guards officer Mikhail Kister in 1894. In 1887 in Saint Petersburg a boxing section was launched, which was led by Ernest Lustallo, a guest from Paris, champion and coach of French and English boxing. Since then, sections, groups, and clubs of boxing began to appear spontaneously in different cities of the Russian Empire: Odessa, Sevastopol, Kharkov, Smolensk, Mariupol. In 1911, French sailor Marseille Rathje came to Kiev and organised several boxing clubs at once.
By the middle 1920s there were two clearly defined types of boxing - boxing and amateur boxing. By this time Anatoly Kharlampiev created programmes of physical education in secondary and higher education institutions. He devoted considerable place to studying self-defense, and in this framework – to wrestling and boxing.
Six Russian boxers took eight gold medals within five four-year Olympic cycles. Two time Olympic champions are Oleg Saitov (1996 and 2000) and Alexey Tischenko (2004 and 2008). Apart from that, Oleg Saitov, a faculty of journalism alumnus of Kazan State University, won bronze at the Athens 2004 Olympic Games.

Gaidarbek Gaidarbekov claimed Olympic gold in 2004 in addition to his silver in 2000. Alexander Lebzyak, Alexander Povetkin, and Rakhim Chakhiev also earned Olympic championship titles in 2000, 2004 and 2008 respectively.

Raimkul Malakhbekov is a double Olympic medallist, he claimed silver in 2000 and bronze in 1996.
Sultan Ibragimov placed second at the Sydney 2000 Summer Olympics. Olympic bronze medals went to Albert Pakeev and Alexey Lezin in 1996, Kamil Dzhamalutdinov and Alexey Maletin in 2000, Sergey Kazakov and Murat Khrachev in 2004 and Georgy Balakshin in 2008.

Tatarstan boxing made a breakthrough on the international sports scene thirty years ago, two outstanding athletes – Airat Khamatov and Foat Gatin – coached by Viktor Krasnov and Sergey Ramodanovsky respectively, became the best boxers in the Soviet Union.