Illegal Moves in Boxing: Every Foul and What It Costs
The illegal moves in boxing under British Boxing Board of Control rules, from low blows and rabbit punches to holding, and what each foul costs a boxer in the UK.
By CricketTaken EditorialPublished Boxing Rules & Scoring26 min read
- First written foul rules
- 1743
- Queensberry Rules published
- 1867
- Low-blow recovery, unified rules
- Up to 5 minutes
- Tyson disqualified for biting
- 1997
The illegal moves in boxing, as the British Boxing Board of Control's rules set them out for professional contests in England and the rest of the UK, are these: hitting below the belt, hitting the back of the head or neck, hitting over the kidneys, hitting with the open glove, the inside or butt of the hand, the wrist or the elbow, butting, holding, hitting on the break, hitting a boxer who is down, and hitting after the bell. Each can cost a warning, a point or the fight, at the referee's discretion.
The referee is the only official who can penalise any of them. At a British title fight he stops the action, points at the offender and signals a deduction to each of the three judges, who take it off that round. On an ordinary small-hall bill, where he is also the only scorer, he takes it off his own card. Either way a single point can turn a narrow win into a draw or a draw into a defeat, which is why the question of what is and is not a foul matters far beyond the moment it happens.
The full list of boxing fouls and what each one costs
The Board's rule on fouls is a single lettered list, and the American unified rules cover the same ground in slightly different words. Put together and stripped of legal phrasing, the list looks like this.
| Foul | What the referee is looking at | Usual first response |
|---|---|---|
| Low blow | Any punch landing below the belt line | Time out for recovery, warning |
| Rabbit punch | A blow to the back of the head or neck | Warning, quickly a point if repeated |
| Kidney punch | A blow to the back over the kidneys | Warning |
| Open glove, wrist or elbow | Slapping, cuffing, backhanding, forearm follow-through | Warning |
| Butting or careless use of the head | Head leading into a clinch or under the chin | Warning, ruling on any cut |
| Holding | Trapping an arm, holding and hitting, refusing to work | Break, then warning |
| Hitting on the break | Punching after the order to break | Warning or immediate point |
| Hitting a boxer who is down | A blow landing once a knee or glove has touched | Point or disqualification |
| Hitting after the bell | A punch started after the round has ended | Warning or point |
| Shouldering, wrestling, roughing | Pushing, throwing, leaning with the forearm | Warning |
The right-hand column is a tendency, not a tariff. No British rulebook says a first low blow earns a warning and a second costs a point. The rules name the fouls, give the referee the power to caution, deduct or disqualify, and leave the choice to him. That discretion is the most important fact about fouls in boxing and the source of nearly every argument about them.
One number is fixed, because it is arithmetic. A point deducted comes off the offender's score for that round on every card. A boxer who wins a round 10-9 and loses a point in it has a 9-9 round. One who loses the round and a point has lost it 10-8, the same as being knocked down.
- 5Minutes allowed to recover from a low blow
- 4Completed rounds before the cards count after an accidental foul
- 2Points deducted for an intentional foul that injures
- 12Rules in the Queensberry code
Recovery time, the scoring threshold and the two-point deduction are from the unified rules used by American commissions; British Board practice on recovery time is left to the referee. The Queensberry figure is the count of rules in the 1867 code.
The legal punch every foul is measured against
Boxing defines what is allowed very narrowly and treats everything else as a foul by default. A legal blow is struck with the knuckle part of the closed glove and lands on the front or sides of the head or body above the belt. Four conditions, and a punch that fails any one of them is illegal.
The knuckle part. The padded area over the front of the fist. A blow with the side of the hand, the heel or the back of the glove fails. This rules out the hammer fist, the backhand and the cuff with the inside of the glove that looks like a hook and lands like a slap. Amateur gloves used to carry a white patch over the knuckles so that judges could see whether the right part had landed.
The closed glove. An open glove slaps, and an open glove also has a thumb sticking out of it. Thumbing an opponent's eye was common enough that modern gloves have the thumb stitched to the body of the glove to prevent it. The rules on what goes on a boxer's hands are in our explainer on gloves, wraps and what the inspector checks.
The front or sides. The target is roughly the half of the body that faces the opponent in a normal stance. The back of the head, the neck, the spine and the kidneys are excluded.
Above the belt. Covered in the next section, and less simple than it sounds.
A punch that meets all four conditions and lands on the arms or shoulders is legal and does not score. That category confuses people watching a fight between a pressure fighter and a boxer with a high guard. The gloves and forearms are being hit hard and often, and none of it counts.
The narrowness explains why the list of fouls feels long. It is mostly a list of the particular ways a blow can fail the test, with a few items added, holding and ducking among them, that are not blows at all.
Low blows: the belt line, the five minutes and who loses
The belt line is imaginary. It runs across the body at the level of the navel, more or less at the top of the hip bones, and it has nothing necessarily to do with the waistband of the trunks. Boxers wear their trunks high and their protectors higher, partly for comfort and partly in the hope that a referee will treat the waistband as the line. He is not supposed to. A good referee settles the matter in the dressing room, puts a hand on each boxer's midriff and says where he considers the line to be.
A punch that lands on the waistband may therefore be perfectly legal, and a boxer who falls theatrically from one can find himself being counted.
After an accidental low blow
The referee calls time and the hurt boxer is given a period to recover: up to five minutes under the unified rules used by American commissions, and at British shows a period the referee judges sufficient. He need not use it all. Most take thirty seconds and a walk round the ring. The opponent goes to a neutral corner and nobody may touch or advise either man.
Then comes the part that surprises people. If the low blow was ruled accidental and the boxer says after the recovery time that he cannot go on, the traditional answer is that he loses. Some commissions now treat the case like any other accidental foul and send the fight to the cards or record no decision, so the exact result depends on whose rules apply. What no code allows is for a boxer to win a fight by being unable to continue after an accidental low blow.
This looks harsh and it is deliberate. In June 1930 Max Schmeling won the vacant world heavyweight title while sitting on the canvas at Yankee Stadium, awarded the fight on a foul after a low punch from Jack Sharkey in the fourth round. He remains the only man to have won that championship that way. The response in New York, and in time elsewhere, was to make protective cups compulsory and to stop awarding fights to a boxer who claimed a low blow. The traditional rule descends from that change. The protector is assumed to work, and a boxer wearing one is assumed to be able to recover.
A deliberate low blow is a different matter. The referee may deduct a point without any warning, and if the injured man cannot continue the offender is disqualified.
When the argument is about the line itself
In Wroclaw in August 2023 Daniel Dubois, the Londoner challenging Oleksandr Usyk for three heavyweight titles, landed a right hand to the body in the fifth round that put the champion down. The referee ruled it low and gave Usyk time, of which he used nearly four minutes. Usyk stopped Dubois in the ninth. Dubois's team appealed to the WBA on the ground that the punch had landed on the belt line and should have been a knockdown, and the appeal was dismissed.
The episode shows what the rule cannot do. The referee has one look, at full speed, at where a glove landed on a moving waistband. His ruling decides whether the same punch is a foul earning the victim a rest or a knockdown that may end the fight.
What a rabbit punch is and why referees treat it differently
A rabbit punch is a blow to the back of the head or the neck. The name is a countryman's one. A rabbit taken alive from a snare or a net was killed by holding it up by the hind legs and striking it sharply behind the ears with the edge of the hand, and the boxing term borrows the image exactly.
It is the foul that officials worry about most, for anatomical reasons. The back of the skull is where the brain stem and the top of the spinal cord sit, the muscles of the neck cannot brace against a blow the boxer does not see, and a punch there turns the head in a way the front of the body is not built to resist. Boxing accepts the risks of a punch to the jaw. It has never accepted this one.
Referees therefore tend to shorten the ladder. A boxer may get several cautions for holding before anything is done about it. For hitting behind the head he may get one.
The grey area behind the ear
Boxing's rules do not draw a line on the skull. Mixed martial arts has tried to, defining the forbidden zone as a strip down the centre of the back of the head, one of several contrasts set out in our guide to how MMA and boxing rules differ. In boxing the referee decides, and his difficulty is that a hook thrown at the side of the head lands behind it if the target moves.
That is the turning-away problem. A boxer who ducks low, bends at the waist or turns his back presents the back of his head to punches that were aimed legally. Whose foul is it? Referees are instructed to consider who created the position. A man who persistently dips below his opponent's waist is committing a foul of his own under the Board's rules, and a punch that glances off the back of his head as a result will generally go unpunished.
The benefit of the doubt has limits. Ricky Hatton lost a point in the sixth round against Floyd Mayweather in Las Vegas in December 2007 for a blow to the back of the head delivered as Mayweather turned away along the ropes. Mayweather had turned. Hatton could see what he was aiming at and threw the punch anyway, and that is the distinction referees draw.
A boxer who turns his back entirely runs a second risk. A referee may read it as a man who no longer wishes to defend himself and stop the contest.
Is holding allowed in boxing? The clinch, the break and the tolerance
On paper, no. Holding is a foul in the Board's list and in every other. In practice some of every fight is spent with the boxers' arms tangled, and nobody is penalised for most of it.
The working distinction is between a clinch and a hold. A clinch is what happens when two men at close range tie each other up for a moment: arms overlap, heads come together, neither can punch freely. Referees regard it as part of the fight and deal with it by parting the boxers. A hold is one boxer deliberately stopping the fight from happening, wrapping both arms round his opponent's, clamping a glove under his armpit or grabbing behind the neck. Holding with one hand and hitting with the other is the clearest form and the least tolerated.
What the order to break requires
When the referee says "break", both boxers must stop punching and step back before resuming. A full step, and the British convention is strict about it. Punching on the break, in the moment when the opponent has lowered his hands to comply with the order, is a separate listed foul and is treated more severely than the holding that led to it, because it takes advantage of obedience to the referee.
Some American referees work differently, telling the boxers before the fight to punch their way out of clinches and to defend themselves at all times. A British boxer abroad needs to know which instruction he has been given.
Why so much holding goes unpunished
Three reasons, none of them a secret. Holding usually takes two, and deciding which boxer is responsible is harder than it looks from the seats. A point deduction can decide a close fight, and referees are reluctant to decide fights. And a tired or hurt boxer who holds is doing the sensible thing, which most referees are former boxers enough to respect for a few seconds.
The tolerance runs out when holding becomes the whole of a boxer's contribution. Henry Akinwande, the Londoner challenging Lennox Lewis for the WBC heavyweight title at Lake Tahoe in July 1997, held from the opening bell, was warned again and again and went on holding. The referee, Mills Lane, disqualified him in the fifth round. It is the standard example of a rule that is rarely enforced to its limit and can be.
Heads, shoulders, forearms and elbows at close range
Most fouls that draw blood are committed inside, where the referee's view is worst.
The Board's foul on the head is worth noticing, because it covers careless use of the head as well as butting. The second half matters. A referee need not find that a boxer meant to butt, only that he was careless with where his head went. That reflects reality. Deliberate butts exist, a short upward jerk of the forehead under the chin in a clinch being the classic one, but most clashes come from two men leaning in at once, and they are commonest when an orthodox boxer meets a southpaw, because each man's lead foot and lead shoulder are heading for the same space.
A clash that cuts sets off the ruling described later on this page, and it is the commonest route by which a foul ends a fight.
The other close-range fouls
The elbow usually arrives behind a hook. The punch misses or lands, the arm carries on round and the point of the elbow follows through into the face. Because it travels on the same arc as a legal blow, it is hard to see and easy to pass off as momentum.
The forearm is used to push. Laid across the throat or under the chin, it levers an opponent's head back and makes room for the other hand. The shoulder does similar work from underneath, driven up into the jaw as a boxer straightens out of a crouch. The Board's list covers all of this in one run of words, shouldering, wrestling and roughing, and the last is a sensible catch-all for the varieties of leaning, shoving and spinning that go on in a clinch.
None of it is new. A century ago the inside game was rougher, with gloves laced and the laces rubbed across faces, and the old professionals' handbook of minor fouls was a trade skill passed down in gyms. What has changed is the camera. A slow-motion replay from above shows the elbow that the referee, standing behind the boxer's back, could not have seen, and the argument afterwards is conducted with evidence he never had.
The fouls in the Board's rulebook that surprise people
Four entries in the British list have nothing to do with hitting an opponent in the wrong place.
The pivot blow. A backhand punch delivered by spinning round on the heel, so that the arm swings like a flail and lands with the back of the fist or forearm. It has been illegal since shortly after George LaBlanche used it to knock out the middleweight champion Jack Dempsey, the one known as the Nonpareil and no relation to the later heavyweight, in San Francisco in 1889. The blow fails the knuckle test and is thrown blind. That the Board still names it individually, well over a century later, says something about how rulebooks accumulate.
Not trying. A boxer is obliged to make a contest of it. If the referee concludes that one man, or both, is not giving of his best, he can caution, disqualify, or send both to their corners and declare no contest, and the Board can then consider whether the purses should be paid. The clause is seldom invoked. It exists because the public has paid to watch a fight and because a contest in which one party is not trying is the kind that attracts suspicion.
Persistently ducking below the waistline. Bobbing under punches is legal. Diving at an opponent's hips, staying bent double so that he has nothing lawful to hit, and using the low crouch to bring the head up into his face are not. "Persistently" is the operative word, since one deep duck is defence and a habit of them is a foul.
Falling without being hit. Going down deliberately when no blow has landed. This is a survival from the prize ring, where a round ended whenever a man went down and a tired fighter could drop to earn a rest. The London Prize Ring Rules made it a foul, and it remains in the list for the boxer who takes a knee to escape pressure he has not actually been hit with. In the modern ring the usual response is not disqualification. The referee simply counts, and the rules that govern that count are in our guide to knockdowns, the ten count and the mandatory eight.
Behind the named fouls sits the referee's general power over the conduct of the contest, which is what he relies on for anything the list does not spell out.
The referee's ladder from a quiet word to disqualification
There are four rungs, and the referee is not obliged to climb them in order.
- A word in passingSaid without stopping the fight, often in a clinch. Keep them up. Watch your head. It is not recorded and the judges are not told.
- A formal warningThe referee stops the action, names the foul to the boxer and makes clear that the next one will cost him. The corner and the officials at ringside can see it has been given.
- A point deductedTime is called. The referee indicates the offender and signals the deduction to each judge in turn, or takes it off his own card if he is scoring the contest alone.
- A second deductionFor a repeat, or two points at once where a deliberate foul has caused an injury and the fight goes on.
- DisqualificationThe contest is over. The offender loses, the result is recorded as a disqualification and the Board may call him before its stewards.
The customary sequence under British and unified rules. It is a convention and not a requirement, and a referee may go straight to a deduction or a disqualification for a deliberate or dangerous foul.
The informal word is where most fouls end. A referee who says "keep your punches up" twice in a round is managing the fight, not penalising anyone, and the boxer who hears it knows that the next stage will be public.
The formal warning is a piece of theatre with a purpose. By stopping the fight and making the caution visible, the referee puts it on the record, so that a later deduction cannot be said to have come from nowhere.
A deduction is the point at which the referee changes the score. At a title fight he tells each judge and they subtract the point from that round. At an ordinary British contest, where the referee is the only scorer, he takes it off his own card. A fuller account of how deductions and close rounds combine on the cards, sometimes to the point of leaving a fight level, is in our guide to majority draws and the other kinds of draw.
Skipping rungs
The ladder is for fouls that might be carelessness. For one that is plainly deliberate, a referee can go directly to a deduction, and for one that is dangerous or outrageous, directly to disqualification. A punch thrown at a man who is sitting on the canvas does not earn a quiet word.
The reverse also happens, and is the more common complaint. A referee who has issued four "final" warnings without acting has told both boxers that the warnings mean nothing, and the fouling continues at the going rate.
Accidental or intentional: the ruling that sets the price
Every foul is two questions for the referee. Did it happen, and did he mean it. The second matters more, because the same blow can cost nothing or cost the fight depending on the answer.
| Situation | Outcome |
|---|---|
| Accidental foul, no injury | Recovery time if needed, perhaps a caution, and the fight goes on |
| Accidental low blow, boxer cannot continue after the time allowed | Traditionally the boxer who was hit loses; some commissions go to the cards instead |
| Accidental foul causes an injury that stops the fight before four completed rounds | Technical draw under Board rules, a no decision under the unified rules |
| Accidental foul causes an injury that stops the fight after four completed rounds | The scorecards are totalled for a technical decision |
| Intentional foul, the fight continues | A point deducted, two under the unified rules if the foul caused an injury |
| Intentional foul, the injured boxer cannot continue | The offender is disqualified |
The third and fourth rows are the head-clash rules, and they explain why a referee makes a visible signal the instant a cut opens. He taps his own head for a butt or mimes a punch, so that the judges, the supervisor and both corners know which route the fight will take if the doctor later stops it. A few commissions and sanctioning bodies have experimented with replay review of exactly this call, but on most nights the live ruling stands. The results that follow from it are covered in our guide to no contests and technical decisions.
There is a harder case that the unified rules address directly. An intentional foul opens a cut, the referee deducts two points, the fight goes on, and several rounds later the same cut forces a stoppage. The injured boxer then wins a technical decision if he is ahead on the cards. If he is behind or level, the result is a technical draw. He cannot lose a fight that was ended by his opponent's deliberate foul.
Intent is inferred from what the referee sees: where the boxer was looking, whether he had been warned, whether the foul came at a suspiciously useful moment. A boxer being outpointed who suddenly begins to lead with his head will get less benefit of the doubt than one who was winning easily.
Disqualified on the biggest nights: Tyson, Golota and Akinwande
Disqualification is rare at the top of the sport, partly because the boxers are skilled enough to foul discreetly and partly because nobody wants a title fight to end that way. A handful of cases define what it takes.
| Fight | Date | Round | Foul |
|---|---|---|---|
| Riddick Bowe v Andrew Golota | July 1996 | 7 | Repeated low blows |
| Riddick Bowe v Andrew Golota | December 1996 | 9 | Repeated low blows |
| Montell Griffin v Roy Jones Jr | March 1997 | 9 | Hitting an opponent who was down |
| Evander Holyfield v Mike Tyson | June 1997 | 3 | Biting |
| Lennox Lewis v Henry Akinwande | July 1997 | 5 | Persistent holding |
Golota against Bowe, twice
Neither fight carried a title, a point often lost because of how much attention they drew. At Madison Square Garden in July 1996 Andrew Golota was beating the former champion Riddick Bowe clearly and kept hitting him below the belt. Points came off. The low blows continued, and in the seventh round he was disqualified while ahead on all three cards. A riot followed in the ring and the seats.
The rematch in Atlantic City that December went the same way two rounds later. Golota was again in front, again could not or would not keep his punches up, and was thrown out in the ninth. The pair of fights is the purest demonstration that a disqualification overrides the scoring completely. Golota won most of the rounds he boxed against Bowe and lost both contests.
Tyson against Holyfield
At the MGM Grand in Las Vegas on 28 June 1997, in a rematch for the WBA heavyweight title, Mike Tyson bit a piece out of Evander Holyfield's right ear during a clinch in the third round. Mills Lane, after consulting the ringside doctor, deducted two points and let the fight go on. Before the round was over Tyson had bitten the other ear. Lane disqualified him once the bell had gone. The Nevada commission withdrew Tyson's licence and fined him, and he did not box again until 1999.
Lane's first decision is the interesting one. An intentional foul had caused an injury and the injured man could continue, so the two-point deduction was the penalty the rules provided. Many at ringside thought he should have ended it at once.
What a disqualification does
It is a loss on the record, coded DQ. A champion who is disqualified loses his title, as Roy Jones Jr found in Atlantic City when he struck Montell Griffin, who had gone down on one knee, in the ninth round. In Britain the Board can also bring a disqualified boxer before its stewards, with the power to withhold part of a purse, impose a fine or suspend a licence. Kash Ali, disqualified in Liverpool in March 2019 for biting David Price, was fined and suspended in that way. The Board's disciplinary reach is described in our guide to what the British Boxing Board of Control does.
Fouls committed outside the punching
A fight can be bent without a glove being thrown illegally. Most of these offences are about time.
The gumshield. A boxer who is hurt can buy several seconds by letting his mouthpiece fall out, since the referee must have it rinsed and replaced. The rules anticipate this. The referee waits for a lull before stopping the action, so that a boxer under fire gets no relief from spitting it out, and deliberate ejection can be penalised with a point.
The corner. Seconds must stay outside the ropes while a round is in progress. One who climbs into the ring during the action can get his boxer disqualified. In Las Vegas in April 2006 Floyd Mayweather's trainer entered the ring in the tenth round after Zab Judah had hit Mayweather low and then behind the head, and a brawl followed. The referee let the fight continue and Mayweather won on points, but the commission fined and suspended the trainer. What a corner may lawfully do to end a fight is a separate subject, covered in our page on throwing in the towel.
Grease and water. A thin smear of petroleum jelly on the face is allowed, to help punches slide. A thick layer, or any on the body and arms, makes a boxer hard to hold and hard to hit cleanly, and the referee will have it wiped off. What goes into a boxer between rounds is restricted as well. The Board's rules confine the corner essentially to water, and stimulants are prohibited.
Equipment. A loose strip of tape or a split glove stops the fight until it is dealt with. The best-known case in British boxing is the tear in Cassius Clay's glove at Wembley in June 1963, between the fourth and fifth rounds, moments after Henry Cooper's left hook had put him down. How much time it gained and what his corner did with it is examined in our account of Cooper against Ali and the split glove.
None of these is a move in the sense the list of fouls means. They are covered by the referee's general authority over the contest, and by the Board's over everyone holding one of its licences.
How the list of boxing fouls grew from 1743
The first written rules of English boxing contained exactly one sentence about fouls. Jack Broughton, champion and proprietor of an amphitheatre off Oxford Road in London, drew up seven rules in August 1743, and the last of them said that no person was to hit his adversary when he was down, or seize him by the ham, the breeches, or any part below the waist, and that a man on his knees was to be reckoned down.
Everything else was permitted. Broughton's fighters could throw each other, hold and hit, and butt. The two things he banned are still on the list.
- 1743, Broughton's rulesNo hitting a man who is down and no seizing him below the waist. A man on his knees counts as down.
- 1838, London Prize Ring RulesButting, gouging, biting, kicking and falling without a blow are made fouls. Throws above the waist remain legal.
- 1867, Queensberry RulesGloves and timed rounds arrive. Wrestling and hugging are banned outright and a man on one knee is down.
- 1889, the pivot blowLaBlanche knocks out the Nonpareil with a spinning backhand and the blow is outlawed soon afterwards.
- 1929, Board of ControlThe British Boxing Board of Control is re-formed and takes over the rulebook from the National Sporting Club.
- 1930, the no-foul ruleAfter Schmeling wins the heavyweight title on a low blow, New York stops awarding fights to a boxer hit low.
The main written codes that governed English boxing and the fouls each one added. Dates are those of the codes themselves.
The London Prize Ring Rules of 1838, revised in 1853, were the code of the bare-knuckle era's last decades, and they read like a list of things that had gone wrong. Butting was banned. So were gouging, biting, scratching, kicking and the use of stones or other hard objects held in the hand. Going down without being struck became a foul. Wrestling throws stayed, provided the hold was above the waist, and a great many prize fights were settled by one man being thrown heavily and landed on.
The Queensberry Rules, drafted by John Graham Chambers and published in 1867 under the Marquess's name, made the break with wrestling. The second of the twelve says simply that no wrestling or hugging is allowed. That one clause is the ancestor of the modern foul of holding, and it changed the sport more than the gloves did, because it turned boxing into a contest of punching alone.
After that the list grew by accident and response. A blow or a trick would decide a notable fight, the public would object, and a rule would follow. The pivot blow went that way, as did the low-blow reforms of 1930. So, much later, did the attached thumb on the glove. The catalogue of illegal moves a British referee enforces is therefore less a design than a record of nearly three centuries of things boxers tried once too often.
Our other guides to the rules of the ring sit alongside this one on the combat sports pages.