Editing BoxRec (section)

==Foundation==
The site was founded by John Sheppard, an [[Englishman]]. Sheppard had never attended a boxing bout until 1995 when he attended a [[Naseem Hamed|"Prince" Naseem Hamed]] fight with Hamed's older brothers Riath and Nabeel. Sheppard had considered boxing to be a "barbaric and degrading" spectacle, stating "I sat there watching people punch each other in the head, wondering why they were doing it... I was sprayed with blood, getting more and more miserable." However, Sheppard later explained, "[D]uring Naseem's fight, something clicked in my head. The subtlety of what he was doing, the genius of it all, became obvious to me. It wasn't a disgusting spectacle anymore. It was art, and I found myself cheering."<ref name="Indispensable Website"/>

Following Hamed's split with [[Frank Warren (promoter)|Frank Warren]], Sheppard went to work for Hamed at "Prince Promotions" in 2000. Sheppard then began to compile record of active British boxers in an attempt to aid matchmaking of boxers and then decided to create a website which would store the records of all boxers. The site has grown so much that Sheppard has gone full-time since 2005. {{asof|December 2008|post=,}} on a typical day 50,000 visitors could view 700,000 pages with the record of 1,300,000 bouts in its database encompassing 17,000 active and 345,000 non-active fighters.<ref name="Indispensable Website"/>