Top 10 Iconic Pop Culture Songs About Boxing to Relive Today

Art Garfunkel made a surprise appearance at Madison Square Garden on May 29, joining Charlie Puth onstage for a duet of “The Boxer.” Garfunkel told the crowd that Puth was “my student,” crediting the younger singer’s debt to the catalog he built with Paul Simon, as Billboard reported.

The moment was a reminder that boxing has long held a place in popular songwriting, well beyond the entrance music that plays before a title fight. Across folk, reggae, soul, rock and hip-hop, songwriters have used the ring as a setting for stories about ambition, violence, race and survival. The following ten songs put boxing, or a specific fighter, at their center.

1. “The Boxer,” Simon & Garfunkel (1969)

Paul Simon wrote “The Boxer” and released it as a Simon and Garfunkel single in March 1969, before it appeared on the 1970 album Bridge Over Troubled Water. The lyrics shift between a first-person account of poverty in Fresh York and a third-person portrait of a fighter who carries the marks of every punch. Simon has said the song was largely autobiographical, written while he felt he was being unfairly criticized. It reached the top ten of the Billboard Warm 100 and remains one of the duo’s signature recordings.