I was recently watching Raging Bull,(as a long time boxing fan I don't know why it took this long.)But the scene in the beginning of the movie, Jake worries about never being able to fight Joe Louis, him being a middleweight and all.
With Raging Bull being made in the 80's and Lamotta's story taking place in the 40's, I had begun wondering if the scene was a bit of commentary on masculinity but also a piece of foreshadowing. Due to many in the boxing world believing that the term pound for pound was invented for Sugar Ray Robinson, who of course is the final opponent of the film for Lamotta.
So I just wanted to know when the term first used to see if it matches up to Scorsese's time line of when he made the movie.
According to the almighty Google "Ngram" and Book Viewer search engines (which allows you to specifically search published works for the earliest known usage of a word or term), the first time the term "pound for pound" appeared in relation to the sport of boxing was in 1929 in Munsey's Magazine, volume 97-98, and was used to refer to boxer Bob Fitzsimmons.
In this issue, the specific quote was "Pound for pound, there is no question but that Bob Fitzsimmons was the finest piece of fighting mechanism ever cast in the mold of man".