What age did you start boxing at?

Hey everyone, I'm new here. From reading these forums for the past few weeks it seems that most of you started boxing under 20 years of age, with a lot of you starting as young kids. I'm curious if that's the norm.

I'm actually 25 and just starting to get into boxing. I used to wrestle in high school and have been an athlete my entire life (hockey, football, track, soccer) but have been relatively inactive the last couple of years. I'm a huge MMA fan, but I don't think its the best sport for me to get into. I tore my ACL when I was 21 and had another fairly significant knee injury last year while playing soccer. As you can imagine, my knee's aren't in the best of shape and often times are sore.


I'm thinking boxing would be the easiest of combat sports to get into while limiting the damage I do to my knee. I really want to get into boxing just to get into good shape and learn the art of it. I don't want to be a boxer. I do however, want to have one amateur fight. How long typically does it take for someone to train and become ready for a fight from scratch. I'm planning on training/learning for a minimum of 12 months and then looking into it after that. I don't want to do much more than that, to be honest I'm not really looking to mess up my face or develop brain damage from concussions. I just want to experience a fight once.


Most of my training will be at home. My wonderful wife has purchased a heavy bag (water filled) for my christmas gift, so I'll be working with that in the garage. Weighted jump rope, plyometrics, sprints and swimming. I like swimming a lot more than I do long distance running as its much much easier on my legs. It also seems to give me a much more full body workout. Sprints are for the interval training.


After a few months of getting down the basics and getting into good shape I may consider going to a boxing gym. There aren't any terribly close to me right now though, and I just don't have the time to drive an hour to a gym a couple nights a week. It's so much more convenient to just go to the garage after I get off work or in the morning before work.



I'm curious as to everyones thoughts on this stuff? Any particular advice? The biggest thing I'm looking for is to learn teh right techniques for boxing. Any good resources/videos anyone can recommend? I don't want to develop bad habits from being self-taught.