Celebrity Smackdown

A strange little side quest

Before the next round of Celebrity Smackdown, here is a piece of the bigger picture. Boxing entered the modern Olympic Games in 1904 at St. Louis. The broader history adds one more wrinkle. Space Invaders, released in 1978, helped push video games into mainstream popular culture. That long chain of experiments is part of why combat sports still feels fresh when a game finds the right twist.