This essay attempts to examine Norbert Elias's views on the connection between state- formation and the decline of violence, and to examine his analyses boxing and duelling within that context. Crucially, recent research and rethinking on French absolutism now presents a very different interpretation of that phenomenon from that which was available to Elias in the early twentieth century. Moreover, work on English state-formation has laid emphasis on the emergence of the "fiscal-military state after 1688, and also on the importance of a "history from below" approach to state-formation. Elias's interpretation of boxing in England and duelling in both England and France is re-assessed in the light of these historiographical developments.