Likeability and modernity are two of Cameron's strongest suits, and his aides have told him before to rein back on anything that smacks of posh boy pugilism.
But as those communities assimilated into the middle class, their young men found better ways to make a living than pugilism.
Mr Hurd may have been proud of Britain's foreign policy pugilism, but a lot of critics would say it subsequently led under Tony Blair to a misguided deference to America and an almighty mess for British troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.
In particular, they will embrace his passion for pugilism without embracing his passion for ideas.
By the early 1800s many British aristocrats thought boxing to be a required skill for a well-rounded gentleman, and soon thereafter pugilism was encouraged as an appropriate exercise for young college men (though only at the amateur level).
The terms pugilism and prizefighting in modern usage are practically synonymous with boxing, although the first term indicates the ancient origins of the sport in its derivation from the Latin pugil, "a boxer," related to the Latin pugnus, "fist," and derived in turn from the Greek pyx, "with clenched fist".
Soon he became a regular in the yellow No 3 shirt, delighting the fans with his cultured methods, though it was for untypical pugilism that he hit the headlines during the 1954 World Cup finals in Switzerland.
For pure pugilism, it has to be Ponting.
It is also true that notwithstanding his distinguished service on the late Robert Kennedy's anti-mob investigating committee, Arum is notorious even in the cynical old vineyard of pugilism for his admission that some of his words need to be weighed more carefully than others.
Sure, in terms of pure rhetorical pugilism he's still able to go the distance (too far a distance if Dimber's constant telling offs are anything to go by) but this can't mask the fact that he's deeply tainted – to the point of toxicity - by all the murkier parts of New Labour's legacy.
When savate died out, its more skillful elements were combined with those of English bare-knuckle pugilism to produce la boxe française.
