Green’s Dictionary of Slang

boxing; thus any form of fighting with the fists; also attrib.; thus bruising match/battle, a boxing fight; bruising shop, a boxers’ training gym.

1751		Smollett Peregrine Pickle (1964) 745: The combatants were, in point of strength and agility, pretty equally matched; but the jailer had been regularly trained to the art of bruising.
1804		Eve. Mail (London) 17 Feb. 1/4: The left eye is completely black, and the deceased exhibited altogether the appearance of one who has been engaged in a brusing match.
1807		Morn. Advertiser (London) 12 Feb. 3/2: A bruising match between a shoe-maker [...] and a waggoner [...] took place on Saturday.
1811		Chester Courant 28 May 3/4: On Tuesday the bruising-match [...] between Molineaux, the black, and Rimmer, was fought with all the savage brutality that makes such meetings.
1825		Northampton Mercury 20 Aug. 4/6: The sum of money, which [...] he had not acquired by honest means, but by some unlawful gaming upon the bruising match.
1831		Westmorland Gaz. 4 June 4/4: The lower orders and swell blacklegs of England are wont to assemble at a bruising match.
1848		Preston Chron. 11 Nov. 2/5: A bruising match, for £100, took place near Andover.
1854		Thackeray Newcomes I 101: At that time the Sunday newspapers contained many and many exciting reports of boxing matches. Bruising was considered a fine manly old English custom.
1862		Thackeray Adventures of Philip (1899) 536: Mugford always persisted that he could have got the better of his great hulking sub-editor, who did not know the use of his fists. In Mugford’s youthful time, bruising was a fashionable art.
1880		Bulletin (Sydney) 9 Oct. 4/2: There was a little bruising match [...] the next day, and proceedings at law are talked of.
1900		Bulletin (Sydney) 10 Mar. 24/2: Interprovincial bruising-battle between heavyweights, Ted Sullivan [...] and Tim Nolan [...] occurred at Golden Gate [...]. Neither is a champion.
1900		Bulletin (Sydney) 26 May 24/2: If a referee at a bruising match were treated in this way they’d be a howl throughout the land.
1901		Bulletin (Sydney) 14 Sept. 26/2: Joe’s pub. and bruising-shop have apparently gone where all his other possessions went – up the gargoyle.