0 comments by Brent Hedtke on 8/11/2019
The following two statements are simultaneously true: Over 23% of Jason Sosa’s professional fights have ended in something other than a victory. *AND* Jason Sosa is an exceptionally talented fighter who is very much in the mix at the upper tier of the junior lightweight division. We talk a lot in these columns about how […]
0 comments by Brent Hedtke on 7/28/2019
Yep, that kicked ass. Well, have a great week, everybody! *closes laptop, starts car, cranks up the Whitesnake* What’s that? There’s more to discuss? Do I have to do everything around here?! Fine. Whatever. In a deliciously thrilling junior welterweight bout, Jose Ramirez slithered into Maurice Hooker’s backyard and stole his title, his heart and, […]
0 comments by Brent Hedtke on 7/20/2019
Imagine you work at an insurance company collating and sorting accident claims. Also, for the sake of verisimilitude, your name is Ruth and you have what can only be described as “way too many” cats. Now, you’re a bit of a hotshot in the collating department. You’ve done some highlight reel alphabetizing and your stapling […]
0 comments by Brent Hedtke on 7/14/2019
If you missed a call from an unknown number this past week, chances are good that it was Top Rank’s matchmaking department inquiring about your availability to fight Shakur Stevenson Saturday night. In the month leading up to the fight, one opponent after another fell through as Stevenson’s team discovered they weren’t either a woman […]
0 comments by Brent Hedtke on 6/30/2019
Before we go any further let’s just get this out of the way: twins are creepy. There’s no way around it. Over three percent of the world has a nearly exact genetic copy and no one ever talks about it. There’s a sentient flesh mound walking around with a Xerox of your genome and we’re […]
0 comments by Brent Hedtke on 6/22/2019
Back in the mid to late 1990s, NASA’s Theoretical Physics division consulted with pound for pound king Roy Jones Jr. in an effort to advance their studies on the possibilities of time travel. The thinking was that Jones’ preternatural reflexes and timing could provide insight into how matter could be converted into energy and transported […]
May 4, 2019; Las Vegas, NV, USA; Boxer Gennady Golovkin attends the Canelo Alvarez (not pictured) and Daniel Jacobs (not pictured) WBC/WBA/IBF middleweight unification world championship boxing bout at T-Mobile Arena. Alvarez won via unanimous decision. Mandatory Credit: Joe Camporeale-USA TODAY Sports
0 comments by Brent Hedtke on 6/5/2019
“Aren’t you embarrassed by this?” That was the question former HBO ringside analyst Larry Merchant asked then-middleweight champion Bernard Hopkins after The Executioner’s farcical game of “the floor is lava” that doubled as a professional boxing match against comically undeserving French challenger, Morrade Hakkar in 2003. The implication of Merchant’s question — to say nothing […]
0 comments by Brent Hedtke on 6/2/2019
Anthony Joshua is, by all accounts, a genuinely good guy. The animosity being spewed toward him in the wake of his shocking knockout loss to Andy Ruiz Jr. this weekend feels, at the very least, misdirected. In boxing’s class structure though, Joshua (22-1, 21 KOs) represents the establishment, the “man” so to speak. Ruiz’s (33-1, […]
0 comments by Brent Hedtke on 5/26/2019
There are only a handful of specific notes in the western musical language. Twelve to be exact. One can texture these notes how they see fit and vary the octave based on the range of their preferred instrument, but every musician, from Beethoven to Black Flag, draws from the same palette of twelve unique tones. […]
0 comments by Brent Hedtke on 5/19/2019
If you attempted to reach Deontay Wilder this week and were unsuccessful in doing so, it’s because the hulking heavyweight was busy rounding off the edges of the manufactured personality he would try out for the build-up to his fight with Dominic Breazeale (20-2, 18 KO) on Saturday night at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn […]
0 comments by Brent Hedtke on 5/12/2019
After his hard fought and well deserved unanimous decision victory over previously undefeated Jarrett Hurd was announced to the 5,105 partisan fans in attendance Saturday at the EagleBank Arena in Fairfax, Va., Julian “J Rock” Williams had a message for the boxing world. “Stop condemning fighters after they take a loss. It’s boxing, things happen.” […]
0 comments by Brent Hedtke on 4/28/2019
The elastic promise of future potential will always outweigh the concrete truths of our present. In life, and most certainly in boxing, we spend so much time wondering what will be that we forget to appreciate what is. This guy could be a contender. He might be a champion. Possibly even a pound for pound […]
0 comments by Brent Hedtke
They say the punching power is the last thing to go. For the eternally youthful yet somehow 36(!) year old Nonito Donaire (40-5, 26 KO) this certainly holds true, though I’d argue his hairline may outlast his near mythically heavy hands. For all the effects that asshole father time has had on the aging Donaire’s […]
0 comments by Brent Hedtke on 4/21/2019
Stardom in boxing is a fickle thing. It can’t be forced or manufactured. It happens organically or not at all and remains one of the last things in this sport that can’t be bought. Some fighters attain stardom because of their talent, others in spite of it. Some guys lack the connections while others rely […]
0 comments by Brent Hedtke on 4/14/2019
Corruption or incompetence? That’s the eternal question with boxing’s unending flirtation with scripted reality television. Are the people who pull the levers that turn the gears and ultimately decide the course of fighters’ careers crooked or are they just dumb? Or both? In order to make sense of the 12 round majority decision junior middleweight […]
