0 comments by Jason Langendorf on 5/2/2022
Christy Martin punched like hellfire but looked like a Dollar General assistant manager. Laila Ali was a lovely scrapper with a world-class pedigree — but was she an all-timer or a paper tiger? Today, Ebanie Bridges leans into her looks with top-heavy gusto, and “The Blonde Bomber” is eviscerated on social media — almost exclusively […]
0 comments by Jason Langendorf on 4/13/2022
Time comes for us all. Mind you, it never comes bearing good news. Usually, it shows up hiding a shiv behind its back. When you’re a teenager, you have no clue how good your body has it. Boundless energy and limitless, pain-free functionality are taken for granted. Physically, your 20s are your best years: the […]
0 comments by Jason Langendorf on 3/28/2022
The line that separates a sanctioned prizefight from a carnival freak show is an embarrassingly thin one, and the only presence keeping those of us on both sides of it from being marks are the in-ring officials. These are men with names like Russell Mora, Laurence Cole and Ian John-Lewis, and it’s up to them […]
0 comments by Jason Langendorf on 3/9/2022
Greatness shouldn’t be easy. It isn’t supposed to be swinging a dead cat and hitting the broad side of a barn while falling out of bed. Excellence is meant to be forged on an anvil of sacrifice, hammered into being by blood-sweat-and-tears brute force. It should be the painstaking process of transforming bone into steel […]
0 comments by Jason Langendorf on 1/5/2022
The business of boxing has changed. The world around us, even compared to just a couple years ago, is a very different place. But the essence of what happens between the ropes — the ancient stuff that keeps a man off the canvas, that knocks another senseless, that keeps us turning out to witness this […]
0 comments by Jason Langendorf on 12/10/2021
For some time now, Devin Haney has been discussed as a sort of spiritual successor to Floyd Mayweather Jr., a boxing mastermind if there ever was one on either side of the ropes. And on at least one occasion during Saturday’s DAZN broadcast, Haney — all of 23 years old — was mentioned in the […]
0 comments by Jason Langendorf on 11/22/2021
The grin was the tell. Even as his brow leaked and his mouth hung open for occasional gulps of air, Terence Crawford couldn’t suppress the smile curling the corners of his lips late in Saturday’s fight at the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas. The world’s welterweight apex predator may have been made to labor and […]
*** FREE FOR EDITORIAL USE ***
XU Can vs Leigh Wood, WBA Featherweight World Title Fight.
31 July 2021
Picture By Ian Walton Matchroom Boxing.
Leigh Wood celebrates his win.
0 comments by Jason Langendorf on 8/1/2021
Eight years ago, Zou Shiming turned pro and immediately began stoking visions of a Chinese crossover star who could pack arenas and casinos in Macau while earning respect, attention and profits — never forget the profits — by handling his business on boxing’s competitive world stage. Zou was sent to work at Freddie Roach’s Wild […]
0 comments by Jason Langendorf on 6/21/2021
So much of what we think we know about sports legend is bullshit. Babe Ruth’s called shot? Just as likely a mosquito swat. Larry Bird’s predicted 43-point night? John Stockton loves to tell the story, but it changes with every telling. Brett Favre’s unsolicited dick pic text? OK, that probably happened. But the truth is, […]
March 13, 2021; Dallas, TX; Juan Francisco “El Gallo” Estrada and Roman “Chocolatito” Gonzalez during their WBC, WBA and Ring Magazine Super-Flyweight unification fight at the American Airlines Center in Dallas, TX. Mandatory Credit: Ed Mulholland/Matchr
0 comments by Jason Langendorf on 3/15/2021
For such a tiny man, Roman Gonzalez has a surprisingly easy time lugging around a legacy large enough to exert its own gravitational force. The phrase “first-ballot Hall of Famer” was practically an official honorific in the lead-up to Saturday’s junior bantamweight unification fight between Gonzalez and Juan Francisco Estrada — a nod to Gonzalez’s […]
0 comments by Jason Langendorf on 2/21/2021
By the time any of the first-person musings and pre-packaged on-screen interviews with Adrien Broner began rolling in from his latest training camp, there was nothing left to be shocked about. Broner had risen to fame (or ignominy, depending on your slant) on the delivery of a riffing, foul-mouthed, money-talks persona that could best be […]
0 comments by Jason Langendorf on 1/6/2021
How did a 5-foot-8, 135-pound asthmatic — a kid who showed up to work just once over the past calendar year, and who isn’t yet old enough to rent a car — become the most distinguished fighter in the world in 2020? Just ask Teofimo Lopez Jr. Or don’t. Either way, he’s probably gonna tell […]
0 comments by Jason Langendorf on 1/3/2021
When Daigo Higa emptied the contents of Yuki Strong Kobayashi’s face onto the ring canvas of Tokyo’s Ota-City General Gymnasium around suppertime, Japan Standard Time, on New Year’s Eve, I was still rubbing the sleep out of my eyes amid the glow of a flatscreen in Midwest suburbia. Nothing about the moment, neither the act […]
0 comments by Jason Langendorf on 12/22/2020
It’s a little-known law of nature: Because crusty, bloated sportswriters are biologically predisposed to pearl-clutching, the survival of the species depends on the periodic rant about The Sanctity of the Game. In boxing, that means screeds about sanctioning bodies, state commissions, promoters, managers, yahoo judges, YouTubers, referees, Saved By the Bell refugees, various and sundry […]
0 comments by Jason Langendorf on 11/29/2020
Pete Rademacher. Tyrell Biggs. Henry Tillman. Michael Bennett. Michael Grant. Expect the names to be rolled out in the coming days, like the saddest of funeral processions — a somber reminder of the heavyweight division’s most auspicious careers cut down too soon. For a Brits-only version, the ceremony will be shorter, but stingingly familiar: They’ll […]
