0 comments by Patrick Connor on 5/8/2014
Most boxing fans should be familiar with the term “crossroads fight.” For those who aren’t familiar, a crossroads fight is defined as one where the career trajectory of both men seem to be divergent. Bouts where youngsters face veterans often fit the description. In those match-ups, it sometimes happens that the guy supposedly fated to […]
0 comments by Patrick Connor on 5/5/2014
“Okay. Justin Bieber, Lil Wayne and Floyd Mayweather walk into a dressing room doing a three-way hug…” Though that might seem like that’s the set up to one of the most mind- and/or gender-bending joke in the universe, it actually happened the other night. Let the reality of that sink in for a moment. Past […]
0 comments by Patrick Connor on 4/28/2014
That image attached to the article is of Lucas Matthysse sledgehammering John Molina, courtesy of Jae C. Hong/AP, and probably depicts what happens when two men enter a boxing ring under “Loser doesn’t get to listen to TQBR Radio this coming week” rules. It gets brutal, because the show is in high demand… among bloggers. […]
0 comments by Patrick Connor on 4/24/2014
Many of the greatest fighters in history had some sort of rival or antithesis that helped define their careers. Obvious examples would be Muhammad Ali having his Joe Frazier, or Tony Zale his Rocky Graziano. The list goes on. Why, though, are there pairs of men who faced each other numerous times without any sort […]
0 comments by Patrick Connor on 4/22/2014
If Bernard Hopkins were to go parasailing, we imagine him floating about to the tune of Kansas’ “Dust in the Wind.” Because he’s old. …because that’s what everyone wants to talk about when he fights. But thankfully us boxing fans seem to be barreling into a period of unrest for the sport, in a good […]
0 comments by Patrick Connor on 4/10/2014
A repetitive, yet ever important theme in the world of boxing is how fights unfold parallel to the history of the times. Boxing fed off the momentum of social movements and vice versa, and it still does, with race being perhaps the easiest of fuels to ignite. One of the more obvious examples covered here […]
Is Manny Pacquiao, left, ready for another go with Tim Bradley? (Photo: Kathy Willens)
0 comments by Patrick Connor on 4/7/2014
What does it say about boxing, as a whole, that the first really big, meaningful fight of 2014 is happening about a quarter of the way through the calendar year? Really. That’s not a rhetorical question, and the answer probably won’t be in this post. Whatever quasi-philosophical approach you take to figuring out how this […]
0 comments by Patrick Connor on 4/3/2014
The 1920s spirit flowed freely in 1923. The roar was protected by low unemployment rates, jazz and dance clubs crawled with frantic activity, and New York — a city that embodied the decadence of the decade — was graced with ambiguous prohibition laws that lubricated the mind and spirit. And boxing breathed fire. When Al […]
Satisfaction: what boxing has been largely unable to provide lately.
0 comments by Patrick Connor on 4/1/2014
What exactly do we get when a predatory butcher like Sergey Kovalev is granted a major pay cable network time slot to pulverize a virtually unknown opponent, and have it mean…nothing at all? Well, boxing, that’s what. While Adonis Stevenson’s departure to Showtime and the subsequent implosion of a likely matchup against Kovalev isn’t quite […]
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0 comments by Patrick Connor on 3/20/2014
The names Sam Langford and Ed “Gunboat” Smith would be enough to pen an entire shelf-full of books. But while one is often considered one of the greatest fighters to ever smash his mitts into a pair of gloves, the other is largely lost to the wake and smoke trails of history. They fought twice, […]
0 comments by Patrick Connor on 3/18/2014
(Pictured above: boxing, for the most part; via) Oh, boxing. The jabs, the constant conflicts and drama, the back and forth action — and that’s just the media side of things! It’s easy to feel let down by the sport lately, and especially in comparison to the whirlwind that was 2013. Danny Garcia got a […]
0 comments by Patrick Connor on 3/13/2014
(Jack Dempsey, left, pretends to punch Harry Houdini, with Benny Leonard’s help) There exists an adage in boxing: “As the heavyweights go, so goes boxing.” It’s a fancy way of saying that most people extract more pleasure out of the sport the larger the fighters are, and the harder they’re hitting each other. It also […]
0 comments by Patrick Connor on 3/4/2014
(Julio Cesar Chavez Jr., left, rekindled the above magic last Saturday on HBO; via) Sometimes Julio Cesar Chavez, Jr. asserts himself in the ring, using his size and brute strength to muscle around opponents en route to slowly beating them down. Other times he just gets high and eats cereal in his hot pink bikini […]
0 comments by Patrick Connor on 2/27/2014
(Young Peter Jackson; via) Even the most rabid of boxing fans would have to scrape the look of perplexity off their faces if asked about that time Sim Thompkins and Aaron Lister Brown met in a ring. But tell them Young Peter Jackson and Dixie Kid squared off, and that might be speaking their language. Around the […]
0 comments by Patrick Connor on 2/20/2014
(Sam McVey; via) Around the dawn of the twentieth century, it wasn’t at all uncommon for top black fighters to have fought each other a dozen or more times. Having been shut out of the title picture in various divisions time and again. Gimmicks were sometimes necessary to sell the fights, and when it came […]
