Move Juan Manuel Marquez-Juan Diaz to the front of the line for best fight of 2009. The great Marquez, the lightweight champion of the world, was getting beaten early on by the #1 challenger in the division, as Diaz dragged Marquez into his ultra-kinetic fight, and it didn’t look good for the second best boxer […]

Per a news release I just got, the WBA has installed John Ruiz (photo: right) as the mandatory challenger to the winner of its heavyweight title fight between Ruslan Chagaev and Nicolay Valuev (photo: left). That means we could end up with Valuev-Ruiz III, if Valuev beats Chagaev. Since the first bout only happened because […]

So young Johnathon Banks wasn’t so evidently doomed as I imagined. Fighting the cruiserweight champion Tomasz Adamek, Banks had scads of nice moments, landing huge right hands and left hooks that at times dealt surprising hurt to Adamek’s chops. Most cruiserweights get knocked out by those shots. Adamek is an altogether different kind of boxer. […]

This week, lightweight champion Juan Manuel Marquez declared that his fight Saturday night on HBO against Juan Diaz would be “complicated” and “violent.” I don’t know that he could have picked two adjectives that, taken together, better summarize what I love about the sweet science. That a complicated and violent fight is expected to break […]

Remember that one last feature I was talking about adding to the new, improved Queensberry Rules? I’m jumping the gun a little. You can now read my instant, short (140-character maximum) takes on developments in the boxing world on Twitter. Just go to

A sequence of explosive lefts and rights from cruiserweight Troy Ross in the 4th left Ehinomen Ehikhamenor (“Hino”) with his back turned and his chin draped over the top rope like it was his security blanket and he was going to sleep. When the referee stopped the fight, Ross became the champion of “The Contender” […]

I’m about to reverse myself, or appear to, on all kinds of things about this cruiserweight championship fight between divisional king Tomasz Adamek and challenger Johnathon Banks Friday night on Showtime: I know I said earlier this week that I expected this to be an excellent fight. I’m no longer convinced it will rise to […]

Wednesday night on Versus brings an unexpected season finale of “The Contender” boxing reality show. They aren’t the two men anyone probably thought would end up in the finale before it started, but Troy Ross and Ehinomen Ehikhamenor (“Hino”) didn’t get there by luck of the draw. No sir. They dispatched with the most seasoned […]

Hi there. You might notice things look a little different around here all a sudden. It’s because that second redesign, promised as far back as October, just went into effect. Obviously, we’ve got a banner, a real one. The concept is thus: The typeface is from a newspaper that you might read in 1867, back […]

It should be a truly excellent week of boxing on television, both in the quality and quantity departments. Just take a look at the schedule: It’s time, already, for this season’s “The Contender” season finale. Wednesday on Versus, cruiserweights (200 lbs.) Troy Ross and Ehinomen “Hollywood Hino” Ehikhamenor will square off for all the marbles. […]

Time didn’t permit an extended take on the Top Rank pay-per-view Saturday night, so here’s where I (and hopefully you) will revisit what went down in more detail.

Neither Miguel Cotto nor Kelly Pavlik, the two rising stars whose ascendance was stalled last year by the first losses of their careers, proved all that much by beating inferior opponents Saturday night. What they did prove was the bare minimum they had to: that neither are severely diminished from 2008 defeats that were both […]

It hasn’t gotten a ton of attention yet, but Oscar De La Hoya, on the Ring magazine website, has finally talked about his devastating loss to Manny Pacquiao in a welterweight (147 lbs.) bout in December. It’s a sad sort of interview. He talks about wishing that Pacquiao would land one shot that would knock […]

Holy SMOKES, boxing has gotten weird over the last couple months. On ESPN2′s Friday Night Fights, in an echo of one of the most infamous incidents in boxing history, lightweight (135 lbs.) journeyman Humberto Toledo was disqualified in the final round of his fight with Breidis Prescott when he chomped down vampire-style on Prescott’s neck, […]

Oh, the haters. Before 2008, Kelly Pavlik and Miguel Cotto were young undefeated superstars, among the elite in the sport, until, golly, they both got one loss each against top-flight opponents, and now we have to acknowledge that their entire careers are jokes. Attacking this kind of pervasive narrow-mindedness is an ongoing crusade of mine, […]