Here’s the latest from welterweight (147 lbs.) star Miguel Cotto, discussing his promotional company Top Rank’s advocacy for the license-revoked Antonio Margarito, who got caught using loaded hand wraps in January and may have used loaded hand wraps last summer to put Cotto’s career in jeopardy: “I’m just going to stay with them until the […]

Not since I began following boxing has there been such a concentrated spate of people pulling out of fights. The latest is what could have been the best fight on the coming weekend’s pay-per-view card, the lightweight (135 lbs.) bout between rising Anthony Peterson and exciting Edner Cherry. When combined with the news that negotiations […]

You’re looking at Sarah Blewden, a Brit who has been barred from fighting because of her breast implants. In related British news, did you know that Joe Calzaghe totally sucked because everyone else he ever fought totally sucked? You should not know this, because it is false. But with the way some folk think, you […]

It’s been a weird month and a half in the sport of boxing. Cheating scandals (Antonio Margarito). A five minute round (Juan Urango-Herman Ngoudjo). Everything about the Valentine’s Day card coming in was strange: three different opponents dropping off the slate, a long delay in picking the location before ending up in Florida, and the […]

Just caught up to the Friday Night Fights card on ESPN2. First things first: It was where I learned that Nate Campbell didn’t make the lightweight (135 lbs.) limit for his HBO main event bout with Ali Funeka, and after starting at 138, he only was able to get down another half pound. Is there […]

It was going to be a mega-romantic Valentine’s Day for you and your sweetheart: candy, dinner, flowers, rose petals on the bed and six men attempting to bludgeon each other into submission on HBO. The fundamentals of that evening are largely the same — seriously, buy the woman some flowers — but what was once […]

The other day, CrazyJoeDavola proposed the possibility of a weekly or otherwise regular forum for people just talking about whatever the hell they want, be it questions for me or questions/comments they want other folk to ponder and respond to. The idea got at least one vote, from Steve. I was intrigued. So here we […]

For at least a year, Antonio Margarito — a man who had become among the handful of the very best boxers in the world and a major attraction in the sport — will not be able to fight in California and therefore the entire United States, the result of a California Athletic Commission decision to […]

[Update below: The L.A. Times is reporting on what’s happening at the hearing as we speak. It’s getting bad in there.] Two indicators of the way things will be presented by Antonio Margarito’s team at today’s California State Athletic Commission hearing RE: his allegedly loaded gloves. First, promoter Bob Arum: Arum contends Margarito did not […]

Joe Calzaghe’s retirement should bring his relinquishing of the Ring magazine title belt at light heavyweight, with the Ring belt being the one title that matters most because it traces its lineage back to the days when there was only one champion in each division.* Unfortunately, it’ll be one more vacancy in a list of […]

Above is the conclusion to the flyweight (112 lbs.) battle between Omar Narvaez and Rayonta Whitfield. With the win, Narvaez broke the record for title defenses by an Argentinian previously held by the great Carlos Monzon. Let’s weigh the relative value of that, and revisit all of the jam-packed weekend’s action, in roughly chronological order. […]

The first couple rounds, it looked like it was going to be an easy night for Vic Darchinyan. Then in the 3rd round, Jorge Arce looked like he might, after all, give his fellow power puncher but better boxer a handful. But it didn’t take long for Darchinyan to take back over, and by the […]

In my excitement over Vic Darchinyan-Jorge Arce (I was part of a Showtime poll on the fight, the results of which you can read here) and a couple other fights I already mentioned, I left out a few noteworthy fights this weekend. I like super middleweight (168 lbs.) Andre Ward, so it’s crazy that I […]

(Arce, left; Darchinyan, sitting. Tom Casino/Showtime) Saturday night delivers the first surefire action brawl of 2009, which is not to say that a couple other bouts, like Andre Berto-Luis Collazo, haven’t surprised in how they turned unexpectedly into action brawls. Vic Darchinyan-Jorge Arce? That’s the kind of fight where the surprise would be if it […]

After thinking it over for a few months, Joe Calzaghe is calling it quits. It’s easy to have some hard feelings toward Joe if you’re a boxing fan these days, since the last taste he left in our mouths was a pronouncement that the sport was “dying,” when in fact it’s on more of an […]