February feels like the hardcore boxing fan’s month. Every weekend, it’s one or more bouts that are almost certain to dispense with the pretty stuff and turn into a brawl, from Saturday’s junior bantamweight (115 lbs.) battle between Jorge Arce and Vic Darchinyan to Feb. 28’s lightweight (135 lbs.) fight between champion Juan Manuel Marquez […]

At least 50% of the awesomeness of this Saturday’s bout pitting Vic Darchinyan against Jorge Arce has been the pre-fight trash talk. And while it’s not that Arce hasn’t had plenty interesting to say — “When I am cut, I am content. My blood pleases me” — Darchinyan has spit out so many nasty things […]

Quickly, a look at some boxing results from this week besides the Friday Night Fights show: Everything about the above video is just kind of strange. Why was Marco Antonio Barrera taking a tune-up fight before what was likely to be a big-money U.K. showdown with lightweight (135 lbs.) Amir Khan in March? He had […]

…I have two pieces of recommended reading. A. Donald Tremblay, the universally respected former PR man for promoter Main Events, is doing some freelance writing these days, and this piece, at Ring magazine’s site, is a doozy. It’s all about the 2000 Ali Act that was supposed to protect fighters, and saying much more gets […]

ESPN2 aired a top-notch match-up Friday night, and although it ended up not so close on the scorecards, it was a bout with stretches of competitiveness. Juan Urango grabbed a junior welterweight (140 lbs.) title belt by beating Montreal hometown favorite Herman Ngoudjo, and despite some protesting of the scores by the “Friday Night Fights” […]

I defended Kelly Pavlik after his loss to Bernard Hopkins from idiotic remarks that he had been “exposed,” as if his entire career up to that point was fraudulent and it took B-Hop to reveal the truth that he sucked. But I think Pavlik and his crew are missing an opportunity to turn Pavlik into […]

The California State Athletic Commission has temporarily suspended welterweight (147 lbs.) Antonio Margarito and his trainer over those controversial hand wraps that were discovered before Margarito went on to fight and lose to Shane Mosley this weekend. The press release is here. By my read, it looks to be fairly standard procedure for state commissions […]

Said all there is to say about this one for now, so I’ll just get out of the way and let the news release from Golden Boy Promotions speak for itself. Anyone who needs tickets, they tell you how to get them and how much they’ll cost, although who knows how many will be made […]

[Sorry, y’all — looks like I accidentally disabled comments on this one. Won’t happen again, now that I know what went wrong. Comment away now…] Other topics in this edition of Quick Jabs, besides what’s in the headline: the value of trash talk versus sportsmanship; Ring magazine’s interesting new top-10 pound-for-pound man; an amusing (and […]

(Cynthia Plaster Caster, from her MySpace page) We’ve got some more people jumping into the news about Antonio Margarito’s allegedly illegal hand wraps from this weekend’s welterweight (147 lbs.) loss to Shane Mosley: another member of his management team (there was no plaster!) and three past opponents (feeling a little shy).

If you didn’t think Shane Mosley-Antonio Margarito had enough wild storylines — divorces, steroids, allegedly loaded gloves, a wholly unanticipated upset result –well, Margarito’s camp is throwing another out there. Mr. Ryan directed me to this article where Margarito’s manager said the welterweight (147 lbs.)  “had to have surgery on his eye a little over […]

I’m not trying to get all Nancy Grace up in here, convicting someone before they are proven guilty. I want to emphasize upfront that we need a fuller investigation of the allegations against welterweight (147 lbs.) Antonio Margarito that his team tried to artificially load his glove before Saturday night’s bout with Shane Mosley. But […]

That was mind-boggling. Mind-boggling. Shane Mosley knocked out Antonio Margarito in the 9th round Saturday night on HBO. You read that right. Margarito, with his cement block of a head, got knocked out by anyone. And the man who did it, Mosley, did it with a near-perfect performance at age 37 to overcome 4-1 odds […]

Big ol’ welterweight Antonio Margarito weighed in at 145 and some change Friday, a bit less than two pounds below the limit, while Shane Mosley was two-tenths over initially. If you’re a Mosley fan, you have to like the sound of that. Why? Because Margarito has apparently had a tendency to overtrain before fights where […]

Just when you thought it was dead, Manny Pacquiao-Ricky Hatton has sprung back to life. Again. But unlike in a zombie movie when they think they’ve killed the zombie but then the zombie gets back up and keeps coming, I’m glad Pacquiao-Hatton has returned. Apparently. I probably won’t believe it until I have a signed […]