Cristobal Cruz! Just a couple months ago, I wrote that he was a television-friendly fighter who may never win a title. Scratch ‘im off the list! Nice to see a guy like that make good. Versus Network broadcast a card Wednesday night that featured a title fight and the debut of a hot prospect fresh […]

Manny Pacquiao’s got weight issues. Or, at least, his trainer Freddie Roach does. The way Pacquiao and his team have been talking about his poundage in advance of his Dec. 6 welterweight (147 lbs.) bout with Oscar De La Hoya is wildly inconsistent, as if his own waistline was as unpredictable as Lindsay Lohan’s or […]

Alan Greenspan, famous for warning against “irrational exuberance,” helps me warn against a similar phenomenon. IT’S EASY SOMETIMES in this sport of ours to watch two men duke it out and, based on the outcome of that one span of combat between the duo, come to some rather hyperbolic conclusions about each warrior’s fundamental merits. […]

We’re still working through issues associated with switching over from the old site, Ring Report, to the new site, The Queensberry Rules, and for those of you who managed to find us and leave comments that disappeared into the ether: The overlords at MVN.com, the hosts of this modest boxing blog, are diligently doing everything […]

It’s really still just soaking in, the enormity of what ol’ Bernard Hopkins did Saturday night to lil’ Kelly Pavlik. Hopkins, 43, was 17 years older than Pavlik. Seventeen. Years. Older. And he looked old, too, in his most recent fight in April. Stranger still, Hopkins, who usually fights like a snail, threw more punches […]

I’ll have more to say later, but for now, I say this: I have never had as much respect for Bernard Hopkins as I did tonight. I have never been so entertained to see a fighter I love — Kelly Pavlik — beaten so soundly by a fighter I dislike. This was an historic win […]

Welcome to our new site. We were Ring Report — a rather generic name Sean and I inherited when we came aboard MVN — and now we are The Queensberry Rules — a rather esoteric name, but one that sounds cooler, at least to our ears. Like a lot of MVN sites, we’ve undergone a […]

I worry about this one, this Kelly Pavlik-Bernard Hopkins fight. I don’t worry so much about whether one of my favorites, Pavlik, will win or lose against one of my least favorite, Hopkins. No, I worry about whether Hopkins puts the stink on Pavlik. Placing Pavlik in a ring with Hopkins is like cutting out […]

Vitali Klitschko’s hands got so swollen from hitting Sam Peter at will this weekend in a heavyweight title-winning effort that he had to resort to… baby urine. “Baby wee is good because it’s pure, doesn’t contain toxins and doesn’t smell,” the 37-year old boxer told Bild after he won back the WBC title with a […]

Zoom around the boxing news/commentary sites and for the two winners in Saturday night’s double-header, you’ll find raves that border on the hyperbolic as well as surprising disses. For the two losers, you’ll find generous souls extending the benefit of the doubt alongside dismissals of their entire careers. So, in light of this, in the […]

Heading into tonight, we had two fighters — Antonio Tarver and Vitali Klitschko — whose age made them, rather than familiar and consistent rocks of the sport, unknown quantities. In the end, one of the two came up roses. The other fell to the fresher, younger fighter. I commend you to Sean’s take on the […]

Going into Saturday nights heavyweight fight between Sam Peter and Vitali Klitschko, I was confident, I repeat, confident that Peter would be too much for the un-retired Klitschko.¬† Boy was I wrong.¬† In what could be described as a virtuoso performance by Klitschko as he beat down Peter in such a one-side way that Peter […]

I‚Äôm going to have to agree with Thomas Gerbasi over at Maxboxing, WBC heavyweight title holder Samuel ‚ÄúThe Nigerian Nightmare‚Äù Peter must be seething heading into his title defense against former owner of the green belt, Vitali Klitschko Saturday night in Germany.¬† The usually stoic Peter was visibly agitated at Klitschko, and the promoters of […]

This, ladies and gentleman, is how you talk trash. Antonio Tarver and Chad Dawson have been jawing at one another hilariously in advance of their potentially very good light heavyweight (175 lbs.) fight with plenty of storylines — most notably, that of the older, bigger figure Tarver trying to claw his way back to the […]

Antonio Margarito’s promoter, Bob Arum, explained two months ago to ESPN‘s Dan Rafael why there would be no rematch between Margarito and the only other man who can make a legitimate claim to supremacy in one of boxing’s best divisions, welterweight (147 lbs). The problem, he said, was not Paul Williams’ promoter Dan Goosen but […]