"Juan Manuel Marquez delayed performance enhancing drug testing so he could be dirty while Timothy Bradley was clean!" (Only they started testing via separate drug-testing organizations at almost exactly the same time.) "The Nevada State Athletic Commission hasn't begun testing everyone yet!" (When it actually had.) "Brandon Rios is being tested while Manny Pacquiao is not!" (Except most evidence […]

FORT WASHINGTON, Md. — It is envisioned in 2004, in the nosebleeds of Madison Square Garden. 11-year-old Dusty Hernandez-Harrison and his dad, by the retelling of both men, are at the Mecca of boxing to watch Felix Trinidad; Dusty being Puerto Rican meant "Tito" was automatically his favorite boxer. Father Buddy tells his young son, […]

(photo credit: Chris Farina, Top Rank) It was like a Rocky movie gone terribly wrong. The hometown hero had been in control. His Russian opponent had looked frustrated and even a little primitive. But junior welterweight Ruslan Provodnikov (23-2, 16 KO) has the kind of power and determination that reconfigures Hollywood endings. "I knew what […]

"I think of all the education that I missed," David Lee Roth once sang for Van Halen, "but then my homework was never quite like this." It's a real pleasure to write a preview for a fight like Mike Alvarado-Ruslan Provodnikov, because it means I was forced to study up on each man's ouevre. And […]

Juan Manuel Marquez was falling down Saturday, yet from the

(Vasyl Lomachenko, above, Jose Ramirez, below; credit: Chris Farina, Top Rank) These are the results for the three main undercard fights to support the main event of Juan Manuel Marquez and Timothy Bradley on HBO pay-per-view: In the chief supporting bout, Mexico's Orlando Salido (40-12-2, 27 KO) knocked out Puerto Rico's Orlando Cruz (20-3-1, 10 […]

Juan Manuel Marquez vs. Timothy Bradley Saturday on HBO pay-per-view is a match-up spilling over with danger beyond recompense, and danger of the drool-worthy and bitter variety alike. If only we could mandate by law that boxers have chips on their shoulders of the boulder size Marquez and Bradley do, where more money is on […]

You seen that one before? Maybe even in this space? Memory does not serve. It's from "Dancers Among Us," a series of photographs by Jordan Matter, recently the subject of a sequel, "Athletes Among Us." Both are beautiful. No word on whether there's a boxer in the "Athletes Among Us," but I'm guessing not, because […]

Put up your tentacles! It's time for a rumble at the bottom of the sea, cephalopods and crustaceans. (via) We've got some catching up to do in Quickjabstown. Some of it will revisit the weekend prior to last, some of it will be about Floyd Mayweather hanging out with other celebrities, some of it will […]

Did you see heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko Saturday? Then you very well might have been bored! Maybe you saw lightweight Terence Crawford, and were more bored by him instead. Maybe you were bored by neither. All of these outcomes are possible. That's because not all "boring" fighters are created equal. And not all viewers perceive […]

(Miguel Cotto, standing, Delvin Rodriguez, falling; photo credit: Chris Farina, Top Rank) Miguel Cotto salvaged an action-free HBO card in the main event Saturday with a throwback performance against Delvin Rodriguez, electrifying the audience in Orlando, Fla. via the kind of bodypunching that drew cringes of sympathy and via the kind of aggression that left […]

(Wladimir Klitschko, left; Alexander Povetkin, right) There have been back alley assaults outside West Virginia taverns cleaner than what Wladimir Klitschko did to Alexander Povetkin Saturday in Russia on HBO en route to a 119-104 unanimous decision across the board. There have been more credible performances by WWE referees, too, than the officiating Luis Pabon […]