This morning, it’s unanimous that hometown referee Marlon B. Wright performed a tremendous disservice to the sport in Montreal last night when he acted to save Canada’s Lucian Bute from a possible knockout loss that would have handed his super middleweight (168 lbs.) title belt to Librado Andrade. It is almost entirely unanimous that Andrade […]

Blame Canada. Our neighbor to the north arguably cost an admirable fighter his first title with some home country referee cooking. Either way, the attempt to do so was utterly shameful. For 10 out 11 rounds, Canada’s Lucian Bute completely controlled fellow super middleweight (168 lbs.) Librado Andrade, even if Andrade was wearing him down […]

Because I erroneously gave the wrong date in an earlier post for tonight’s Lucian Bute-Librado Andrade bout, I feel compelled to rectify my error by strongly suggesting you tune in to Showtime tonight, not tomorrow evening. It won’t be there if you wait until tomorrow. It helps that the fight could be sensational. Bute and […]

Friday night, McKinney TX, based junior welterweight (140 pounds) undefeated fighter Albert Rodriguez (8-0-1, 4 KOs) makes a return to the ring after a two year hiatus. At the behest of my good friend Joby Gaytan, I woke up at an ungodly hour to catch some high intensity sparring as Rodriguez, prepared for his fight […]

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 […]