Although Showtime’s bantamweight tournament has advanced on a heavily truncated schedule compared to the network’s super middleweight tournament, it sure is hard to remember how it all started off on such rocky footing not so long ago. Nonito Donaire and Fernando Montiel, the two biggest names in the division, refused to enter, causing some to […]

(Top Rank’s Bob Arum, left, and Golden Boy’s Oscar De La Hoya, right, neither strangling one another nor teaming up to destroy boxing.) It was only a few months ago that boxing’s two biggest promoters, Top Rank and Golden Boy, were doing just about everything they could to micturate on boxing fans or would-be boxing […]

Inspired by Tim’s recent posts regarding the good, bad, and (mostly) ugly of the sanctioning organization titles, I decided to take a closer look at the one generally agreed upon shining beacon in the foul blackness that is the boxing championship scene – the Ring Magazine championship. In general, the boxing media and hardcore fans […]

Welcome to the second and final installment of our examination of the alphabet title belt phenomenon. Last time, we took a magnifying glass to the question of whether the alphabet belts offered by the WBC, IBF et al should be ignored altogether. (My answer: Yes. Well, at least, after this post.) This time, we take […]

Occasioned by the WBC’s contemptible decision to strip Timothy Bradley of his junior welterweight belt and award it to the winner of Erik Morales and Jorge Barrios (who isn’t ranked anywhere by the WBC in any division), this week began with any number of writers weighing in on whether the alphabet title gang ought to […]

The biggest boxing card of the weekend is the one that isn’t happening. Three cheers for the sport of boxing in August… Not-Kelly Pavlik vs. Darryl Cunningham, Not-Saturday, Not-Showtime, Not-Youngstown Ohio. Either Kelly “The Ghost” Pavlik doesn’t have interest in boxing anymore, or he’s still on the sauce, or he’s just flat crazy for some […]

Boxing kangaroos are kind of the unofficial mascot around here, so the saga of the kangaroo who beat up an old woman was at first demoralizing (the kangaroo beat up an old woman), then heartwarming (she was damn tough about it, and not hurt badly) and finally, tragic (the ‘roo was euthanized because it was […]

These are your annual summer grades for all of boxing’s weight classes, because it’s a thing that happens in other sports like when college basketball writers give grades to the various conferences, but it’s not the kind of thing that happens in ours. It is not merely an excuse to run a picture of a […]

Maybe Bernard Hopkins “will never lose to a white boy,” but he’ll pal around with one. At the Amir Khan-Zab Judah bout over the weekend, Hopkins shared a laugh twith his old rival Joe Calzaghe, the man at whom Hopkins famously directed that racially inflammatory rhetoric. That loss to Calzaghe still bugs him and Hopkins […]

In an absorbing battle between unbeaten and highly touted heavyweight prospects, Tyson Fury emerged with the British and Commonwealth heavyweight titles draped over his enormous shoulders after whipping the tough but shoddily prepared Dereck Chisora throughout twelve highly entertaining rounds. It was the perfect occasion to help ease boxing back onto terrestrial television as Fury […]