I was there in Dallas for the Manny Pacquiao-Antonio Margarito ophthalmology clinic. If it weren’t for the astonishing undercard, epitomized by the Mike Jones-Jesus Soto Karass fight, where Karass came back to nearly win after having been pummeled against the ropes to within an inch of his life by something like 600 punches by Jones […]

(Underdog, playing the role of undercard, saves the main event, played here by Sweet Polly Purebred. [Try not to think too much about the full ramifications of this visual metaphor.]) For a long time, the conventional wisdom among boxing promoters was that fans only paid for the main events of pay-per-view cards, and that spending […]

(Via Dan Rafael, on Twitter) There’s a lot of things that can be said about last Saturday night’s light heavyweight championship fight between Bernard Hopkins and Chad Dawson, and most of them have been said already. This blog referred to the fight as a “travesty.” On Twitter, I called it (among other things) a pay-per-PU, […]

Chad Dawson and Bernard Hopkins. The fight that fans weren’t clamoring for. Hopkins didn’t want. HBO couldn’t sell. Few anticipated. And even less actually attended. After the abortion of a fight that perhaps many have now seen, though few paid for, there are a host of questions that beg to be asked. How many more […]

(Tony Bellew catches Nathan Cleverly with a punch, if not on the scorecards) Welshman, Nathan Cleverly, underwent the toughest fight of his life in overcoming Liverpudlian Tony Bellew on Saturday. The points margins of 117-112 and 116-113 on two of the three judges’ scorecards seemed particularly harsh on Bellew, a revelation here, with adjudicator Terry […]

You can totally see her watching Guillermo Jones try the heavyweight division on for size on Nov. 5, can’t you? Wealth TV is going to host the Jones fight that night, so if you are one of the rich people who enjoy shows like “Wealth on the Water — Taking you on multi-million dollar mega […]

As the mismanagement of boxing by those with say-so continues, its infrastructure a convoluted pile, the average fan’s need for clarity remains an important factor in allowing sanity and boxing fanaticism to occupy the same gray matter. It doesn’t take a fight game veteran to recognize which styles should be matched together. But absent aesthetically […]

(Tony Bellew, left; Nathan Cleverly, right) Punk has a lot to answer for. Back when provocateurs John Lydon and Malcolm McClaren began stoking a generation with the notion that attitude and image could land you on stage despite the absence of any real talent, they’d never have dreamt we’d have ended up here. Rotten and […]

Year after year in the remarkably long autumn of Bernard Hopkins’ career, one opponent and then another with the physical upper hand has faced off with the now 46-year-old living legend and slumped off either totally defeated or having been given the toughest night of his professional life. Jean Pascal, in a win and a […]

HBO simply couldn’t do better in filling the top spot in its sports department than Ken Hershman, the man who did the counterpart job for rival Showtime and did it in a way that often put HBO to shame. So that’s who it picked, per a story that HBO made official with a news release […]