0 comments by Jason Langendorf on 8/17/2020
Even in the age of social distancing, you can scarcely swing a dead cat without hitting a boxer who doesn’t have a little resentment coming to him. Fighters are hard men with pocked histories. Boxing is known for its boozers, gamblers, junkies, abusers and general dirtbaggery. Self-promotion too often falls somewhere on the spectrum between […]
0 comments by Tim Starks on 8/16/2020
Maybe don’t judge a thing by the first time the thing happens. Saturday’s Showtime card was not as good as the last one featured in this space, either on paper or in practice. Action-oriented super middleweight David Benavidez was in the main event. So far, so good, yes? His opponent, 36-year-old Roamer (great name!) Alexis […]
0 comments by Tim Starks on 8/9/2020
We’ve gotta talk about David Morrell, y’all. Morrell, a super middleweight in just his third pro fight Saturday on Fox, led off the card and overshadowed everything else that came after. The last highly heralded amateur star to make his pro debut then immediately blitz into bouts against top competition a la what Morrell’s doing […]
0 comments by Tim Starks on 8/1/2020
That was much better. Boxing returned to Showtime on Saturday evening, following an earlier comeback from a couple other networks. It was only one card, but even with the now-standard “guy’s not in the fight cuz he tested positive for Covid-19,” the matchmaking here was much better than what we’ve seen on ESPN. The main […]
0 comments by Jason Langendorf on 7/26/2020
We’ve had ourselves a year, huh? It’s only July, I know, but aren’t all of us reaching to throw in the towel on 2020 right now? COVID. Kobe. Thirty years of Cops squeezed into a two-week off-off-Broadway shitshow. Existential dread surrounds us like Confederate Flags at a Charlie Daniels concert. (Alas, now we’re denied even […]
0 comments by Tim Starks on 7/15/2020
The pandemic is messing with scheduled cards so much it’s sometimes hard to pick any one “story” to focus on, so this will be the old “empty the notebook” trick: ****** Despite a solid substitute main event (we’ll return to this soon, then again later), it remains unclear whether boxing in the age of the […]
0 comments by Brent Hedtke on 7/3/2020
Boxing is back, baby! Or something vaguely resembling it, I guess. I’m sure it was every young fighters’ dream to one day find themselves in the glamorous confines of an empty, hermetically sealed broom closet like “The Bubble” at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, but to do it with roughly the population of Ames, […]
0 comments by Matthew Swain on 6/30/2020
“And so it is those we live with and should know who elude us. But we can still love them — we can love completely without complete understanding.” – Norman Mclean If ever existed a fighter who was loved completely, it was Arturo “Thunder” Gatti. Beyond being loved, he was mythologized because he knew what […]
0 comments by Tim Starks on 6/26/2020
Before Andrew Moloney and Jason Moloney headlined separate ESPN cards this week, Jason and Andrew squared up against one another in a game of table tennis. Jason won. Andrew did not. That went for both the fighting and the ping-pong. The Australian twin brothers, Andrew first and then Jason, made their Las Vegas debuts, albeit […]
0 comments by Brent Hedtke on 6/24/2020
First off, I’m fine. My family is safe and all outstanding gambling debts have been settled with the appropriate parties. I’m doing this of sound mind and my own free will. I realize I just declared myself competent to stand trial should any homicidal crime spree result from this, but it’s a price I’m willing […]
0 comments by Tim Starks on 6/21/2020
It’s hard not to sound like complaining, when there’s anything negative to say about “any boxing happening at all,” versus the months-long “none.” There’s nothing that can be done about it. You just have to mix in the small pleasures you unearth. Saturday’s 11 p.m. (!) ESPN card was headlined by Emanuel Navarrete. That’s a […]
0 comments by Tim Starks on 6/19/2020
“The MGM Grand once again proudly boasting that boxing is back,” Joe Tessitore said Thursday night in the lead-in to the ESPN show. Well, it sort of is. The main event feature fight with Jose Pedraza headlining got postponed to July due to Mikkel LesPierre’s manager testing positive despite being “in the bubble.” It’s the […]
0 comments by Jason Langendorf on 6/17/2020
When it comes to grim irony, not even the back-stabbiest of Greek tragedies holds a candle to boxing. In this sport, titans fall, fortunes are squandered and, like clockwork, dreams are splintered on the rocks of reality — all inside a space as cozy as a Little Caesar’s lobby. Had he cared to look, bantamweight […]
0 comments by Matthew Swain on 6/12/2020
Fouling in boxing is an art form. Muhammad Ali was an expert at pulling opponents’ heads down. Floyd Mayweather used his forearms. Bernard Hopkins’s favorite combination after age 40 was a feint jab-lunge-straight right-headbutt (Tim Bradley also employed this maneuver, but I’m convinced that it was just the momentum of his giant skull pulling him […]
0 comments by Matthew Swain on 6/10/2020
Mismatches, propagandistic commentary and weirdly long time lags between bouts: Boxing is back, baby! The return of live boxing to the United States would normally be a cause for celebration, and we should be pleased, but as with most things in life, our expectations should be tempered by reality. Wednesday night at the Bubble, MGM […]
