0 comments by Matthew Swain on 12/15/2019
Young fighters need rounds. There is absolutely no substitute for in-ring experience. That was the idea Friday night at Fantasy Springs Casino in Indio, California. Brad Solomon (28-2, 9 KO), a veteran with a long reach and naught else but a disputed 4-year-old split decision win over Adrian Granados to his name, was supposed to […]
0 comments by Tim Starks on 12/14/2019
This is no illusion: Teofimo Lopez has arrived. In against an opponent wildly more accomplished than anyone he’d ever faced, and likewise wildly more accomplished than himself, Lopez scored a brilliant 2nd round knockout Saturday on ESPN. You can always be forgiven when, after watching a power puncher have outages as he has stepped up […]
0 comments by Jason Langendorf on 12/9/2019
Emanuel Navarrete is in a hurry. Fast hands, CompuBox-busting punch volume, on to the next thing — quickly. He leaps into jabs, straight right hands and even sweeping hooks, the sooner to unspool his go-go gadget arms and put hands on his intended target. Let’s go. Glove up. Ring the bell. Patience? That’s for 12-rounders […]
0 comments by Brent Hedtke on 12/8/2019
Historically, the only way to tell twins apart was through a complicated series of funhouse mirrors and a 40-part questionnaire designed by ex-Navy SEALs. Lucky for us, the Charlo brothers — Jermell and Jermall — have a more streamlined identification process. Jermell is the boxer and Jermall is the puncher. Jermell will take you deep […]
0 comments by Tim Starks on 12/7/2019
One man burned for the win, needed it and acted like it, after taking it for granted last time. One man opted against working as hard as he should have, after originally fighting like a man who had no expectations of winning, nothing to lose and everything to gain. Heavyweight Anthony Joshua turned the tables […]
0 comments by Jason Langendorf
A plaque at the foot of the Golden Gate Hotel & Casino — downtown, where Freemont intersects Main — commemorates the first telephone installed in the city of Las Vegas. It belonged to Charles “Pop” Squires, a publisher and local pioneer who was known around town as “Mr. Las Vegas” — long before Wayne Newton […]
0 comments by Matthew Swain on 12/5/2019
The fight is being contested in Saudi Arabia, how do you feel about the 3 p.m. start time and venue? Swain: It seems a bit weird, but I like the afternoon start time. I understand the cash grab for the site fee, and I’m sure Ruiz’s team wanted a neutral site, but an open-air stadium […]
0 comments by Jason Langendorf on 11/24/2019
As I watched Luis Ortiz crumble to the canvas Saturday night at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, something struck me as familiar. It was his face. Not the unique contours of Ortiz’s cinder block head or Chubby Thanos chin — but his expression. Eyes slung sideways. Lips drawn tightly over teeth. Neck flexing vainly […]
0 comments by Tim Starks on 11/22/2019
Dwight Richie. Patrick Day. Maxim Dadashev. Hugo Santillan. Boris Stanchov. That’s the list of newsmaking boxing deaths this year, and it’s nothing but tragic and awful, no matter the circumstances. I say that upfront because I’m about to perform a trepidatious high wire act where I try to defend the sport that produced those fatalities, […]
0 comments by Brent Hedtke on 11/13/2019
Liking stuff is hard. Even if you didn’t grow up on a steady diet of punk rock and decentralized anarchist propaganda like I did, the human brain’s capacity to enjoy things is finite. One pancake is good. Two are better. Ten is suicide. And so it goes. The more things there are, the more opportunities […]
0 comments by Matthew Swain on 11/11/2019
Not everything has to mean something. A fight can sometimes just be a fight. The meaning it holds can be personal, not universal. And it can be a shared experience that makes it so. Saturday night, a day before the Marine Corps’ 244th birthday, and two days before Veterans Day, at Chukchansi Park in Fresno, […]
0 comments by Matthew Swain on 11/8/2019
If you aren’t prepared to be a hermit, no matter where you go, you’ll have to deal with complaints. It doesn’t matter how good life is, there will be someone bitching about some aspect of what’s going on. This is obviously amplified by social media, but it generally is a safe assumption that the whiners […]
0 comments by Brent Hedtke on 11/7/2019
People tend to forget that Rocky loses in the end. Though filmed as a moment of triumph, when Sylvester Stallone’s eponymous dipshit is monosyllabically shrieking the name of his sort-of girlfriend, the ring announcer can very clearly be heard declaring Apollo Creed the winner via split decision. Now, “Rocky” is obviously just a single entry […]
0 comments by Tim Starks on 11/3/2019
If you watched Canelo Alvarez brutally, clinically knock out one of the world’s top few light heavyweights Saturday without ever flinching at one of his punches, you might hardly believe the following tale is true: Fighting in Las Vegas in just his fourth pro fight, Alvarez took on Jose Miguel Cotto, the lesser known person […]
0 comments by Tim Starks on 10/31/2019
(PRESS RELEASE) The Transnational Boxing Rankings Board this month celebrated its seventh year of providing fair, uncompromised boxing rankings and clear, singular divisional champions. Comprised of 50 boxing writers and record keepers in 20 countries across five continents, the board has published weekly rankings in stark contrast to alphabet organizations like the WBC, WBA, WBO and WBF, […]
