0 comments by Matthew Swain on 9/9/2018
No matter why you watched the first two installments of HBO’s 115-pound cards, you left happy. HBO might think that it was for Chocolatito Gonzales or Srisaket Sor Rungvisai, but ultimately that’s not the case. It was never the status of the fighters; it was the quality of the fights. In that, Superfly 3, from […]
0 comments by Tim Starks on 9/8/2018
In a battle for control of style Saturday night on Showtime — Danny Garcia the technician, Shawn Porter the frantic Cookie Monster — it took a few rounds for Porter to abandon his ill-conceived plan to try to imitate Garcia. But once he started mauling and slinging junk in equal proportion to quality blows, Porter […]
0 comments by Brent Hedtke
Amir Khan is like a puppy chewing on a hand grenade: He’s a threat to anyone who comes near him but he’s just as likely to blow himself to high hell in the process. His ability to create dangerous situations for his opponent is rivaled only by the more precarious ones he creates for himself. […]
0 comments by Kevin Canfield on 8/30/2018
In December 1966, Howard Cosell opened a boxing press conference with a nod to the literary arts. “To my right is the author of a great new poem,” the sportscaster said. This was Muhammad Ali’s cue. He leaned into the microphone, pointed at his opponent and reeled off a series of rhymes. “I’m not here […]
0 comments by Matthew Swain on 8/10/2018
It’s an unwritten rule in life that after anything unexpected happens, many of those who viewed it will spend an inordinate amount of time on the autopsy. They will generally be looking for those little nuggets of information that went unseen. Because if they’d had all the facts, they never would’ve been surprised. This is […]
0 comments by Tim Starks on 8/4/2018
As doubleheader cards teeing up the expected winners to face one another go, Saturday night was a disaster. As gobsmacking, can’t-believe-your-eyes upsets go, well, one out of two ain’t bad. Long-languishing light heavyweight Eleider Alvarez, put in the ring on HBO as an authentic test for longtime boogeyman Sergey “Krusher” Kovalev, notched the upset with […]
0 comments by Tim Starks on 7/29/2018
For just a little while — about two and a half rounds, let’s say — it looked like Robert Easter might give Mikey Garcia some trouble all Saturday night long. But a Garcia knockdown in the 3rd, and a thorough takeover by midfight, reminded us yet that Garcia is an outstanding fighter. It was a […]
0 comments by Tim Starks on 7/14/2018
This Manny Pacquiao, on this Saturday night, was not the Manny Pacquiao we saw last time he was in the ring more than a year ago. Nor was Lucas Matthysse the same kind of opponent as the last man Pacquiao faced. Nonetheless, those of us expecting an even further diminished Pacquiao — an older one, […]
0 comments by Matthew Swain on 7/13/2018
There is a certain reverence that we pay to the greats. It often lasts far beyond their usefulness. It ignores or exaggerates their faults and their inevitable decline because we need to believe in greatness for our own sake. People who are otherwise ordinary will have their every action and opinion somehow treated as important […]
0 comments by Matthew Swain on 6/23/2018
This evening at the SSE Hydro Centre in Glasgow, Scotland, junior welterweight Josh Taylor signaled his entrance into the ranks of world class fighters in just his 13th professional bout. He did so by winning a (way too goddamn) wide unanimous decision over Ukrainian Viktor Postol by scores of 117-110, 118-110, and 119-108. TQBR was […]
0 comments by Matthew Swain on 6/13/2018
Boxing is full of mind games. Many times they are positive and necessary. Think of a trainer subtley tweaking a fighter’s insecurities to motivate them. Many times they are just necessary, as when fighters fuck with each other before a bout. Most of the time, though, they are tedious and obvious, and we as the […]
0 comments by Tim Starks on 6/9/2018
Leo Santa Cruz had moved beyond it, this Abner Mares rematch Saturday on Showtime. Mares had done almost nothing to earn the do-over, while Santa Cruz had beaten a better fighter in Carl Frampton. You know what, though? The second time around was arguably better than the first, which ended with the same victor: Santa […]
0 comments by Brent Hedtke on 6/4/2018
If sports were restaurants, boxing would be the rustic, old steakhouse that hasn’t changed so much as a side dish since prohibition. The kind that bills its own reluctance to adapt to modern ideas as “classic.” Sure, the filet mignon is boiled and there’s rats in the bathroom the size of campground raccoons but hey, […]
0 comments by Tim Starks on 5/12/2018
For a while early, and then right in the middle, it looked like Vasyl Lomachenko’s otherworldly skill might not be enough to guarantee a victory against the bigger, faster and himself-pretty-skilled Jorge Linares. But Saturday on ESPN, Lomachenko overcame a rare knockdown to himself score a knockout in the 10th round. This might be Lomachenko’s […]
0 comments by Tim Starks on 5/6/2018
You couldn’t be blamed for wondering whether Gennady Golovkin’s two-fight non-knockout streak meant he was no longer the power punching beast who once gobbled up opponents whole. It seems, rather, that it was just a matter of opponent caliber. Golovkin barely beat fellow middleweight Daniel Jacobs, then fought to a draw with Canelo Alvarez. Vanes […]
