Recently, ESPN’s Dan Rafael hit some of the low lights of the WBC’s boxing rankings. And from time to time, I hear people say that Ring magazine’s rankings are terrible, too. My own view is fairly well-established. I think the alphabet sanctioning gang has terrible rankings and that Ring’s are about as good as it […]

Not to be confused with the Round Mound of Rebound. We’ll stay at around 147 to 160 pounds for a while for some of the top names there, then move on to everybody else. Miguel Cotto has no interest in fighting Kermit Cintron and plans to take the rest of the year off. The thinking, […]

One of the refrains of those who back Manny Pacquiao-Antonio Margarito is, paraphrased, that you moral types who don’t like Margarito because of the loaded-gloves incident can ban the fight if you want, but it’s still going to sell because people love the controversy. On a similar note, Yahoo’s Kevin Iole recently penned a piece […]

Paul Williams-Sergio Martinez II: That’s more like it. Way, way, way more like it. It’s no secret that boxing is having a pretty terrible year, but Williams-Martinez II represents a meaningful thaw in the permafrost that is the tundra of 2010. Even when 2010 has had its good moments, something’s turned around and screwed it […]

One common rejoinder from some fans and writers alike to the Shane Mosley-Sergio Mora draw on Saturday is that it was a fair result because neither man “deserved” to win. I beg to differ, on two levels. The man who “deserves” to win a decision is the man who wins the most rounds. That’s the […]

David O. Russell does good work (I just quoted I Heart Huckabees in this space recently, in fact) and this trailer for “The Fighter,” about Micky Ward, starts slowly and builds good momentum. Some of the remarks I’ve seen about it say it looks pretty standard for a boxing story, but if you know Ward’s […]

Sergio Mora might be the only fighter I want banned more than Antonio Margarito. For all but a few rounds, he hardly did anything Saturday night; you might say he wasn’t a participant in his boxing match with Shane Mosley at all. Yet somehow he managed a draw in his junior middleweight bout with the […]

Unlike other combat sports, and simulated combat, the art of the ring entrance is often lost in boxing. Frequently, television networks won’t show entrances at all, opting to talk over graphics or highlight packages instead. When networks do decide to air fighters’ ring walks, we’re often met with a steady flow of cliché music choices, […]