Anthony “The Man” Mundine might be slowing down, if his average performace against the average “Deadly” Rob Medley is anything to go by. While he easily beat the smaller, less experienced Medley, he never looked as dominant as he should have. Mundine hasn’t fought a world class opponent since Mikkel Kessler in 2005. While Danny […]

For much of the debut main event in the ESPN2 “Friday Night Fights” season, rickety 37-year-old middleweight Roman Karmazin was not looking his best, getting wobbled as he did by Dionisio Miranda in the 3rd round and largely surviving with ring savvy against a low-skilled, one-handed but powerful fighter in his physical prime. Then in […]

When critics used to trot out the reasons for boxing’s decline, the word “greed” inevitably made the list. They were wrong. I’m not saying it doesn’t exist in boxing. But boxing is the only sport I know of where irrational emotion and excessive pride regularly trump greed. That’s what seems to have happened when Floyd […]

With boxing taking a holiday break, the Floyd Mayweather, Jr.-Manny Pacquiao fiasco has dominated the headlines and depressed the naïve and clearly delusional boxing fans (including myself, admittedly) who thought the sport could maintain positive momentum without pulling an Andrew Golota somewhere along the line. Now that the New Year is upon us, the action […]

Both BoxingScene and the Las Vegas Review-Journal are reporting that what would have been the richest fight in boxing history, Floyd Mayweather, Jr.-Manny Pacquiao, is dead. The Review-Journal reported that Mayweather turned down an unspecified compromise Top Rank and Golden Boy worked out during mediation. BoxingScene reported that Mayweather wouldn’t accept a 24-day cutoff for […]

I recently posted a short piece about the best boxing books, a list that included “The Sweet Science,” a collection of A.J. Liebling’s articles from the New Yorker that constitutes a kind of cultural history of boxing in mid-century. Now one of the best-known pieces from “The Sweet Science,” “Ahab and Nemesis,” about the 1955 […]

I’m usually all, like — standards, guidelines, consistent principles, etc. etc., blah blah blah. But I’ve had three frozen pineapple margaritas at the sushi place, I’m still bitter about writing a full blog entry last night that I then failed to save and therefore lost, and I’m thinking to myself, “What the hell fights do […]

We recently ran down the Round of the Year for 2009 and the Round of the Decade. But what about the best rounds EVER? Friend of the site Andrew Harrison, of Safe Side of the Ropes, contributes a highly innovative take on the question below. (And I’m going to stop introducing people now that there’s […]

If you stop 2009 on the afternoon of Dec. 22, the year boxing had ends up an unqualified success. Unprecedented pay-per-view sales and improved television ratings in the United States. Historic crowds and record television ratings abroad. Mainstream media recognition of the sport’s revitalization, a far cry from the “mixed martial arts is killing boxing” […]

Yesterday, something like a breakthrough occurred in the dreadfully disheartening negotiations to make Floyd Mayweather-Manny Pacquiao, only very likely the biggest-selling fight ever. For the first time, Bob Arum, Pacquiao’s promoter, opened the door to the random drug testing Mayweather, represented by Golden Boy Promotions, sought. GBP put out a news release saying it found […]