They often say that one of the differences between boxing cards and mixed martial arts cards is that MMA tries to give people “events” with lots of good fights and boxing just gives people one good main event fight and a bunch of junk beforehand. They are right. But with the Sept. 19 Floyd Mayweather-Juan […]

At the start of 2009, HBO decided it was going to be in the Juan Diaz business and the Robert Guerrero business, investing in them as part of a list of young fighters the network thought had a chance of becoming stars. Even though both have suffered setbacks, HBO is staying in the business. Diaz, […]

(It’s all been downhill for Mr. Pavlik, pictured getting punched in the mug by Mr. Hopkins, for a while. Photo credit: AP/Tim Larsen) You may have read that the Oct. 3 Kelly Pavlik-Paul Williams middleweight championship fight has been postponed, but it’s very possible the fight won’t happen at all now. Why? Because Pavlik and/or […]

I haven’t done a full-length, in-depth pound-for-pound list since 2008, instead relying on shorter updates, and I’d intended to the full treatment halfway through the year, except for all kinds of summer fights got canceled, so it didn’t make much sense to do it then, since nobody was shifting or changing very dramatically. Now makes […]

I have to admit right from the get-go: Hook City was a lot more fun than I expected. It was far from perfect (more on that later), but the fights themselves were largely entertaining, thanks in good part to headliner and promoter Roy “Captain Hook” Jones, Jr., who took a lot of cheap shots from […]

Over on Telmundo Friday night, lightweight Antonio Pitalua put together a 1-2 on Jose Reyes’ jaw that, in any year where Manny Pacquiao hadn’t delivered perhaps the Knockout of the Decade against then-junior welterweight champion Ricky Hatton, might be a leading candidate for Knockout of the Year. Reyes was something of a journeyman, but as […]

Against an opponent three divisions above his most recent fight, Nonito Donaire on Saturday beat an unprofessionally overweight Rafael Concepcion in a difficult, tense unanimous decision that proved he can handle bigger men but that also showed he has massive room for improvement. On the undercard, featherweight Steve Luevano beat Bernabe Concepcion by disqualification when […]

To your right is a poster for perhaps the most important light heavyweight fight of the weekend. On Saturday, Beibut Shumenov will try to become the light heavyweight titlist who achieved that goal in the fewest number of fights: Nine. That’s assuming it happens, by the way. Universum claims it has an option on Gabriel […]

(Believe me, if you search “woman boxer” on images.google.com, you’ll come up with a lot more gratuitously titillating photos than the one above from womenboxing.com of Wendy Rodriguez, left, and Hollie Dunaway, right.) After the 2008 Olympics, I remember reading in some quarters that boxing was hanging by a thread, with softball, on the list […]

Add another huge fight to the fall ledger, and Compubox employees better make sure they have their backup punch-counting machines ready in case of overload: Middleweight champion Kelly Pavlik will defend his Ring magazine belt Oct. 3 in Atlantic City against Paul Williams. Both long, tall powerful boxers thrive on overwhelming their opponents with volume, […]

Would that the Roy Jones, Jr. who once ruled as boxing’s pound-for-pound king had ever put the kind of promotional muscle into his fights against quality opponents that he does now. Jones famously snubbed the media in those days, when he was a joy to behold even if he could have made himself even more […]

Nonito Donaire is finally winning his critical acclaim, with many now considering him one of the 10 best fighters in the world. He is starting to get his spotlight, headlining his second consecutive pay-per-view card Saturday night. He is getting busier, fighting for the second time in 2009 after fighting only once in 2008. And […]

Maybe that got us off on the wrong foot. I only mean that the net total of intentional fouls needs to go up. It’s the kind of fouls that would boost those numbers that I want to discuss. I’m talking about retaliation. I was thinking about the Timothy Bradley-Nate Campbell junior welterweight fight from a […]

It was a good night to be a canine on ESPN2’s Friday Night Fights, whether it was super middleweight Anthony “The Dog” Dirrell or junior middleweight Alfredo “El Perro” Angulo. Even the real mongrel Angulo brought in the ring on a leash before his fight was having a nice time. Dirrell started sloppy, lunging, winging […]

Would-be star junior middleweight Alfredo Angulo, above left, was last seen getting “exposed,” as some like to say in the boxing world, by Kermit Cintron, above right (photo credit: Naoki Fukuda). Some boxers would take an extremely soft opponent after a loss like that, but not Angulo. On ESPN2′s Friday Night Fights this evening, he’s […]