This being a pro boxing-oriented blog, I confess I’d never seen world amateur boxer ratings until today, via Boxing Along the Beltway/D.C. Amateur Boxing. The man who provided the rankings to D.C. Amateur Boxing, the U.K.’s Michael Smith, appears to have been a well-regarded authority on the matter for any number of years. In the […]

Via Deadspin, it picks up just as things get interesting: You have to love the way both heavyweights came out swinging. Not strategically, necessarily, but from an entertainment standpoint.

(Please join us all week long for daily De La Hoya/Pacquiao coverage, leading up to a live blog Saturday night. Today: Why the fight matters, and what its result means for boxing.) A total joke. Earlier this year, that’s what I thought of Oscar De La Hoya fighting Manny Pacquiao. In the first half of […]

We’ve got a whole week of Oscar De La Hoya-Manny Pacquiao coverage ahead for you, starting today (with some slices of other things, like this week’s premier episode of “The Contender” on Versus), so let’s clear the deck from this past weekend. Above, in an admittedly poor quality video, Edgar Sosa completed his junior flyweight […]

Paul Williams, above: Boxing elite’s skinniest. Chris Arreola: Boxing elite’s fattest. Paul Williams and Chris Arreola had trouble with their opponents early, but turned the tables to knock them out. In so doing, Williams enhanced his stock with me, but Arreola hurt his. Williams never was in any major trouble, but lost a round to […]

I’ve never used this “Cover It Live” live blog application before, so in advance of the live blog I anticipate doing for Manny Pacquiao-Oscar De La Hoya next weekend, I’ll give it a test run tonight so I can be safe rather than sorry. (I won’t do as good a job this week as I […]

Whatever your opinion of boxing, I think you’d be forced to admit that it is without peer among sports in one vital category: nicknames. For years, nicknames in almost every other sport have been going downhill, and steeply. The whole “first initial dash last name” trend has gotten way out of hand. There are some […]

Quality, exciting young American fighters are a scarcer breed than I’d like them to be right now, but they’re far from extinct. Of the 10 best fighters in world, there are only two Americans on my list at all, and one is a 43-year-old. But help is on the way. There are a very nice […]

This is easily the weirdest way I’ve scored an interview in my whole life: 1. I say on the Internet that a boxer’s wife is hot. 2. Someone from the boxer’s team gets in touch with me to say his wife, a Taekwondo champion, smiled about the blog entry. 3. Relieved that the e-mail doesn’t […]

All right, I’ve been awfully hard on Paulie Malignaggi about his performance against Ricky Hatton this weekend, and in the video above, he offers a compelling reason for why he didn’t throw many punches: All his hand injuries and surgeries have “psychologically” gotten to him and made him afraid to open up. I’ve always admired […]

I have to admit that it is hard not to root for a guy like Lamon Brewster.  The former WBO heavyweight titlist is one of the most humble and amiable guys you will ever meet.  Though at times, watching him fight was a maddening experience.  For a fighter of Brewster’s considerable talents, there were times […]

Because clearly it’s the one I consider to be the most legit, since it represents the linear championship and all… But a friend and I who watched Saturday night’s fights wondered: Is it crazy to think the Ring belt might not be a little bit more universally respected if it wasn’t so hideously ugly? I’ve […]

Say whatever you will about Ricky Hatton — and he has his share of detractors, a group I do not consider myself a part of — but he’s great for pugilism. He has helped revitalize boxing in Great Britain, and because he’s such a colorful character, he helps bring star power to the sport that […]

My take on Lennox Lewis is this: One of the greatest heavyweights ever — woefully under-appreciated a la Larry Holmes — and one of the worst television commentators working today in any sport. As of this weekend, I’d like to add that my take now also includes: speaker of silly gibberish. In case you missed […]

For the second straight night, the boxer in a boxer/brawler match-up laid a brick as Ricky Hatton was just good old Ricky Hatton and therefore had an easy time with a version of Paulie Malignaggi who had a completely, thoroughly awful evening. It was one of the worst big fight performances I’ve seen in a […]