0 comments by Jamie Rebner on 11/28/2021
Over the decades, junior featherweight has produced an outsized number of excellent fights, and one more needs to be added to that list. That would be last night’s brutal unification fight between Brandon “The Heartbreaker” Figueroa and Stephen “Cool Boy Steph” Fulton, which saw Fulton emerge with both WBC and WBO belts in a Showtime […]
0 comments by Tim Starks on 8/17/2021
Boxing has a grand tradition of its athletes protesting, both within and outside the sport. Muhammad Ali, most obviously, protested the Vietnam War and more. Last month, a French Olympian protested his disqualification with a sit-in afterward — the Olympics being a pretty serial site of ring injustice. Never before has the sport witnessed, until […]
0 comments by Jamie Rebner on 6/30/2021
Few countries boast as proud an amateur boxing tradition as Cuba. The island nation has won 73 Olympic medals in its history, including 37 gold, despite having boycotted the Games in 1984 and 1988. Many of Cuba’s most successful amateur boxers chose to remain in their country, where professional boxing has been banned since 1961, […]
0 comments by Jason Langendorf on 1/3/2021
When Daigo Higa emptied the contents of Yuki Strong Kobayashi’s face onto the ring canvas of Tokyo’s Ota-City General Gymnasium around suppertime, Japan Standard Time, on New Year’s Eve, I was still rubbing the sleep out of my eyes amid the glow of a flatscreen in Midwest suburbia. Nothing about the moment, neither the act […]
0 comments by Matthew Swain on 8/26/2020
In the very best of times, we here at TQBR come together to discuss the biggest fights and argue about the current state of the sport. This year, unfortunately, has been a protracted rectal bleed of Old Testament severity. With that in mind, we stocked up on Neosporin, strapped on our Depends flex fits, and […]
0 comments by Tim Starks on 2/9/2020
Showtime made a risky decision to headline a doubleheader with A-sides who mainly had in common that they are ultra-talented fighters who routinely disappoint us. Guillermo Rigondeaux is at times virtually unwatchable. Gary Russell Jr. can also rarely be watched, because he fights about once a year — literally so, since 2015. All in all, […]
0 comments by Jason Langendorf on 12/9/2019
Emanuel Navarrete is in a hurry. Fast hands, CompuBox-busting punch volume, on to the next thing — quickly. He leaps into jabs, straight right hands and even sweeping hooks, the sooner to unspool his go-go gadget arms and put hands on his intended target. Let’s go. Glove up. Ring the bell. Patience? That’s for 12-rounders […]
0 comments by Jason Langendorf on 9/25/2019
Sometimes, the forming of a more perfect union requires the separation of a rib or three. At least that’s what our politicians would have us believe. Bureaucrats, wonks, and snake-oil salesmen love nothing more than co-opting the language of boxing (“I’ll fight for you!”), but believe it or not, some pols have actually gone so […]
0 comments by Tim Starks on 9/12/2019
Few things in boxing inspire as much bile by their mere existence — or each list’s ability to inspire derision because of how obviously stupid its author is — as the mythical pound-for-pound list. That’s part of what makes them so delicious. The lists do possess a certain value, though, even the most obviously awful […]
0 comments by Matthew Swain on 7/16/2019
July kind of drags. For most of us, it’s hotter than Satan’s taint, and everything tends to find itself in a bit of a holding pattern. Typically there aren’t a lot of fight cards either. So, in what has been a surprisingly entertaining year to date, now feels like the exact right time to take […]
0 comments by Matthew Swain on 5/13/2019
It’s Monday, boys and girls. So you know what that means: TQBR group therapy. This is a safe space in which Jason and Tim help Brent and I fulfill our court-mandated counseling sessions. We reveal our deepest insecurities, talk about our feelings, and bat opinions back and forth about the previous weekend’s boxing matches. Some […]
0 comments by Tim Starks on 12/24/2017
It’s been a long time since we’ve done this, so, wow, have things changed a bunch. Beyond just a thinking and debating exercise, pound-for-pound lists have some value for a number of reasons. For one, a lot of fighters aspire to the greatness a consensus pound-for-pound king-dom symbolizes. For another, it’s a good snapshot at […]
0 comments by Tim Starks on 12/11/2017
The cult of Guillermo Rigondeaux is small, but as the term “cult” might suggest, it’s pretty devoted. It’s had to live underground with Rigo’s long career hibernation that dates back to 2013, the year of his one and only major win against Nonito Donaire, with only the occasional decent win since. If the cultists have […]
0 comments by Tim Starks on 8/6/2017
Vasyl Lomachenko showcased himself Saturday in a rare performance off pay TV, dominating Miguel Marriaga on ESPN before stopping his outclassed showcase-friendly opponent. Lomachenko is technically brilliant, so you can substitute most names for Marriaga and it would still be an outclassing. And Marriaga had his moments, especially early, bruising Lomachenko’s right eye and doing […]
0 comments by Brent Hedtke on 7/8/2017
I don’t remember when exactly I became a boxing publicist, nor do I recall the circumstances that led up to it. Granted, I most likely wouldn’t. I have a goldfish brain and pertinent details are often banished to the recesses of my mind in the amount of time it took to type this sentence. Still […]
