0 comments by Jason Langendorf on 11/22/2021
The grin was the tell. Even as his brow leaked and his mouth hung open for occasional gulps of air, Terence Crawford couldn’t suppress the smile curling the corners of his lips late in Saturday’s fight at the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas. The world’s welterweight apex predator may have been made to labor and […]
0 comments by Tim Starks on 7/18/2021
We’ve all been there. Something truly exciting is about to happen. It starts to happen and it feels really good. Then it just… it just stops, unsatisfactorily. It’s called ruined orga— Sorry, that is, Jermell Charlo vs Brian Castano Saturday night on Showtime. This was to be the fight that would crown a legitimate junior […]
0 comments by Tim Starks on 9/27/2020
There’s a tendency when something odd happens in boxing for fans to turn to conspiratorial thinking. It’s understandable. Boxing has earned a lot of that from its followers. Saturday night’s Showtime Pay-Per-View main event between Jermell Charlo and Jeison Rosario, though, probably deserves the benefit of the doubt in a blend of two different kinds […]
0 comments by Brent Hedtke on 8/30/2020
Why do I keep doing this to myself? Besides the manifestly obvious fact that I well and truly despise who I am as a person, I can’t, for the life of me, understand this predilection for blatant self-sabotage. Allow me to briefly pull back the curtain on how these articles get made. Yes, it’s more […]
0 comments by Matthew Swain on 1/19/2020
Redemption arcs are one of mankind’s favorite forms of entertainment. Our daring protagonist has to rebuild after enduring a devastating early setback. We become emotionally attached to their struggle because it fills some deep-seated belief that with a little luck, we too can come back from failure. In boxing, often these two waves of redemption […]
0 comments by Jason Langendorf on 1/12/2020
Don’t take this the wrong way, but you’re pretty easy. You get what I’m saying: loose. But consider it a compliment. You’re always down to party. You’re low-maintenance. Agreeable. Even in this modern environment of seemingly endless entertainment options, your viewing standards for a fight are admirably … squishy. When you, the consummate boxing fan, […]
0 comments by Tim Starks on 12/24/2019
Welcome to The Queensberry Rules’ annual year-end boxing awards, continuing throughout this week. Here’s how we do it around these parts: The major categories are Knockout of the Year, Fight of the Year and Fighter of the Year. For each category, we give five finalists, with video and/or relevant info. On the second day after a category […]
0 comments by Brent Hedtke on 12/22/2019
“He earned it. I hate it, but he earned it.” That was a dejected Tony Harrison after his 11th round TKO loss to Jermell Charlo on Saturday night, and despite being the exact thing the judge told my ex upon granting me full custody of our Super Nintendo, this wasn’t Harrison so much squashing a […]
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 Brent Hedtke on 6/30/2019
Before we go any further let’s just get this out of the way: twins are creepy. There’s no way around it. Over three percent of the world has a nearly exact genetic copy and no one ever talks about it. There’s a sentient flesh mound walking around with a Xerox of your genome and we’re […]
0 comments by Tim Starks on 6/23/2019
Jermell Charlo was the headliner on Fox Sports Sunday, so we’ll get to that in a sec, but the fight really worth talking about — for reasons both good and ill — was Guillermo Rigondeaux vs Julio Ceja. The true junior featherweight champion, Rigondeaux, bafflingly decided to turn it into a phone booth shootout against […]
0 comments by Tim Starks on 6/9/2018
Leo Santa Cruz had moved beyond it, this Abner Mares rematch Saturday on Showtime. Mares had done almost nothing to earn the do-over, while Santa Cruz had beaten a better fighter in Carl Frampton. You know what, though? The second time around was arguably better than the first, which ended with the same victor: Santa […]
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 10/15/2017
Showtime on Saturday evening hosted three major junior middleweight match-ups, and the results were largely satisfactory. Jermell Charlo scored a stunning 1st round knockout of Erickson Lubin. Jarrett Hurd stopped Austin Trout in a bout that was competitive through most of the fight. Erislandy Lara used the main event to Lara-fy the boxing ring, stinking […]
0 comments by Matthew Swain on 4/26/2017
Something I have always avoided doing that many people seem to enjoy, or at least pretend to enjoy on Facebook, is looking back and taking stock. I don’t want to think about where I’ve been, what I’ve accomplished, and where I’ve failed. I tell myself that it’s because I am too focused on the present […]
