0 comments by Tim Starks on 1/4/2022
Welcome back to The Queensberry Rules’ annual year-end boxing awards, continuing over the course of a 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, as […]
0 comments by Matthew Swain on 12/15/2021
When I was in college, I was very briefly in a band. The sum total of our accomplishments was playing three open mics and recording a cover of Cake’s cover of “I Will Survive,” because that was the only song I could hit the notes for (that means I can’t sing for shit, if you […]
0 comments by Brent Hedtke on 12/13/2021
They say you should never meet your idols, for they will only ever let you down. This past Saturday night, Reymart Gaballo learned that one should also never fight their idols. Especially if said idol has a history of denting heads and exploding livers. Growing up in the Philippines, Gaballo (24-1, 20 KOs) idolized fellow […]
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 Matthew Swain on 7/15/2021
Normally, we only do these roundtables as a way to collectively discuss the biggest fights, but given all the givens of the last 18 months, we decided to sit down and hash it out last summer, so we’re going to do it again. Quite a few things have changed in that time. Hedtke hatched an […]
0 comments by Jason Langendorf on 6/21/2021
So much of what we think we know about sports legend is bullshit. Babe Ruth’s called shot? Just as likely a mosquito swat. Larry Bird’s predicted 43-point night? John Stockton loves to tell the story, but it changes with every telling. Brett Favre’s unsolicited dick pic text? OK, that probably happened. But the truth is, […]
0 comments by Tim Starks on 5/31/2021
By age 38 — more like age 50 at 118 pounds, where fighters get older faster — Nonito Donaire should be well into the part of his career where he gets by on veteran savvy, if he gets by at all. Coming off a two-year rest, after the most grueling fight of his life, no […]
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 Tim Starks on 12/29/2020
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 Jason Langendorf on 11/15/2020
Calculating precisely where Terence Crawford fits along the spectrum of boxing’s superstars is something of a fool’s errand and, if we’re being honest with ourselves, entirely beside the point. No sport is more tribal, more random in the focus of its fan adoration, nor more fickle in ascribing value to fundamentally flawed human beings — […]
0 comments by Brent Hedtke on 11/2/2020
First off, before we even get started, Naoya Inoue fought on Halloween night and I didn’t use “Monster Mash” or any variation thereof in the headline of this piece. It’s a nearly pornographic display of willpower that future religions will base their scriptures on. While I appreciate the sentiment, your gaping jaws and undying servitude […]
0 comments by Tim Starks on 9/26/2020
It had the look early on in Jermall Charlo versus Sergiy Derevyanchenko Saturday night brawl like Derevyanchenko was just straight made for Charlo. A natural counterpuncher loves an aggressive, hard-charging, easy to hit target. Charlo’s best punch is an uppercut, and Derevyanchenko is about as tiny a fella as you’ll see in the middleweight division, […]
0 comments by Matthew Swain on 12/31/2019
The 1st and 12th rounds were the same, Tim Bradley in mortal danger, just about out on his feet, punching back with all his might. When the final bell rang, Ruslan Provodnikov dropped to his knees and pounded the mat in tears of rage, agony, lust, and joy. Minutes later, Bradley admitted to HBO’s Max […]
0 comments by Matthew Swain
“He’s not gettin’ up, Jim!” That’s all anyone has to say. You know what they’re talking about. In a single moment on Dec. 8, 2012, and with a single punch, Manny Pacquiao was rendered unconscious and mortal. And he was rendered so by the only man in eight years who’d managed to withstand him. The […]
iNov 2, 2019; Las Vegas, NV, USA; Canelo Alvarez (blue/green trunks) knocks out Sergey Kovalev (black/white/red trunks) during their WBO light heavyweight title bout at MGM Grand Garden Arena. Alvarez won via 11th round TKO. Joe Camporeale-USA TODAY Sports
0 comments by Jason Langendorf on 12/29/2019
Somewhere in the memory banks, wedged between a 7,000-piece Millennium Falcon LEGO set and a fuzzy “Best of Christy Canyon” VHS tape, you’ll find a yellowed paperback copy of “The Sun Also Rises” — a remnant from Mrs. Nelson’s eighth-grade English Lit class. The novel, published in 1926, chronicles a very particular time and place, […]
