0 comments by Jason Langendorf on 1/5/2022
The business of boxing has changed. The world around us, even compared to just a couple years ago, is a very different place. But the essence of what happens between the ropes — the ancient stuff that keeps a man off the canvas, that knocks another senseless, that keeps us turning out to witness this […]
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 8/17/2020
Even in the age of social distancing, you can scarcely swing a dead cat without hitting a boxer who doesn’t have a little resentment coming to him. Fighters are hard men with pocked histories. Boxing is known for its boozers, gamblers, junkies, abusers and general dirtbaggery. Self-promotion too often falls somewhere on the spectrum between […]
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, […]
0 comments by Tim Starks on 12/27/2019
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
If you saw it in a movie you wouldn’t believe it. A fight with a backstory so romantically improbable that any attempt to regale a non-observer with it would immediately be met with accusations of exaggeration. Hell, I myself can no longer tell where my real memory of this wondrous night in Saitama, Japan ends […]
0 comments by Matthew Swain on 12/26/2019
Brutality. Finality. Significance. Those are the three criteria on which we judge knockouts. The knockout of the year is seldom the most cartoonish because, well, anyone can poleaxe a 10-17 club fighter. In fact, if you’ve made it to the upper echelons of the sport, chances are extremely high that you’ve done that a few […]
