0 comments by Jason Langendorf on 6/29/2019
We are all jobbers. Journeymen. Club-circuit vets. Gatekeepers and B-siders. Taxi drivers, tomato cans and trash men. Pugs and palookas. Oh, that’s not you? You’re special? Hate to break it to you, Chico, but you are not the Floyd Mayweather of your beige suburban office park. You are lower-middle management. You are a junior associate […]
0 comments by Nick Wong on 6/2/2017
Back in 2009, I spent four months in Peru as the principal sparring partner of Jonathan Maicelo. In sum, I more or less acted as a human punching bag during my stay, and this was when he was a only marginal star in the world of boxing. Since then, he moved to the United States and built […]
0 comments by Matthew Swain on 12/11/2016
Terence Crawford is good at boxing. Saturday, in Omaha, Neb., he reminded us how good he is. Crawford’s junior welterweight bout with John Molina, Jr. on HBO was always destined to be a mismatch. Molina gave Lucas Matthysse a few rough moments while absorbing a frightening beating a few years back. He came back from […]
0 comments by Tim Starks on 12/8/2016
It’s a packed fight weekend, but one tables-ladders-chairs match already got started in advance, as heavyweight Dereck Chisora threw a whole damn table at Dillian Whyte. And that’s one of the least interesting bouts on the ledger. Terence Crawford vs John Molina, Saturday, HBO, Omaha Neb. Junior welterweight champion Terence Crawford returns to his hometown for […]
0 comments by Tim Starks on 5/1/2015
An overweight Raymund Beltran tore through Takahiro Ao like a hippo through a watermelon on truTV’s debut boxing program Friday night. Maybe he would’ve if he had made weight, too. It just was kinda unfair, is all. Beltran, who weighed in over the lightweight limit, tried to get under and settled at 136, established himself […]
0 comments by Alex McClintock on 4/28/2015
Thank God nobody is buying the Manny Pacquiao vs Floyd Mayweather pay-per-view for the undercard. Because it’s bad. Really bad, even by the low, low standards of recent PPV undercards. Ah well, preview it we shall, along with the rest of the week’s boxing schedule, including a few televised bouts in Vegas taking advantage of […]
0 comments by Tim Starks on 1/11/2015
On the surface, boxing in 2014 sucked. Everyone knows this, and most everyone knows why. Scratch a little deeper, and it still sucked — worse than any year since the mid/late-2000s — just maybe not as atrociously as commonly understood on the surface. There’s little need to rehash, at length, the rather obvious diagnosis about what ailed […]
0 comments by Tim Starks on 12/31/2014
Terence Crawford is an unlikely figure to rule boxing in any year, even one as dire as 2014. Away from the ring, he is plain — as plain as, well, the plains of his native Nebraska. He just arrived on the national scene last year, and then only as a late replacement to face Breidis Prescott […]
0 comments by Tim Starks on 12/25/2014
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFWUlObSgn0 There’s pretty much nothing a kangaroo won’t punch. But if you’re looking for some serious boxing footage, try this 30 For 30 episode, “Robbed,” revisiting the intersection of lawless New York City and the controversial decision for Ali-Norton III; or try “Tapia,” airing on HBO. “Robbed” is nice but I wish it was more […]
0 comments by Tim Starks on 12/5/2014
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ARLvgrTFXzM Junior welterweight prospect Mike Reed just had his first fight away from the East Coast last weekend in Nebraska, appearing on the undercard of a fighter he said he admires, Terence Crawford, and won a close decision. Here he is in a lightly condensed and edited Q&A on what went right in the fight, […]
0 comments by Tim Starks on 12/2/2014
(via @HBOBoxing on Twitter) Three writers whose work I admire — David P. Greisman, Bart Barry and Carlos Acevedo — have in recent days offered some critiques of Terence Crawford vs. Raymundo Beltran that I think warrant rebuttals. We’ll dispense with the set-up other than to say that this isn’t anything personal in any way, […]
0 comments by Tim Starks on 11/30/2014
(via @HBOBoxing on Twitter) Terence Crawford is a lot of things after Saturday night: the true lightweight champion of the world; a candidate for Fighter of the Year; perhaps the best test for Manny Pacquiao outside of Floyd Mayweather; and someone who’s going to start getting some pound-for-pound top 10 buzz. It was a big […]
0 comments by Tim Starks on 11/29/2014
In Terence Crawford, fighting Saturday evening on HBO, we have the latest contestant for Floyd Mayweather’s successor as the next American superstar boxer — a game show punctuated by the mournful blasts of sad trombones for years now. Chad Dawson? He had the physical talent, but none of the personality, and he petered out. Andre Ward? He had an […]
0 comments by Tim Starks on 8/19/2014
(Dec. 12, Seattle — Jay-Z speaks with an acquaintance before a press conference to introduce new Seattle Mariners second baseman Robinson Cano [not pictured] at Safeco Field. Credit: Joe Nicholson-USA TODAY Sports) That’s not just a picture of Jay-Z for no reason(able doubt). The Jigga Man’s Roc Nation has rather quickly started making a splash […]
0 comments by Tim Starks on 7/3/2014
Real life Mike Tyson quotes for Nintendo’s Punch-Out make the whole game a lot weirder. (But if you want more of them, have at it.) The game of matchmaking never ends; in this edition of Round And Round, we contemplate what’s next for Floyd Mayweather, Manny Pacquiao, Ruslan Provodnikov, Andrzej Fonfara, the men in the […]
