0 comments by Brent Hedtke on 6/6/2022
While George Kambosos Jr. brought the fans to the fight, Devin Haney almost immediately took them out of it. On a brisk Sunday afternoon, nearly 42,000 fans packed into Melbourne’s Marvel Stadium to watch Kambosos (20-1, 10 KO) make the first defense of the lightweight titles he lifted from Teofimo Lopez last November. What they, […]
0 comments by Matthew Swain on 1/1/2022
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 Tim Starks on 12/31/2021
Welcome 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 well […]
0 comments by Jason Langendorf on 12/10/2021
For some time now, Devin Haney has been discussed as a sort of spiritual successor to Floyd Mayweather Jr., a boxing mastermind if there ever was one on either side of the ropes. And on at least one occasion during Saturday’s DAZN broadcast, Haney — all of 23 years old — was mentioned in the […]
0 comments by Jason Langendorf on 1/6/2021
How did a 5-foot-8, 135-pound asthmatic — a kid who showed up to work just once over the past calendar year, and who isn’t yet old enough to rent a car — become the most distinguished fighter in the world in 2020? Just ask Teofimo Lopez Jr. Or don’t. Either way, he’s probably gonna tell […]
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 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 Tim Starks on 8/16/2020
Maybe don’t judge a thing by the first time the thing happens. Saturday’s Showtime card was not as good as the last one featured in this space, either on paper or in practice. Action-oriented super middleweight David Benavidez was in the main event. So far, so good, yes? His opponent, 36-year-old Roamer (great name!) Alexis […]
0 comments by Tim Starks on 11/3/2019
If you watched Canelo Alvarez brutally, clinically knock out one of the world’s top few light heavyweights Saturday without ever flinching at one of his punches, you might hardly believe the following tale is true: Fighting in Las Vegas in just his fourth pro fight, Alvarez took on Jose Miguel Cotto, the lesser known person […]
0 comments by Jason Langendorf on 9/29/2019
It’s hard not to think about Michael Grant. Two decades ago, Grant was boxing’s latest next big thing. A chiseled, athletic 6-foot-7 250-pounder with an 86-inch reach, Grant was a radioactive-spider-bitten unicorn — a powerful, athletic American heavyweight. Born in Chicago, he would have appeared just as formidable a figure rushing the quarterback off the […]
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 Jason Langendorf on 9/15/2019
It’s tempting to view boxing as the ultimate meritocracy. On Forbes’ annual World’s Highest Paid Athletes list, a fighter routinely cracks the top five — and often leads the way, with Floyd Mayweather recently banking nearly a third of a billion dollars in a single calendar year. Social media directly connects fans to fighters, promoters […]
