0 comments by Patrick Connor on 12/25/2014
(photo via) There has always been a constant struggle between youth and experience in boxing. Though many fighters in recent years seem to have tapped into a wellspring of unlikely rejuvenation at advanced ages, the reaper can’t be fended off forever. Eventually old succumbs to young, brittle to sturdy, and so forth. Youth does have […]
0 comments by Patrick Connor on 11/20/2014
Boxing’s heavyweight division is its own beast. These days, that beast is looking toothless and dreary, but in days past it was ferocious. There are no quick fixes, or simple answers as to how or why things change, we just know that the landscape of the heavyweight division now is mostly barren. American networks have […]
0 comments by Patrick Connor on 11/6/2014
Boxing overflows with victims. With no levee in place, fighters are martyred, managers are taken advantage of, men lose a competition, the winnings are plundered, and the cruel cycle spins forth unabated. A fighter can either develop a monetary exoskeleton, as Floyd Mayweather Jr. has done, or tell the system to climb right on, as […]
0 comments by Patrick Connor on 10/16/2014
(photo via) Just as there cannot be rebirth without death, there cannot be dark without light. It’s all relative to belief, but the idea that one extreme cannot exist without another is a basic philosophy that eats its way into the physics and chemistry of it all. In boxing terms, at its simplest, one fighter’s […]
0 comments by Patrick Connor on 9/11/2014
The gnashing gears and sprockets of boxing clack into their notches at their own pace, no matter what humans have in mind. A metaphor for life, to be certain, but also something much more specific — an institutionalized bloodletting, with purpose. Heroes get old. But before new ones are welcomed, there are milestones to be […]
0 comments by Patrick Connor on 8/21/2014
Boxing is easily one of the most unforgiving and predatory sports conceivable. Only a very small percentage of fighters over the course of more than a century have been able to wrest ultimate control of their destinies from promoters, managers, advisers and filthier. For the rest, a career guided by a competent entity whose success […]
0 comments by Patrick Connor on 8/14/2014
The difference between good and great can be miniscule. Distinguishing one tier of greatness from another is often a matter of opinion, and perhaps schooling, In great divisions, figuring out rankings and who deserves what recognition is, again, splitting hairs. At lightweight, for instance, being even the 15th greatest fighter the division has seen still makes […]
0 comments by Patrick Connor on 7/31/2014
Even among boxing’s detractors, there is little doubt that the sport is unique in many ways. Beyond the inherent danger involved in voluntarily getting pasted, and beyond the one-on-one aspect of prizefighting that only a few mainstream sports enjoy, the fact that the result of a fight can never be certain no matter how far […]
0 comments by Patrick Connor on 4/3/2014
The 1920s spirit flowed freely in 1923. The roar was protected by low unemployment rates, jazz and dance clubs crawled with frantic activity, and New York — a city that embodied the decadence of the decade — was graced with ambiguous prohibition laws that lubricated the mind and spirit. And boxing breathed fire. When Al […]
