0 comments by Matthew Swain on 4/30/2015
Depending on whom you ask, this is the biggest fight since Marvin Hagler-Sugar Ray Leonard or Muhammad Ali-Joe Frazier. I’m not quite sure where it ranks on a biggest fights list, but Mayweather vs Pacquiao damn sure the biggest fight of this young century. The two best fighters of their generation are finally facing each […]
0 comments by Lou Catalano on 4/28/2015
Five years is a long time to wait for anything. In most sports, there’s an incredible amount of turnover in a span of only a few years. The Texas Rangers went to the World Series in 2010, the first of back-to-back appearances. They finished 2014 buried in last place and they’re still stuck there. The […]
0 comments by Tim Starks on 4/27/2015
Because past is prologue, it’s worthwhile to revisit it in advance of Floyd Mayweather vs Manny Pacquiao, May 2 on pay-per-view. Here, we examine a list of Manny Pacquiao’s biggest wins, in reverse order from #10 to #1. By biggest here, we mean — the best opposition he defeated, based on that fighter’s form at the time, […]
0 comments by Tim Starks on 4/18/2015
Don’t worry, everybody. Sometimes there’s a thing that happens in boxing where the conventional wisdom gets upended about a fight, and suddenly what once looked like a stellar match-up becomes a lackluster one, or vice versa. Lucas Matthysse’s declaration that he wouldn’t just purely brawl with Ruslan Provodnikov Saturday night on HBO inspired the first […]
0 comments by Tim Starks on 4/10/2015
The sweetest thing we’ve gotten yet from Al Haymon’s aspired-for 2015 boxing takeover, or that we’re even scheduled to get, arrives Saturday night when Danny Garcia faces Lamont Peterson on NBC’s “Premier Boxing Champions.” Anyone embittered by the manner in which it has arrived is entitled. Yet a pugilistic confection it remains. We were forced to […]
0 comments by Tim Starks on 2/9/2015
The talk of the boxing world, and the talk of boxing in the non-boxing world, is whether we might finally get Floyd Mayweather vs. Manny Pacquiao. The interest is understandable (if not comical, based on the various inaccurate reports about whether the fight is finalized). For a subset of boxing fans, the subject of Mayweather Pacquiao […]
0 comments by Tim Starks on 1/1/2015
Sick of the drip-drip-drip of year end boxing awards yet? Hard to blame you, hard to blame you. So we’ll bring out two enormous platters to conclude our 2014 awards. In the first installment, that flavor is heavy and serious. In the second one, that flavor is light and fluffy. Just add “of the year” […]
0 comments by Tim Starks on 12/17/2014
(Nov. 8, Atlantic City; Sergey Kovalev celebrates his win over Bernard Hopkins after their bout at Boardwalk Hall. Credit: Ed Mulholland-USA TODAY Sports) Just about all the 2014 business is finished for the best boxers in the world across every weight division, with only Adonis Stevenson and Guillermo Rigondeaux on this list yet to have […]
0 comments by Sam Sheppard on 12/14/2014
(Timothy Bradley, left, Diego Chaves, right; via @HBOBoxing) Timothy Bradley (31-1) vs. Diego Chaves (23-2) Timothy Bradley entered the ring on a mission to reestablish himself amongst the sport’s elite, and largely cruised against the tough Diego Chaves in a fight that at times threatened to turn into something special, before ultimately throwing up another […]
0 comments by Tim Starks on 12/11/2014
Regular font: Devon Alexander vs. Amir Khan is an evenly-matched fight Saturday night on Showtime between two contenders in one of boxing’s deepest divisions. Sarcastic font: Ooooooh, thanks so veeeeerrry much, Showtime, for always providing fights JUST like this throughout 2014. It’s a weekly occurrence and if evenly-matched Showtime fights in 2014 were calories, we’d […]
0 comments by Alex McClintock on 12/9/2014
That is me IRL above, because I am writing the boxing schedule from a beach in Mexico (OK, so it’s really Shannon Briggs being a goose, but you get the idea). Also worth celebrating is the fact that it’s a huge week of boxing, the last of the year. There are some seriously big names […]
0 comments by Tim Starks on 11/2/2014
Here’s boxing in 2014, in a nutshell: Showtime, which had cast its lot with Golden Boy’s Richard Schaefer prior to the company’s split with him, has aired trash almost exclusively this year, yet is putting on a quality welterweight bout Dec. 13 between Devon Alexander and Amir Khan. The undercard bout between junior middleweights Demetrius […]
0 comments by Tim Starks on 9/30/2014
(Roman Gonzalez, left; Akira Yaegashi, right) At last, some movement. Since our last update of the best boxers in the world, regardless of weight, some of them have, actually, you know, fought. And in some meaningful fights, too. There are two new entrants to the top 10 (hint: one of them is in the picture), […]
0 comments by Tim Starks on 9/2/2014
What if… there existed another universe where fighters were ranked pound-for-pound — i.e., who’s best regardless of weight — based nothing at all on any actual evidence from what a fighter had actually accomplished? A dimension where some figure or the other just points at a fighter and says, “I think he looks like he’s […]
0 comments by Tim Starks on 7/7/2014
(June 7, New York City: Miguel Cotto reacts after a TKO against Sergio Martinez in the 10th round of the middleweight championship fight at Madison Square Garden. Credit: Noah K. Murray-USA TODAY Sports) It’s been a few years since we last went through this exercise of looking at the lineal championship (aka real champs, as […]
