Like anyone who identifies as something of a boxing diehard, I’m familiar with the name Ezzard Charles. However, if pressed I could not tell you much more than ...
On January 11, 2021 / By Ronnie McCluskey“And then I was hitting Pete as hard as I could and Vickie was screaming, and I was beating Vickie and then raping Viola, and I found myself ...
On December 31, 2020 / By Alden ChodashMy earliest memory of boxing is a poster for Mike Tyson vs Michael Spinks from back in 1988, the big heavyweight superfight that lasted exactly 91 seconds. The poster ...
On December 28, 2020 / By Joshua IsardThe 1980s remain perhaps the most successful decade in boxing’s history, a rare time when the sport was highly popular and widely accepted as mainstream entertainment. Champions such ...
On December 9, 2020 / By Rafael GarcíaIn its visual style and heady narrative, Requiem for a Heavyweight (1962) resembles few other films of its genre and ranks among the greatest boxing movies of all ...
On November 29, 2020 / By Marko Sijan“I spent a lot of money on booze, birds and fast cars. The rest I just squandered.” — George Best The Northern Ireland footballer’s famous quip is less ...
On November 20, 2020 / By Rafael GarcíaHBO’s Tapia begins with an overhead shot of the New Mexico desert. The camera pans across the yellow landscape and settles on a solitary man, walking with his ...
On November 13, 2020 / By Eliott McCormickIt’s an interesting time to be a Mike Tyson fan. More than fifteen years removed from his final fight, we’re long past him being “The Baddest Man On ...
On October 22, 2020 / By Joshua IsardIn grainy black and white, half-naked boys and young men form a line in a Montreal gymnasium. They’re lean and fit, registration cards tucked into snug white briefs ...
On October 15, 2020 / By Marko SijanIn labeling Punching from the Shadows a memoir, Glen Sharp might be selling short his autobiographical work. More than a memoir, Sharp presents in his book a thorough ...
On October 2, 2020 / By Rafael GarcíaMore than nine decades have passed since the rematch between Gene Tunney and Jack Dempsey took place on a brisk September evening at Chicago’s Soldier Field in 1927, ...
On September 22, 2020 / By Patrick ConnorA.J. Liebling will always be boxing’s literary standard bearer, his masterwork The Sweet Science and other books certain to find appreciative fans through the generations. If there’s a ...
On September 4, 2020 / By Ronnie McCluskeyIn Salvador Sanchez, singer-songwriter Mark Kozelek walks amongst men who died much too soon. Such deaths are tragic by definition, but in the case of the men depicted ...
On August 12, 2020 / By Rafael GarcíaMax Schmeling was the first German-born world heavyweight champion and the only boxer to defeat Joe Louis in “The Brown Bomber’s” prime. A sporting hero to the German people, he risked ...
On July 19, 2020 / By Eliott McCormickAt first glance, Reading the Fights is a compendium of insightful essays which alternate between examining the responses boxing evokes and bringing to life stories of its past, thus providing ...
On June 14, 2020 / By Rafael GarcíaFew champions have ever inspired as much public ambivalence, mistrust, and scorn as Sonny Liston. The frequently violent events of a life spent underneath the bright lights of ...
On May 9, 2020 / By Eliott McCormickI loved it. I loved it. I loved luring a guy into throwing a punch, then landing my own right hand and hurting him and dropping him. I ...
On April 28, 2020 / By Rafael GarcíaOne of the obvious realizations upon re-reading A.J. Liebling’s The Sweet Science is that while much has changed in the sport over the last sixty years, some things ...
On April 12, 2020 / By Rafael GarcíaThe story of Edwin Valero is one boxing fans know because of his famously all-action, go-for-broke style—he won all 27 of his pro bouts by knockout—and because of ...
On April 4, 2020 / By Joshua IsardRing of Fire: The Emile Griffith Story explores the ramifications of one of the most infamous moments in the history of professional boxing. On March 24, 1962, at ...
On March 24, 2020 / By Marko Sijan“Boxing is especially valuable, and there are few spectacles as healthy and beautiful as a boxing match.” These are the words of a 26-year-old Vladimir Nabokov, taken from ...
On March 15, 2020 / By Eliott McCormickEven if it had nothing else going for it—something very far from the truth— Shadow Box by George Plimpton will forever remain a bastion of boxing literature because of the ...
On March 9, 2020 / By Rafael GarcíaOne of the best parts about being a boxing fan is the vitality of the sport’s history and the spirited debates and discussions that arise from it. The ...
On February 27, 2020 / By Joshua IsardLike humanity, the world of boxing consists largely of losers. Perhaps the most self-defeating kind of loser is one who fails to take responsibility for his failures, instead ...
On February 6, 2020 / By Marko SijanThe generational sectarian violence in Ireland, or “The Troubles” as they are often called, is something I have always known about, but never understood. I live in Philadelphia ...
On January 30, 2020 / By Joshua IsardIn Cut Time: An Education at the Fights, Carlo Rotella expounds deeply on a thesis boxing fans have heard before; namely, that the fight game serves as a ...
On January 11, 2020 / By Rafael GarcíaHBO’s 2008 film Thrilla In Manila is a sports documentary with an agenda; not necessarily a bad thing, but when a bias obscures and twists the truth, as happens here, ...
On December 28, 2019 / By Michael Carbert“The only thing we knew was violence in Brownsville, even with people we love.” — ...
On December 13, 2019 / By Eliott McCormickIn recent years women’s boxing has taken huge strides forward, its participants commanding more attention than ever before. Tokyo 2020 will the third Olympic Games to feature a ...
On November 27, 2019 / By Joshua IsardIt’s one of life’s most interesting ironies that prizefighting–a brutal, often exploitative, enterprise baptized as “the red light district of sports” by the late Jimmy Cannon–is the most ...
On November 14, 2019 / By Rafael García“Boxing is the sport to which all other sports aspire.”
– George Foreman
© 2020 Media DEJ. All rights reserved.