What could be said with some confidence Saturday morning, and perhaps no less confidently today, is that super welterweight Tim Tszyu has arrived. We know this not because Tszyu was to participate in a fight of genuine intrigue, one of the few such bouts boxing seems willing to proffer this year—but because he was to headline quite the opposite. Here is one of boxing’s peculiarities: when you have achieved a certain currency within the sport, your matchmaking occasionally gets softer; what you are gifted, for having supposedly proven yourself beyond any need for caution is charity, a showcase ..read more

There is a right way for titles to change hands, a right way to consolidate them: in a manner expeditious as it is violent, captivating as it is definitive. This is the only way Naoya Inoue accepts, and it would be uniquely his were it not for the apex predator from Omaha. Inoue is now the undisputed super bantamweight champion of the world, a distinction he secured, fittingly, on Boxing Day, stopping Marlon Tapales in ten rounds at the Ariake Arena in Koto-Ku, Japan. After two fights, the division is Inoue’s; consecutive concussive performances reminding us that if “all the belts” is your amb ..read more

There was a time when the opponent hardly mattered, when he might charge admission to watch him box his shadow, pummel a heavy bag, harrow a skipping rope. But the opponents mattered to him then, and he sought them even against the discretion of his promoter. He had his soft touches—those simulacrums whose reputations persisted when their threat did not—and, with few exceptions, butchered them appropriately. Or so memory encourages us to remember now, years past the years of unmatched ambition, past too, his best. Attach any asterisk you like, diminish any number of opponents, and there is sti ..read more

Plenty laughed in November, malicious little chortles at a rare moment of weakness from a fighter who seemed without any. Terence Crawford heard them. They questioned his nerve, his heart, and through that jaundiced lens, his manhood, the legitimacy of all he had earned. Crawford heard that too. They laughed at his work beyond the ropes—work best left to managers, promoters, and their lawyers. And for good reason: he failed utterly and embarrassingly in that endeavor. When the first negotiations between Crawford and Errol Spence were stillborn, Crawford had to shoulder the blame. They laughed ..read more

It was a harbinger of his undoing, that talk of toughness, that little kindness from the commentary team offered barely fifteen minutes into the action. And true too. But the timing of that gesture was all wrong. Stephen Fulton represented a style Naoya Inoue, the new unified super-bantamweight champion, had never encountered—for some even, a style Inoue had avoided in a career that anathematized avoidance. What was that style? Sharp, elusive, quick, confounding in that concoction. But not one characterized by toughness. And so you knew—if the action hadn’t already proven as much—that when the ..read more

“Do I still got it?” What was your answer? When Teofimo Lopez, wearing a wry smile and as many belts as his junior-welterweight frame could support, asked the soldout crowd in The Theater at Madison Square Garden, asked anyone who understood the reference, asked you that question—what was your answer? The most straightforward answer came from Josh Taylor, the now former junior-welterweight kingpin who suffered his first defeat Saturday, losing a unanimous decision to Lopez. Despite favorable odds and judging, Taylor confirmed Lopez’s class in his complimentary post-fight interview and—more imp ..read more

His nose, that bulbous bullseye stuffed with gauze, secured by tape, bled determinedly into his mouth; a handkerchief wrinkled and spattered returned rhythmically to dab the claret trickle. With a voice warped by the carnage in his sinuses, John Ryder declared that Saul Alvarez, the man who so roughly pulped him at the Estadio Akron in Zapopan, Mexico, was past his best. What might be the evidence of that decline? It seems Ryder surviving to hear the final bell and his success in landing enough punches to force Alvarez behind a pair of sunglasses at the post-fight press conference. Were Ryder ..read more

Imagine fight night in LA twenty years ago. Girls would wear their tightest dresses and their highest heels. We’d pull up to the house that was hosting the Oscar De La Hoya fight in his hometown of East LA. There would be twenty-five Harley Davidsons lined up by the curb, and least a few lowriders and a sparkling candy-colored hot rod or two. Bodies spilled out of a house packed with people who stood shoulder to shoulder watching a TV in a living room. Everyone shouted and screamed for Oscar to beat whoever he was fighting. It was electric. This is the epoch that you often hear boxing fans pou ..read more

Like so many of his devotees, were they graced with a private moment in his presence, Ryan Garcia got on his knee and let it come. There he stayed until it was over, and the man across from him was satisfied. Satisfaction on this night belonged to Gervonta Davis, who promised to knock Garcia out in their catchweight clash at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Saturday. Technically, Davis did just that with a left hook to the body that kept Garcia on his knee for barely ten seconds. Though not the brutal ending either man implied in his promotional banter, it was in keeping with a fight that saw ..read more

I have been here before, intentionally, if not by design. It is a strange place, particularly for one who has lived for so long looking down, not haughtily, not arrogantly, but by necessity, for my world, and very likely yours, conducts its business beneath me. This place is not without its comforts, its allure of mercy; indeed, some have sought it for such reasons—and I have sent them there. Others have resisted it with a vehemence that only we understand. They failed—and I sent them there. The former I can understand, relate to, empathize with. The latter, they are my brothers; we know the s ..read more