Wednesday, February 5

Tag: boxing

Does the sport of boxing have a future?
24Dec By adminNo Comments
Health

Does the sport of boxing have a future?

Exactly five years ago, HBO pulled out of the boxing business, which was a shock to the sport. “I had heard about it before I read about it,” recalled Seth Abraham, the former head of HBO Sports on its demise. He was president of Madison Square Garden at the time. “It was very, very sad to see that brand sort of go away.” And away it did with all its great pugilistic memories. HBO’s first big fight was Joe Frazier vs. George Foreman for the heavyweight championship in 1974, followed by classics like Foreman-Muhammad Ali, Ali-Frazier III, Sugar Ray Leonard-Thomas Hearns I and II, Mike Tyson-Buster Douglas, Oscar De La Hoya-Floyd Mayweather Jr., and the Arturo Gatti-Micky Ward trilogy to name a few. Now Showtime Sports, HBO’s longtime rival in televising the sweet science, took a ten count...
Read More
Amanda Serrano wants to fight 3-minute rounds. Will boxing respond?
15Dec By adminNo Comments
Sports

Amanda Serrano wants to fight 3-minute rounds. Will boxing respond?

Amanda Serrano was overcome with pure joy. Her face lit up as the scorecards were read and several featherweight championship belts were placed on her right shoulder and waist. She had dominated Danila Ramos en route to a unanimous decision win in October, bolstering her argument for being considered the best pound-for-pound fighter in the sport, and a trailblazer.Serrano’s performance came in the first unified women’s championship fight contested over 12 three-minute rounds in boxing history. Female boxers, until that point, were only able to compete in bouts with 10 (or fewer) rounds at two minutes each.“I really enjoyed the three minutes,” Serrano said after the fight in Florida. “I was able to set up a little more of my punches, and I think I’m going to continue with the three minutes...
Read More
How Francis Ngannou Shocked the Boxing World
31Oct By adminNo Comments
Entertainment

How Francis Ngannou Shocked the Boxing World

Mixed martial arts was designed to sniff out frauds. The U.F.C., the sport’s dominant company, was launched in 1993, with a championship that matched a wide range of fighters, to determine which styles were effective in real life, or at least a caged simulation of it. (The U.F.C. rule set was notably inhospitable, for instance, to a sumo wrestler.) Decades later, M.M.A. fans were still sharing videos of characters like Xu Xiaodong, a Chinese fighter known for challenging—and thrashing—various gurus who claimed special powers. He accused his opponents of practicing “fake kung fu”; by beating them, he sought to prove that their arcane claims and methods were more or less bullshit.Is boxing bullshit? The sport itself seems fairly empirical: two people punch each other for about half an hour,...
Read More
Why the Best Boxers Don’t Draw the Biggest Crowds
28Jul By adminNo Comments
Entertainment

Why the Best Boxers Don’t Draw the Biggest Crowds

This past Tuesday, at around 7:30 A.M. in New York, or 4:30 A.M. in California, a small but stubborn faction of the American boxing audience (which is, itself, a small but stubborn faction of the broader sports audience) opened up the ESPN+ app and got ready to watch one of the year’s most eagerly anticipated fights: Stephen Fulton, the top fighter at junior featherweight, which has a limit of a hundred and twenty-two pounds, was facing Naoya Inoue, a Japanese star who was moving up from bantamweight, which has a limit of one-eighteen, and who was considered one of the best and most exciting fighters in any weight division. Fulton comes from Philadelphia, but he doesn’t have much of a home-town fan base, especially compared to Inoue, which explains why the fight was held in front of a sol...
Read More