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Foreman Fondly Remembers “Geezers At Caesars”
His is the most distinct dual-era career in boxing history. There was the rise of George Foreman (Part I), in which a remorseless young destroyer from Marshall, Texas, pulverized opponents without ever seeming to crack a smile. That was followed by the rise of George Foreman (Part II), a physically and spiritually transformed individual who emerged from a 10-year retirement fat and happy, but with the same gift for bludgeoning the guy in the other corner into submission.
Now, at 67 (as of Jan. 10), Foreman has the luxury of sitting back and taking stock of both phases of his remarkable boxing journey, and even that portion which preceded Part I of his professional life. Upon reflection, he sees much that is good along the way, a journey of self-discovery from which he has culled four bouts he now considers to be his personal favorites.
No, the “Rumble in the Jungle” against Muhammad Ali is not included; Big George lost that one, in a monumental upset, and few fighters are apt to list a defeat among their most cherished memories. The first touchstone event for Foreman is his gold-medal run through the 1968 Mexico City Olympics, capped by his emphatic, second-round stoppage of the Soviet Union’s Jonas Cepulis. A lot of people will forever remember the image of Foreman, his surliness temporarily put aside, parading around the ring while waving a tiny American flag.
Favorite Fight No. 2 is his two-round demolition of WBC/WBA heavyweight champion Joe Frazier in Kingston, Jamaica, on Jan. 22, 1973, in which the 6-foot-3 Foreman – then a lean and taut 217½ pounds – knocked down the favored Smokin’ Joe six times, the last coming on a right uppercut that lifted the previously undefeated and indomitable conqueror of Ali into the air like a Cape Canaveral rocket during blastoff.
“I didn’t think I belonged there,” Foreman said, citing the stumpy left hooker from Philadelphia as the only man who ever elicited fear in him. “I was fighting Joe Frazier! Every time he threw a hook that missed, it was like a bullet whizzing by my head. I’m not ashamed to say I was afraid of him.”
But didn’t that sense of impending doom subside or even vanish once Frazier started going down?
“I never got to that point because he kept getting up,” Foreman explained. “I’m thinking, `Man, if this thing goes to the fourth round, I could be in trouble.’ I never did feel like I had it for sure. Not in that fight, not against the great Smokin’ Joe.”
Favorite Fight No. 3 came on Jan. 24, 1976, in Foreman’s first bout after being upset by Ali, a loss that severely shook the defrocked champion’s confidence in himself. His opponent that night at Las Vegas’ Caesars Palace, for the vacant NABF title, was another huge puncher, Ron Lyle, who figured he could do unto Big George what Ali had done. And Lyle seemingly was in the process of doing just that, flooring Foreman twice in what eventually was named The Ring’s Fight of the Year. Twice Foreman crumpled to the canvas and, after the second flooring, in a semi-stupor, he had an epiphany.
“When he knocked me down I was, like, `Wow, it wasn’t a fluke (getting knocked out by Ali) in Africa,’” Foreman said. “I told myself, `You got to get up, you got to get up.’ I got up, then he put me down a second time. That’s when I asked myself, `Are you a fighter or are you going to quit?’ If I hadn’t gotten up then, nobody would have ever believed in me again. I wouldn’t have believed in me.That would have been my exit from boxing, forever.”
Favorite Fight No. 4 was … ah, here’s where the surprise comes in. It’s not what most people would expect, Foreman’s one-punch knockout of WBA/IBF champ Michael Moorer, who was well ahead on points, in the 10th round of their Nov. 5, 1994 bout at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas when Foreman landed the straight right heard ’round the world. “It happened! It happened!” HBO blow-by-blow announcer Jim Lampley excitedly repeated as Foreman ascended to a second championship reign 20 years after the first one ended.
But, to Foreman’s way of thinking, the bolt-from-the-blue conquest of Moorer was merely the culmination of a process that had played out in his mind even before he began his long-delayed comeback. On March 9, 1987, against journeyman Steve Zouski in Sacramento, Calif., the then-38-year-old Foreman, who had eaten his way up to 320-plus pounds and had pared down only to a distinctly unsvelte 267 pounds, put away journeyman Steve Zouski in five rounds.
As grand plans go, it was hardly an auspicious launch. But then it was just what Foreman had in mind. He was on a mission, but not one on an accelerated timetable. Like the tortoise that Aesop’s fable, Big George understood that the race does not necessarily go to the swift. Sometimes slow and steady is preferable to fast and furious.
“Not everyone can plot and plan like I did. They don’t have the patience,” Foreman said of a return to the ring that, at first, drew mostly snickers and derision. “I deliberately took time. I stayed off television. I wanted to lay low until I developed my skills.”
And so it went, Foreman winning 19 fights in as many outings against mostly has-beens and never-weres, beating 18 of them inside the distance. But eventually the moment came when he had to put up or shut up, and that night arrived on Jan. 15, 1990.
George Foreman vs. Gerry Cooney. The matchup of presumably past-their-prime sluggers (Cooney, 33, had not fought since his fifth-round technical knockout loss to Michael Spinks on June 15, 1987) officially was labeled “The Preacher and the Puncher,” the preacher, of course, being Foreman. But UPI boxing writer Dave Raffo had dubbed it “The Geezers at Caesars,” which the public quickly latched onto, and never mind that the scheduled 10-rounder actually would take place in Boardwalk Hall and not neighboring Caesars Atlantic City, which was sponsoring the event.
Although some dismissed the matchup as something akin to the circus coming to town – one Philadelphia reporter (that would be me) wrote that “America is and has always been a society of the curious, voyeuristic and gullible, which is why those modern Barnums, boxing promoters, continue to run freak shows up the flagpole to see just how many of us will salute” – both combatants understood it to very much be the real deal. Speculation already was rampant that the winner would move on to a megabucks matchup with heavyweight champion Mike Tyson.
“That fight turned everything around,” Foreman said of the second-round knockout that legitimized what, until then, had seemed an impossible dream. “If Cooney had won that fight, even on points, that would have derailed me. That was the one fight that did it. Not only did I win, but the fashion that I did it determined my destiny.”
Because he had been active, even if not against top-tier opponents, Foreman opened as a 3-to-1 favorite, which was whittled down to 9-to-5 by the opening bell when word began spreading that Cooney, whose pulverizing left hook was his weapon of choice, was looking very sharp in training under the watchfui eye of new trainer Gil Clancy, who had helped bring out the best in such notable fighters as Emile Griffith, Ken Buchanan and Jerry Quarry. There was a rising sentiment that if Cooney, who had whacked out Ken Norton in one round, Lyle in one round and Foreman conqueror Jimmy Young in four, connected with one of his trademark hooks, George and the 253¼ pounds he was packing (36¼ more than he weighed the night he walloped Frazier) would come crashing down like an imploded building.
“When you talk about left hooks, I think Cooney – when he was really at his best – had one that would match up with anybody’s in terms of power,” said Larry Hazzard, the boss of the New Jersey State Athletic Control Board. “That was his punch. I imagine it still is.”
But Hazzard’s optimistic view that Foreman-Cooney was a potential clash of the titans wasn’t shared by all. Ferdie Pacheco, the NBC boxing analyst (the fight was televised via closed-circuit and pay-per-view) and former personal physician to Muhammad Ali, said that Cooney, who, depressed, had begun to drink heavily after his loss to Spinks, “has the face of a drunk trying to make a comeback” while deriding Foreman as “grossly overweight and flabby.” Trainer Tommy Gallagher, who was the chief second for WBO middleweight champion Doug DeWitt, who would yield his title to Matthew Hilton on an 11th-round stoppage on the Foreman-Cooney undercard, said the main event was “a joke, in my opinion. But I guess I can see where some people might find it interesting.”
For his part, Foreman didn’t mind the verbal jabs aimed at him about his weight. He had come in at a relatively trim 235 pounds for his March 19, 1988, bout with Tyson-sized Dwight Muhammad Qawi and, although George won via seventh-round TKO, he felt like his legendary strength had been substantially drained.
“When I fought Qawi, my body was almost like it was in the ’70s,” Foreman said. “I had concentrated so much on losing all that weight that I lost track on who I needed to be the second time around. I didn’t make that mistake again. From then on, I was always at or over 250.
“I knew what Cooney could do. He knocked out Norton. He knocked out Lyle. He was just going down the line of my generation, mowing us down one by one. I knew he had to be thinking, `OK, Foreman’s next.’
“But you know what frightened me more than anything? It was that Cooney had hired Gil Clancy to work his corner. Gil was a good boxing man who knew how to get a fighter ready to fight his best fight.”
Clany’s prefight strategy was sound enough. The 6-7 Cooney would box the old, fat guy, take him into the middle rounds where his perceived lack of stamina would come into play, and try to stay out of Foreman’s optimal punching radius until he saw openings to move in and connect with that big left hook. The plan might have worked, too, except that such an opening came too early.
When Cooney landed that big hook in the first round, Clancy instinctively knew that his guy had seized an advantage that needed to be capitalized on right then, when Foreman was still buzzed. But, curiously, Cooney hesitated.
“He didn’t believe it (that Foreman was in trouble),” Clancy said afterward. “Inactivity does that.”
For his part, Clancy changed course and advised Cooney to go right after Foreman in Round 2. It proved to be a disastrous miscalculation.
“After the first round Cooney went back to his corner and Clancy said, `You got him! You got him!’” Foreman recalled. “I was like, `Dang, I didn’t think anybody knew that but me.’ And he did come right after me. I had a fight on my hands. I knew I had to get him before he got me.”
Foreman did exactly what he needed to do, He wobbled Cooney with a left hook of his own, which was followed by a succession of clubbing right hands that put “Gentleman Gerry” in deep trouble and drew a mandatory eight-count that would not be nearly a long-enough reprieve. Referee Joe Cortez didn’t even bother with a count when Foreman followed up with a left uppercut and overhand right; Cooney was unconscious even before he landed on the canvas, face-first.
When he was revived, Cooney said that Foreman “hit me harder than anyone I’ve ever been in the ring with.” Foreman graciously allowed that Cooney was “the hardest left-hook puncher I faced. His hook was harder than Joe Frazier’s.”
One can only imagine what might have happened had not Tyson lost his championship to Buster Douglas three weeks later in Tokyo. The Tyson-Foreman megafight that seemingly had been put into place by George’s KO of Cooney never took place.
“Tyson truly was a tiger,” Foreman said. “But it wasn’t like I was begging to fight him. He was a short guy and, because I would be jabbing downward, I thought I’d have had a good chance of beating him. Then again, he’d been taught how to do well when he fought taller guys, so it would have been interesting. I had Tyson in mind when I boxed Qawi. But when Tyson lost to Douglas, that basically was the end of that.”
Even missing out on a shot at Tyson, however, couldn’t dull the high Foreman experienced from beating Cooney. It was a fight he needed to win to not only maintain relevance, but to build on it.
“It was a big night. A big night,” Foreman said, savoring the memory. “And everybody knew it. It was in the air. Before the fight, people knew something momentous was going to happen, one way or the other. Fortunately, things went my way.
“Walking out of that arena in Atlantic City that night … I’ll never forget it. I wasn’t on top just yet, but I felt like I was back on top.”
Cooney never fought again, but unlike the funk he fell into following his losses to Larry Holmes and Spinks, he made peace with himself. He now co-hosts a boxing program with Randy Gordon on Sirius XM, on which Foreman has been a guest several times.
“Gerry and I are great friends now,” Foreman said. “Boxing is funny that way, isn’t it? I was even friendly with him when we fought. Gerry Cooney is a very encouraging-type person. He inspires people. There are times when he’s inspired me as well.”
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Northern California’s Cain Sandoval remained undefeated with a knockout win over Mark Bernaldez in a super lightweight battle on Friday on a 360 Promotions card.
Sandoval (15-0, 13 KOs) of Sacramento needed four rounds to figure out tough Filipino fighter Bernaldez (25-7, 14 KOs) in front of a packed crowd at Chumash Casino in Santa Ynez.
Bernaldez had gone eight rounds against Mexico’s very tough Oscar Duarte. He showed no fear for Sandoval’s reputed power and both fired bombs at each other from the second round on.
Things turned in favor of Sandoval when he targeted the body and soon had Bernaldez in retreat. It was apparent Sandoval had discovered a weakness.
In the beginning of the fourth Sandoval fired a stiff jab to the body that buckled Bernaldez but he did not go down. And when both resumed in firing position Sandoval connected with an overhand right and down went the Filipino fighter. He was counted out by referee Rudy Barragan at 34 seconds of the round.
“I’m surprised he took my jab to the body. I respect that. I have a knockout and I’m happy about that,” Sandoval said.
Other Bouts
Popular female fighter Lupe Medina (9-0) remained undefeated with a solid victory over the determined Agustina Vazquez (4-3-2) by unanimous decision after eight rounds in a minimumweight fight between Southern Californians.
Early on Vazquez gave Medina trouble disrupting her patter with solid jabs. And when Medina overloaded with combination punches, she was laced with counters from Vazquez during the first four rounds.
Things turned around in the fifth round as Medina used a jab to keep Vazquez at a preferred distance. And when she attacked it was no more than two-punch combination and maintaining a distance.
Vazquez proved determined but discovered clinching was not a good idea as Medina took advantage and overran her with blows. Still, Vazquez looked solid. All three judges saw it 79-73 for Medina.
A battle between Southern Californian’s saw Compton’s Christopher Rios (11-2) put on the pressure all eight rounds against Eastvale’s Daniel Barrera (8-1-1) and emerged the winner by majority decision in a flyweight battle.
It was Barrera’s first loss as a pro. He never could discover how to stay off the ropes and that proved his downfall. Neither fighter was knocked down but one judge saw it 76-76, and two others 79-73 for Rios.
In a welterweight fight Gor Yeritsyan (20-1,16 KOs) scorched Luis Ramos (23-7) with a 12-punch combination the sent him to the mat in the second round. After Ramos beat the count he was met with an eight punch volley and the fight was stopped at 2:11 of the second round by knockout.
Super feather prospect Abel Mejia (7-0, 5 KOs) floored Alfredo Diaz (9-12) in the fifth round but found the Mexican fighter to be very durable in their six-round fight. Mejia caught Diaz with a left hook in the fifth round for a knockdown. But the fight resumed with all three judges scoring it 60-53 for Mejia who fights out of El Modena, Calif.
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By TSS Special Correspondent David Harazduk — After David Alaverdian (8-0-1, 6 KOs) scored a gritty victory against a tough Nicaraguan journeyman named Enrique Irias, his plans suddenly changed. The flashy flyweight from Nahariya, Israel hoped to face even tougher opposition and then challenge for a world title within a year or so. But a prolonged illness forced David to rip up the script.
The Irias fight was over 22 months ago. On Saturday, Feb. 22, Alaverdian will be making his first appearance in the ring since that win when he faces veteran road warrior Josue “Zurdo” Morales (31-16-4, 13 KOs) at the Westgate Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas. It’s the fifth promotion by Las Vegas attorney Stephen Reid whose inaugural card was at this venue on Feb. 13, 2020.
“I’m excited to come back,” Alaverdian declared.
During his preparation for Irias two years ago, Alaverdian felt fatigue after a routine six-round sparring session. “It was on April 1, 2023, about ten days before my fight. It felt like an April Fool’s joke,” he said. He came down with a sore throat, a headache, and congestion. He soon developed trouble breathing. At first, he thought his seasonal asthma had flared up, but his condition soon worsened. No matter what he did, Alaverdian could no longer take deep breaths. Fatigue continued to plague him. His heart constantly raced. Instead of breathing from his diaphragm, he was breathing from his chest. He sought out numerous doctors in the United States and in Israel.
His symptoms were finally diagnosed as Dysfunctional Breathing (DB). DB is a condition that can stem from stress and is often misdiagnosed. Its symptoms include dyspnea and tachycardia, both of which David experienced.
While receiving treatment, the Vegas-based pro went back to Israel where he coached aspiring fighters. “David’s influence on Israeli boxing is amazing, because he shows we can succeed in a big business even though we come from a small country,” said another undefeated Israeli flyweight, 20-year-old Yonatan Landman (7-0, 7 KOs). “A lot more Israelis are going to dare to succeed.”
Landman was able to work with Alaverdian during David’s return to Israel. “He is a great guy and a friend,” Landman said. “He has a lot of willingness to help, share his knowledge, and help you move forward.”
Alaverdian finally started to feel like he could compete again eight months ago. He won last year’s Israeli national amateur championship and competed in Olympic qualifiers. Now, he’s preparing to fight as a professional once again. “He doesn’t mention anything about [his breathing issues] like he did before,” his coach Cedric Ferguson said about this camp. “He’s been working like there’s no issue at all.”
It has been a whirlwind week for the 31-year-old Alaverdian. In addition to putting the finishing touches on his preparation ahead of Saturday’s comeback fight, David got married on Tuesday. His mom came over from Israel for the wedding and will stay for the fight. “It’s a good distraction,” David said of this week’s significant events. “It helps me. That way I don’t have to focus on the fight all day.”
Josue Morales, a 32 year old from Houston, hopes to play spoiler on Saturday. The crafty southpaw has never been stopped during his 52-fight career. “He’s a seasoned guy with a lot of experience,” Alaverdian said of Morales. “He knows how to move around the ring and is more of a technical boxer. He’s a tough opponent for someone who has been out of the ring for two years.”
A win Saturday night would complete a monumental week for David Alaverdian, both in and out of the ring, repairing the once-shredded script.
Doors open at the Westgate fight arena at 6:30 pm. The first bout goes at 7:00. Seven fights are scheduled including an 8-round female fight between Las Vegas light flyweight Yadira Bustillos and Argentine veteran Tamara Demarco.
NOTE: Author David Harazduk has run The Jewish Boxing Blog since 2010. You can find him at Twitter/X @JewishBoxing and Instagram.
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Two Candidates for the Greatest Fight Card in Boxing History
Saturday’s fight card in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, topped by the rematch between Artur Beterbiev and Dmitry Bivol for undisputed light heavyweight supremacy, was being hyped as the greatest boxing card ever. That was before Daniel Dubois took ill and had to pull out of his IBF world heavyweight title defense against Joseph Parker, yielding his slot to last-minute replacement Martin Bakole.
The view from here is that the card remains in the running for the best fight card ever, top to bottom. The public didn’t view Dubois as the legitimate heavyweight champion. That distinction goes to Oleksandr Usyk.
Terms like “greatest” are, of course, subjective. Are we referring to the most attractive match-ups or the greatest array of talent, or the card that gives the most satisfaction by churning out a multiplicity of entertaining fights?
We won’t know how satisfying this card is until after the fact. We won’t know whether the talent on display was the greatest ever assembled on one night until many years have passed. Contestants such as Shakur Stevenson, Vergil Ortiz Jr, and Hamzah Sheeraz are still in their twenties (Stevenson is the oldest of the three at age 27) and it’s too soon to gauge if they will leave the sport with a great legacy.
As for which fight card in history had the deepest pool of attractive match-ups, this is a query that is amenable to an operational definition. Betting lines are a useful tool for informing us whether or not a fight warrants our attention if the likelihood of witnessing a closely-contested bout is our primary consideration.
Based on these factors, I would submit that the current leader in the race for the best card ever assembled goes to Don King’s May 7, 1994 promotion at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas.
Six future Hall of Famers – Julio Cesar Chavez, Ricardo Lopez, Azumah Nelson, Terry Norris, Julian Jackson, and Christy Martin — were on that card, an 11-fight, eight-hour marathon with five WBC world title fights, four of which were rematches.
These were the five title fights:
140 pounds: Julio Cesar Chavez (89-1-1, 77 KOs) vs. Frankie Randall (49-2-1, 39 KOs)
Odds: Chavez 3/1 (minus-300)
154 pounds: Terry Norris (37-4, 23 KOs) vs. Simon Brown (41-2, 30 KOs)
Odds: even (11/10 and take your pick)
160 pounds: Gerald McClellan (30-2, 28 KOs) vs. Julian Jackson (48-2, 45 KOs)
Odds: McClellan 7/2 (minus-350)
130 pounds: Azumah Nelson (37-2-2, 26 KOs) vs. Jesse James Leija (27-0-2, 13 KOs)
Odds: Nelson 17/10 (minus-170)
105 pounds: Ricardo Lopez (36-0, 27 KOs) vs. Kermin Guardia (21-0, 14 KOs)
Odds: none
Results
Chavez-Randall — Julio Cesar Chavez avenged his loss to Frankie Randall, but not without controversy. An accidental clash of heads in the eighth round left Chavez with a bad gash on his forehead. Ring physician Flip Homansky would have allowed the bout to continue if that had been Chavez’s preference, but El Gran Campeon wasn’t so inclined. A WBC rule specified that in the event of a significant injury accruing from an accidental head butt, the less-damaged fighter is penalized a point. The fight went to the scorecards where Chavez won a split decision that would have been a draw without the point deduction. The crowd was overwhelmingly pro-Chavez, but the big bets were mostly on Randall and the odds got nicked down on the day of the fight.
Brown-Norris — In their first meeting in December of the previous year, Simon Brown dominated Terry Norris from the opening bell before stopping him in the fourth round. It was a massive upset. Norris was in the conversation for the top pound-for-pound fighter in the sport. In the rematch, Norris opened a slight favorite, but the late money was on Brown. And, once again, the so-called “sharps” were on the wrong side. Terry Norris, the would-be avenger, won a comfortable decision.
McClellan-Jackson — A murderous puncher, Gerald McClellan bombed out Julian Jackson in 83 seconds, or four rounds quicker than in their first engagement. Jackson was also a murderous puncher and attracted money in the sports books, lowering the price on the victorious McClellan who yet remained a solid favorite.
Nelson-Leija – WBC President Jose Sulaiman mandated this rematch after the first meeting ended in a draw after an error was found in the tabulation of one of the scorecards, overturning the original verdict which had Nelson retaining his title on a split decision. Leija thought he was robbed and was the rightful winner in the do-over, outworking Nelson to win a unanimous decision. At age 35, Azumah was getting long in the tooth.
Lopez-Guardia – Before the digital age, bookmakers didn’t trifle to post lines on bouts that on paper were egregious mismatches, save perhaps a fight of great magnitude. Guardia, the Colombian challenger, overachieved by lasting the distance in a fight with no knockdowns, but “Finito” won a lopsided decision.
A Note on Odds
Betting lines serve a useful purpose for boxing historians; they quantify the magnitude of an upset. However, quoting odds is tricky because they are fluid and vary somewhat from place to place. What this means is that two journalists can quote different odds on the same event and they both can get it right – unless there is a significant disparity. The odds quoted above are the closing lines at the MGM Grand or, at the very least, a very close approximation.
Saturday in Riyadh
One reason why tomorrow’s fight card is the best ever, said the tub-thumpers, is that the card (in its original conformation) included seven world title fights. But that’s no big deal There are so many title fights nowadays that the term “world title” has been trivialized. And what wasn’t acknowledged is that three of the title fights were of the “interim” stripe.
However – and this is a big deal — a glance at the odds informs us that tomorrow’s card is chock-full of competitive match-ups (at least on paper) and from that aspect, a blend of quality and quantity, it is a doozy of a boxing card.
The greatest boxing linemaker of my generation, now deceased, once told me that any fight where the “chalk” was less than a 3/1 favorite is essentially a “pick-‘em” fight. Yes, I know that makes no sense mathematically. However, I know what he was getting at. In a baseball game, for example, it’s very rare to find a team favored by odds of more than 3/1. In boxing, where self-serving promoters are constantly feeding us King Kong vs. Mickey Mouse, odds higher than 3/1 are the norm.
As this is being written, there are six fights on Saturday’s card where one could play the favorite without laying more than 3/1. I believe this is unprecedented. Moreover, the main event and a fascinating match-up on the undercard, Vergil Ortiz Jr vs Israil Madrimov, are virtual toss-ups with the favorites, Beterbiev and Ortiz, currently available at 5/4 (minus-125). Another very intriguing fight is the heavyweight contest between late bloomers Agit Kabayel and Zhilei Zhang which finds the less-heralded Kabayel cloaked as a small favorite. And kudos to Joseph Parker for accepting Martin Bakole when he could have held out for a lesser opponent. If Bakole is in shape (a big “if”), he will be a handful.
And so, where does tomorrow’s card rank on the list of best boxing cards ever? Right up there near the top, we would argue, and, if the bouts in large part are memorably entertaining, we would push it ahead of Don King’s May 7, 1994 extravaganza.
That’s the view from here. Feel free to dissent.
Postscript: If you plan to watch the entire card ($25.99 on DAZN for U.S. buyers), it would help to stock up on some munchies. The first fight (Joshua Buatsi vs. Callum Smith) is scheduled to kick off at 8:45 a.m. for us viewers in the Pacific Time Zone / 11:45 a.m. ET. If the show adheres tight to its schedule (no guarantee), Beterbiev and Bivol are expected to enter the ring at 3:00 p.m. PT/6:00 p.m. ET.
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Results and Recaps from Madison Square Garden where Keyshawn Davis KO’d Berinchyk
Hall of Fame Boxing Writer Michael Katz (1939-2025) Could Wield His Pen like a Stiletto
Claressa Shields Powers to Undisputed Heavyweight Championship
Vito Mielnicki Hopes to Steal the Show on Friday at Madison Square Garden
Najee Lopez Steps up in Class and Wins Impressively at Plant City
With Valentine’s Day on the Horizon, let’s Exhume ex-Boxer ‘Machine Gun’ McGurn
Bakhodir Jalolov Returns on Thursday in Another Disgraceful Mismatch
More ‘Dances’ in Store for Derek Chisora after out-working Otto Wallin in Manchester
Boxing Odds and Ends: Ernesto Mercado, Marcel Cerdan and More
Ringside at the Cosmo: Pacheco Outpoints Nelson plus Undercard Results
The Hauser Report: Keyshawn Davis at Madison Square Garden
Avila Perspective, Chap. 311: Jim Lampley Adds Class to the Benavidez-Morrell Rumble
Benavidez Defeats Morrell; Cruz, Fulton, and Ramos also Victorious at Las Vegas
Avila Perspective, Chap. 313: The Misadventures of Canelo and Jake Paul (and More)
Japanese Superstar Naoya Inoue is Headed to Vegas after KOing Ye Joon Kim
Arnold Barboza Edges Past Jack Catterall in Manchester
Lucas Bahdi Paid His Dues, Quite Literally, and Now his Boxing Career is Flourishing
Eric Priest Wins Handily on Thursday’s Golden Boy card at the Commerce Casino
Biyarslanov TKOed Mimoune at Montreal; Jalolov Conspicuous by his Absence
Undercard Results from Las Vegas where Mirco Cuello Saved his Best for Last
Cain Sandoval KOs Mark Bernaldez in the Featured Bout at Santa Ynez
The Return of David Alaverdian
Two Candidates for the Greatest Fight Card in Boxing History
Avila Perspective, Chap. 314: A Really Big Boxing Show in Riyadh and More
Lucas Bahdi Paid His Dues, Quite Literally, and Now his Boxing Career is Flourishing
The Hauser Report: Keyshawn Davis at Madison Square Garden
Oscar Duarte KOs Miguel Madueno in a Battle of Mexicans at Anaheim
Arnold Barboza Edges Past Jack Catterall in Manchester
Results and Recaps from Madison Square Garden where Keyshawn Davis KO’d Berinchyk
Avila Perspective, Chap. 313: Global Cooperation — Golden Boy and Matchroom Boxing
Vito Mielnicki Hopes to Steal the Show on Friday at Madison Square Garden
With Valentine’s Day on the Horizon, let’s Exhume ex-Boxer ‘Machine Gun’ McGurn
More ‘Dances’ in Store for Derek Chisora after out-working Otto Wallin in Manchester
Avila Perspective, Chap. 313: The Misadventures of Canelo and Jake Paul (and More)
Biyarslanov TKOed Mimoune at Montreal; Jalolov Conspicuous by his Absence
Bakhodir Jalolov Returns on Thursday in Another Disgraceful Mismatch
Claressa Shields Powers to Undisputed Heavyweight Championship
Benavidez Defeats Morrell; Cruz, Fulton, and Ramos also Victorious at Las Vegas
Undercard Results from Las Vegas where Mirco Cuello Saved his Best for Last
Avila Perspective, Chap. 311: Jim Lampley Adds Class to the Benavidez-Morrell Rumble
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