Clay Moyle Talks About His Obsession with Boxing Books (with Tips for Collectors)

Published

3 years ago

March 7, 2022

Clay-Moyle-Talks-About-His-Obsession-with-Boxing-Books-with-Tips-for-Collectors

How many boxing books does one really need to own? I don’t know, but I’m sure that I blew by whatever that number is a long time ago. I’m just as sure, that I know a number of fellows who’d probably answer that one can never really have too many boxing books. You see, there are an awful lot of oddballs among serious collectors, but that’s a topic for another article.

Not long after going to a boxing gym for a year in my early 30’s, I got the idea to try and acquire a biography about every world heavyweight champion since the time of John L. Sullivan. That was the spark that lit a fire that quickly raged out of control.

How so? Well, to begin with, during that initial pursuit, I began to come across other boxing books that I thought might be interesting, so I opted to purchase many of those as well. One thing led to another, and it wasn’t all that long before my new objective somehow became to add every boxing book ever written in the English language to my personal collection.

Now that’s obviously a never-ending quest as there are seemingly many that are next to impossible to find, and of course new boxing books are being written all the time. In hindsight, I’ve often thought it would have been much more sensible to target a smaller niche for myself. For example, maybe just a specific era, only non-fiction, anything saner.

I probably purchased around 300 books during the first year of my new sickness. It was about that time, that I made the acquaintance of a serious boxing book collector in Denmark named Niels Thorsen. Niels had a collection of 1,500 boxing titles at the time. I remember wondering how on earth one individual could amass a collection of that many boxing books.

But yet, here I am 30+ years later, with a personal collection of over 4,600 boxing-related books, and an understanding of how it can come about.

To begin with, I think one has to have a few loose screws and a tendency to become completely obsessed with accomplishing a goal once they’ve set their mind to it. Anybody who knows me well, would probably suggest that I fit that description pretty well.

It also takes an awful lot of time, effort and persistence to build a collection this large. When I reflect upon my own journey, I can recall a great number of things that I did along the way that I believe were key to my efforts to build a collection this large, including each of the following:

Visiting Used Bookstores
As long as I can remember, I’ve loved visiting used bookstores. There’s just something about searching bookshelves for treasure, the thrill of coming across a book of interest, holding it in your hands and getting the opportunity to flip through the pages.

This is a primary way that serious book collectors built their collections in the past. Those whose professions required them to travel, had the additional benefit of being able to take advantage of the opportunity to visit bookstores in those cities and I’ve met a number of parties who did that for years. Leaving a business card behind when you leave with your interests written on the back can sometimes prove fruitful as well.

I’ve frequented used bookstores for years, and continue to do, though I no longer expect to find as many desired books that way for reasons that will become apparent shortly.

Writing or Phoning Bookstores
In addition to visiting bookstores in other cities while traveling, I often used to phone those I couldn’t get to personally, while killing time in an airport or during spare time in my hotel room. This proved beneficial on many occasions, and sometimes provided me with some useful leads.

I know others who regularly wrote to bookstores to inquire about available books in their field of interest.

The Internet
The arrival of the internet created opportunities for serious collectors that just didn’t exist previously. Once the internet arrived, and a proliferation of websites began to crop up, it didn’t take me long to learn of a site named AbeBooks. AbeBooks is derived from their original name “Advanced Book Exchange.” They were founded in 1995 and launched their website in 1996 when their listings only included the inventory of four bookstores.

That changed very quickly as booksellers all over the world learned that they could make their inventory of books available to customers worldwide on-line. Today, the site is described as an e-commerce global online marketplace that specializes in rare and out-of-print books and they became a subsidiary of Amazon in 2008.

With the advent of used book sites like AbeBooks, many longtime used bookstores began disappearing. Sellers realized they could reach a much, much wider audience selling their books exclusively on-line, and there was no need to bear the expense of a traditional brick and mortar store presence when there were much cheaper ways to store their inventories.

Sites like AbeBooks are both an incredible resource and a curse for the serious collector. They’re an unbelievable resource from the standpoint that one can now so easily search the inventories of bookstores all over the world. And a curse, because it’s become so much easier to find treasure to spend your money on.

I don’t believe it’s an exaggeration to say that there was a time when I routinely searched the AbeBooks site for new inventory listings as many as 30-40 times per day.

Personal Website
I don’t remember when I began selling boxing books as well, but at some point, I pretty quickly realized that I could partially help fund my book purchasing addiction with the profits realized from buying and reselling duplicate boxing books. As I became more knowledgeable concerning the values of specific titles, I began routinely coming across a number that I knew I could quickly flip for a profit.

Acquiring duplicate books, as well as other boxing memorabilia, ultimately led to the creation of my own website (www.prizefightingbooks.com) from which I list and sell my own inventory of duplicate boxing books and other boxing memorabilia that I have available.

Or course, that inventory has also become much larger than originally planned and there are now over 2,500 boxing books listed for sale on the site as well as many magazines, programs, autographs, artwork, etc.

An unexpected benefit of creating the website is that it led to many parties contacting me with specific books, or entire collections, of boxing books that they wished to sell.

Purchasing Collections
Purchasing another party’s collection can be a pricey proposition. But it’s a quick way to acquire a large number of books to add to and upgrade your collection. It can also prove to be a relatively inexpensive way to build your collection if you can resell the duplicates, especially if a number of those duplicate books are rare and/or scarce titles. The fact that purchasing a collection often results in acquiring a number of common titles as well is one reason I have so many copies of specific titles on my website.

Many times, the purchase of a collection has enabled me to add many rare titles at a very reasonable price as a result of profits that I was able to realize from the sale of the duplicate titles. Of course, you’re liable to end up with a lot of unsold duplicates as well.

The purchase of collections, and a willingness to take on the work of reselling the duplicates, has been one key to my success in building a collection of this size.

Auction Sites
I acquired a number of books on eBay over the years. Some for very good prices, others pretty steep depending upon the rarity. While I didn’t usually find it the most economical way to purchase books I desired, I also occasionally purchased a few from sites like the Leland and Heritage Auction sites. There are many others that one can search.

Simply Making Folks Aware of Your Interests and Plain Old Good Luck
Sometimes simply making individuals aware of your interests can really pay off. Roughly eight years ago, I came across a used book store listing of a $25 signed softcover book by The Ring magazine founder and longtime editor Nat Fleischer and purchased it for resale. When I paid for the book, I added a comment to let the seller know that I’d be interested to learn of anything else he might acquire of that nature. Well, in this particular case that paid off more than I could have possibly imagined.

The seller replied and let me know they’d just acquired a large number of books, manuscripts and personal files that had belonged to Nat Fleischer. They had been kept in storage for decades by the decedents of Fleischer’s son-in-law Nat Loubet and he hadn’t had a chance to inventory it all yet. In fact, the book that I’d purchased from him was the first thing he’d listed.

I immediately let him know that I was interested in the possibility of purchasing what he’d acquired and eagerly awaited a list of offerings and prices.

As it turned out, there was an awful lot more treasure than I expected. But when the seller provided an asking price for the entire lot, I couldn’t say “Yes” fast enough.

So, I fired off a check and within a couple weeks a number of large boxes arrived in the mail. It took weeks for me to properly inventory everything but I loved every minute of it.

The purchase included many boxing books that were written by Fleischer, many of which he’d inscribed to his son-in-law as being the first off the press.

But my biggest thrill was when I discovered that what I’d purchased included a number of complete unpublished manuscripts by Fleischer. For example, where was a large 268,000 words bound four-volume works titled ‘The History of Prizefighting in Literature.’ I later discovered this monster was never published because it was considered too large by the various publishing house’s he shared it with at the time. In fact, the collection included a letter from one publisher turning it down for that specific reason.

Self-publishing a work wasn’t really the option then that it is today, so despite the fact that Nat wrote and published so many boxing books, this particular title and a number of other manuscripts of his were never published.

There were two other huge unpublished works titled ‘The History of Prizefighting in New York’ and ‘The History of Prizefighting in Chicago.’

There were also many other exciting unpublished works written about fighters such as Tom Sharkey, Dan Donnelly, and others, as well as original manuscripts for many of his published boxing books, typewritten pieces that had been used in The Ring, and of course a lot of personal correspondence between he and various parties.

Ultimately, I kept the books, and sold a good chunk of it, including personal files, correspondence and some of the unpublished manuscripts to a university that I knew would take good care of it.

At the time, the bookseller told me that he hadn’t acquired everything in the collection, but he’d acquired everything they were willing to part with at that time. So, I held out hope that he’d one day purchase more and I’d hear from him again.

Sure enough, he eventually phoned me again and let me know that he’d purchased three more large boxes and asked if I’d be interested in those as well.

We quickly agreed upon a price and I received more unpublished manuscripts, scrapbooks, letters, and photos.

It was only later, that I came across an August 1962 Sports Illustrated article about Fleischer and read about the unpublished manuscripts that were sitting in his safe in his Madison Square Garden office at that time, and realized that it had all somehow found their way into my own home a half century later!

So, you just never know what might come about from taking the extra step to make people aware of your collecting interests and what you might be willing to purchase.

Treasured Books
Sometimes I’m asked which of my books I value the most. While I have many rare old titles from the 18^th and 19^th centuries that are worth more money, the books that I personally treasure the most are those that are signed or inscribed to other parties of note. Many of those are among my personal favorites. A dozen of them would include the following:

‘The Roosevelt That I Know. And Recollections of the Most Famous American Fighting Man’ by American Middleweight Champion, Mike Donovan. 1909. This book is a terrific read as it contains insights concerning many of the greats that Donovan knew including the likes of John L. Sullivan, Theodore Roosevelt, Jack Dempsey and many others. For many years, I assumed it was issued without a dust jacket, but one day I discovered it with a very good dust jacket. It’s still the only time I’ve come across it with a jacket. Furthermore, it’s inscribed by Donovan in 1909 to his friend William Pinkerton.
‘The Golden People’ by Paul Gallico. 1965. Profiles of numerous legends of sport. This one has a signed bookplate of Bing Crosby and is also signed to him by both Jack Dempsey and Gene Tunney.
‘Champions Off Guard’ by William O. Inglis. 1932. Terrific read with a beautiful dust jacket. The author not only personally knew many of the early legendary world heavyweight champions such as John L., Jim Corbett, Bob Fitzsimmons, Jack Dempsey, and Gene Tunney, and provides interesting insights about them, but he sparred with a number of them and details those experiences. One of my favorite reads, my copy is also inscribed to the famous early promoter James W. Coffroth.
‘Battling Nelson. Lightweight Champion of The World’ by Battling Nelson. 1909. The autobiography of the great champion. This one is also inscribed “With best wishes from one champion to another. To James J. Jeffries, Heavyweight champion, From Battling Nelson, Lightweight champion Los Angles, Cal. July 12, 1909.”
‘My Life and Battles’ by James J. Jeffries. 1910. Fairly scarce title, this one is inscribed by the famous sportswriter cartoonist Bob Edgren on July 4, 1910, the date of the Johnson-Jeffries title fight.
‘The Tumult and The Shouting’ by Grantland Rice. 1954. Signed by Gene Tunney, Jack Dempsey, Doc Blanchard, Gene Sarazan, Toots Shor, Johnny Weismuller and others.
‘Relief to Royalty. The Story of James J. Braddock’ by Lud. 1936. Inscribed by Braddock to promoter Mike Jacobs.
‘Two Fisted Jeff’ (James J. Jeffries) by Hugh Fullerton. 1929. Signed by Jeffries
‘Physical Culture and Self Defence’ by Bob Fitzsimmons. 1901. Inscribed by Fitzsimmons.
‘Jack Johnson the Man with Boxing Instructions and Health Hints’ 1932. Signed by Johnson
‘The Prize Ring’ by Bohun Lynch. 1925. Long inscription from former light heavyweight champion Tommy Loughran.
‘God, Gloves and Glory. An Autobiography’ 1956 by Henry Armstrong. This book by the first man to simultaneously hold three world titles isn’t particularly scarce. But what makes this one unique is the long inscription “To the Greatest, Ray Robinson.”

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Avila Perspective, Chap. 316: Art of the Deal in Boxing and More

Published

7 hours ago

March 6, 2025

David A. Avila

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So, they want to save boxing?

A group of guys with recent ties to the sport of boxing and bags of money suddenly believe they can save a sport that is older than any other sport since the dawn of mankind.

Boxing is the oldest sport.

When cavemen roamed the planet, you can believe one tribe bet another tribe their guy could whip the other guy. Thus began the sport of boxing. There was no baseball, soccer or horse racing.

Even the invention of the wheel was still a few generations away when men were duking it out with other men for sport.

Throughout history mentions of one man fighting another man without arms are written in the Tales of Ulysses and other literary references.

Boxing will never die. Period.

Here is the reason why?

Boxing requires only two men in their underwear with no weapons and no requirement of classes in jujitsu, kickboxing, wrestling or advance training facilities. You can prepare in your backyard with one heavy bag and a pair of boxing gloves. It’s simple.

MMA, on the other hand, requires money.

Boxing is for the poor. Any kid can walk into a gym and begin training. When they become adults, then they start paying to use the gym.

Don’t let people fool you and tell you “boxing is dying.”

People have been saying those same words since John L. Sullivan in the late 1800s. You can look it up.

The phrase “boxing is dying,” is said by people who want you to pay them money to save it. Kind of sounds like the guy currently sitting in the White House who is going to save America by firing Americans from their jobs and allowing Russia to take over Ukraine.

Don’t believe these people.

Boxing does not need saving.

Why would Dana White, who has stated for decades that MMA is bigger than boxing, though no MMA fighter can equal the purses of a Saul “Canelo” Alvarez or Tyson Fury, why is he involved in boxing?

There is big money to be made in boxing, especially with internet gambling sites being allowed all over the world. And boxing is popular all over the world. MMA is not.

More people know who Canelo is than UFC’s Alex Pereira.

I respect the UFC fighters. They put in hard work and battle injuries throughout their careers. But MMA is simply not as big as boxing. The purses of MMA fighters at the top level don’t come close to boxing’s top money earners.

Why did Conor McGregor, Nate Diaz and others quickly switch to boxing when called?

The money in boxing is much bigger.

Follow the money.

NYC

A rumble is planned for Times Square in New York City.

Vatos from Southern California are fighting dudes from Nevada and Brooklyn. Sounds like a script from the Gangs of New York.

Where is Leonardo DiCaprio when you need him?

Ryan “KingRy” Garcia (24-1, 20 KOs) will meet Rollie Romero (16-2, 13 KOs) in a welterweight match set for May 2, on Times Square in mid-Manhattan. This is one of three marquee bouts planned to be streamed on DAZN.

Others matched will be Arnold Barboza (32-0, 11 KOs) versus super lightweight titlist Teofimo Lopez (21-1, 13 KOs), and Devin Haney (31-0, 15 KOs) against Jose Carlos Ramirez (29-2, 18 KOs) in a welterweight contest.

This is the proposed match by The Ring magazine backed by Turki Alalshikh who along with Golden Boy Promotions and Matchroom Boxing are sponsoring this fight card.

It was also announced that Alalshikh along with TKO Group Holdings and Sela are forming a promotion company.

TKO owns UFC and WWE.

SoCal Fights

Southern California will be busy with boxing cards this weekend.

This Thursday, March 6, is Golden Boy Promotions with a boxing card featuring Manny Flores (19-1, 15 KOs) versus Jorge Leyva (18-3, 13 KOs) in a super bantamweight match at Fantasy Springs Casino. DAZN will stream the boxing card from Indio, California.

On Saturday, March 8, the Fox Theater in Pomona, California hosts a boxing card featuring super middleweights Ruben Cazales (10-0) vs Adam Diu Abdulhamid (18-16). Also, super featherweights Michael Bracamontes (10-2-1) meets Eugene Lagos (16-9-3) at the historic venue promoted by House of Pain Boxing.

On Saturday March 8, Elite Boxing hosts a boxing card at Salesian High in East Los Angeles featuring East L.A. native Merari Vivar (8-0) against Sarah Click (2-8-1) and several other fights.

On Saturday, March 8, an event hosted by House of Champions features top contenders Joet Gonzalez (26-4) vs Arnold Khegai (22-1-1) in a featherweight main event at Thunder Studios in Long Beach, Calif.

A Big All-Female Card in London

On Friday, March 7, the historic Royal Albert Hall in the Kensington borough of London will host an all-female card with two world title fights including a unification fight in the welterweight division.

Natasha Jonas (16-2-1) and Lauren Price (8-0) meet 10 rounds for the IBF, WBC, and WBA belts.

Jonas, 40, the current WBC and IBF titlist, recently defeated Ivana Habazin and before that edged past Mikaela Mayer in a win that could have gone the other way very easily. She will be facing Price, an Olympic gold medalist and current WBA and IBO titlist.

Price, 30, hails from Wales and has an aggressive pressure style that saw her win a battle between punchers with a third-round knockout of Colombia’s Bexcy Mateus this past December in Liverpool. Before that she defeated the always tough Jessica McCaskill.

In the co-main event, lightweights Caroline Dubois (10-0-1) and Bo Mi Re Shin (18-2-3) meet for the WBC world title.

Me Re Shin, 30, fights out of South Korea and has knockout power. She was one of only two fighters to stop Venezuela’s Ana Maria Lozano who has 38 pro fights. That says something. She lost a split decision to Delfine Persoon in Belgium. That really says something.

Dubois had two competitive fights, first, against Jessica Camara that ended in a technical draw due to a clash of heads. Before that she defeated Maira Moneo. Dubois has very good talent and is still young at 24. Is she ready for Mi Re Shin?

Times Square photo credit: JP Yim

Fights to watch:

Thurs., March 6: DAZN, Manny Flores (19-1) vs. Jorge Leyva (18-3)

Fri., March 7: free on DAZN, Lucas Bahdi (18-0) vs. Ryan James Racaza (15-0)

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A Wide-Ranging Conversation on the Ills of Boxing with Author/Journalist Sean Nam

Published

1 day ago

March 5, 2025

Rick Assad

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During the last decade covering boxing, Sean Nam has tackled, without fear or favor, many interesting and thought-provoking subjects.

Nam’s feature on Ukrainian ringmaster Vasiliy Lomachenko, which ran in May 2024 in The Sunday Long Read, falls into this category. “I had been hearing whispers, mainly from Internet chatter, that Lomachenko had something of a contested reputation in his native Ukraine,” said Nam, who found it curious that Lomachenko draped the municipal flag of his hometown over his shoulders rather than the national flag of his country after defeating Richard Commey at Madison Square Garden. “[Those whispers] piqued my interest because that was not the narrative boxing consumers in the United States were given. ESPN, which has long showcased Lomachenko, ran a spot touting his bonafides as a beloved war hero.

“I figured someone from our media establishment, or whatever remains of that shambolic, penny-click bazaar, would write it up, but a year passed, and I didn’t come across anything close to attempting to dissect what was going on with Lomachenko and his country’s people.

“The response [to my story] was overwhelmingly positive. The general reaction was one of shock. I even had a lot of native Ukrainians thank me for shedding light on an admittedly angst-ridden situation; many of them saw their frustrations with Lomachenko reflected in the piece. I am eager to see how it all plays out for Lomachenko, who seems to be on the verge of retirement.”

At the urging of a fellow boxing writer, Nam, whose work has appeared in such periodicals as (British) Boxing News, USA Today, The Sweet Science, and Boxing Scene, found time to write a well-received first book, “Murder On Federal Street: Tyrone Everett, The Black Mafia, Fixed Fights And The Last Golden Age Of Philadelphia Boxing.”

“My close friend and mentor, the writer Carlos Acevedo, suggested it one day in an attempt to get me to write a book,” he said. “Carlos is also the reason I started writing about boxing in the first place.”

“Tyrone Everett is a more or less obscure name in boxing history, but the fact he was part of not just one, but two unsettling tragedies in the sport makes him a standout case – and this is a sport in which there is no shortage of sad stories,” he said. “Here was an opportunity, in other words, to present a story that had legitimate intrigue and, crucially, had not been over-chronicled.”

Philadelphia, which spawned such fighters as Joe Frazier, Bernard Hopkins, Bennie Briscoe, Matthew Saad Muhammad, Danny Garcia and Jaron “Boots” Ennis, has long been a hotbed of boxing talent.

“For a brief spell in the mid-1970s, Everett was a hot property on the sports scene of Philadelphia. His lone title shot, in 1976, against Alfredo Escalera, has long been considered one of the greatest ring injustices: Everett lost a decision despite seemingly out-boxing the Puerto Rican champion for the majority of the 15 rounds,” Nam said. “Noted ringside observers like Harold Lederman had Everett winning handily on their scorecards.”

Nam, who double-majored in English and philosophy at a liberal arts college in Pennsylvania, went on: “Then there was the matter of Everett’s tragic death, six months later, at the hands of his live-in girlfriend, Carolyn McKendrick, who shot him in the face with a pistol. Everett was only 24 years old. The ensuing trial was a tabloid circus. Everett’s sexuality came under heavy scrutiny, as the lone witness to the shooting was a gay, crossdressing drug pusher, whom McKendrick and Everett had allegedly been in bed with on the morning of the shooting.…But Everett’s outré sexual habits were far from the only issues that were being dangled daily to the public. He was also accused of beating McKendrick and dealing drugs himself. In my book, I try to rectify some of the misconceptions that have come down to us over the years from that trial, while also playing up some of the street talk (i.e. the infamous Black Mafia) that most media at the time had snubbed.”

The fight game is a curious suitor but one that can entangle even the best and smartest of us.

“I suppose on some elemental level I enjoy watching people getting punched in the face, to put it somewhat glibly. (I don’t feel any need to over-intellectualize this.) If a poor schlub is getting the tar beat out of him by the proverbial favorite in the name of “good matchmaking,” I don’t see much there to enjoy, but when you have two skilled, evenly matched fighters, sometimes what happens inside the ropes approaches the sublime.

“A corollary to this is upsets. Since so much of boxing is engineered to produce outcomes favorable to the house fighter, when upsets happen, they almost seem like a miracle – a momentary glitch in the machine. Like when Andy Ruiz dethroned Anthony Joshua in 2019. Or consider a far more humble proceeding, an eight-round contest that took place this past year between Kurt Scoby and Dakota Linger.”

Nam talked about the particulars of that super lightweight bout.

“Scoby, the clear-cut A-side, was a ballyhooed prospect touted by his veteran promoter Lou DiBella as a future world champion and Linger was a little-known ham-and-egger from West Virginia, as crude and unheralded as they come,” he stated. “But Linger ended up stopping Scoby, seemingly with nothing more than a decent chin, above-average power, and stubbornness. Guys like Linger cut through all the hype and bull.”

Long before Las Vegas was the boxing capital of the world, New York City held that title.

“At risk of sounding like a curmudgeon, boxing in New York City has not been elite for a long time. It’s a joke, really. You can see this decline in both the amateur and pro ranks. (Indeed, the problem is interconnected.) The Daily News ditched the Golden Gloves brand and promoters seldom stage fights here anymore. By my count there were only 16 fights in the entire state of New York in 2023.

“Anecdotally, I’ve had conversations with a few amateur coaches who tell me that there has been a demonstrative drop-off in the talent level of the average open-class amateur boxer compared to even just 10 or 20 years ago,” said Nam. “This goes back to what the historian Mike Silver argues persuasively in his book, ‘The Arc Of Boxing: The Rise And Decline Of The Sweet Science,’ that there needs to be a culture and industry in place for boxing to thrive, and we simply do not have that anymore. What drives this home are the ubiquitous, white-collar boutique boxing gyms that have popped up around the city. In the neoliberal hellscape of Manhattan today, there is no place for Jimmy Glenn’s Times Square Gym or Cus D’Amato’s Gramercy Gym.”

For the most part, boxing is doing well but there are always issues that prevent the sport from fully flourishing.

“For years promoters and their apparatchiks insisted that boxing was on the upswing. There was Premier Boxing Champions and its audacious play to bring boxing back to network television. There was Top Rank and their own rights deal with ESPN. And there was the UK-based Matchroom, which barged its way into the United States market with the backing of DAZN, the streaming platform that pledged a billion dollars to this crusade. All three outfits have essentially failed to see their initial prognostications pan out. PBC is running (underwhelming) shows exclusively on Amazon Prime, Top Rank seems to be winding down its deal with ESPN and has few if any fighters on its rosters that are legitimate stars, and DAZN (along with Matchroom), after bleeding more than two billion dollars, shifted its priorities to the UK. Golden Boy, which also has a deal with DAZN, seems to be one Ryan Garcia meltdown away from tottering into oblivion.

“Now we’re seeing similar pronouncements made about Saudi Arabian chieftain Turki Alalshikh, who has quickly established himself as the savior du jour.

Major fights have been made under Alalshikh’s dictates, but is boxing healthy?

I fail to see how a sport that is being artificially propped up by a totalitarian state, with numerous human rights abuses can be considered healthy,” said Nam. “Once the spigot is turned off – and I assure you, it most certainly will – the sport will be worse off than before.”

In year’s past, there was one champion for each weight class. Now there are multiple boxers holding titles in one weight class.

“Of course there are too many champions in a single division. It is also true that this problem, diagnosed and groused about by every forum poster, blogger, journalist, and talking head, is the biggest fig leaf in the sport. Of all the jeremiads one could come up with, the ones leveled at the alphabet soup organizations are the most fatuous and exist at this point none other than to flatter the fancies of would-be moralizers,” Nam said.

“Sanctioning bodies are a problem, sure, but they are simply a symptom of a larger predicament, the sport’s inherent fragmentation. I don’t mean to sound fatalistic, but boxing’s problems are not going to go away because the WBA decides to do away with their “interim” championship belts or that every major promotional outfit starts to adhere to the rankings of The Ring magazine.”

Nam continued: “A couple of years ago I broke a story that examined the conduct between the WBA and a promoter. Using legal transcripts and business documents, I showed how, by all appearances, a promoter was paying the sanctioning body to gain favorable rankings for his fighters in a brazen pay-to-play scheme,” he said. “What happened? In any other sport there may have been a reckoning of sorts. Maybe 30 years ago the federal government might have given this a looksee. I was informed that a remonstration of sorts was coming my way. But the WBA to my knowledge never ended up responding to the points made in the article. That turned out to be a canny move. Keeping quiet actually helped defang the story. The episode highlighted a few things, chiefly of which is that, in the absence of a legitimate judicial apparatus in boxing, there are simply no consequences in the sport.”

Perhaps someone to oversee boxing would help, but this isn’t likely to happen.

“Boxing needs more than a commissioner to cure it of its myriad chronic illnesses. Would it help? Maybe. But I have a hard time believing that any meaningful form of organization will materialize in the sport anytime soon, in part because all the key industry players, i.e. the promoters, managers, and network executives, are not interested in reforming it to begin with,” Nam said. “The appeal of the sport has to do with its fundamentally decentralized nature, the fact that there is no barrier to entry and that, in theory, anyone with cash to burn and some patience, can end up with a staggering windfall.

“Ironically, boxing, despite its increasingly marginalized status, still remains a capitalist juggernaut, capable of generating obscene sums of money in a single night, with very little regulatory oversight. It’s a breeding ground for lowlifes, not surprisingly. I don’t see any meaningful change happening in the sport on the structural level. Even though there are a ton of things the individual state commissions can do to shore up the sport, that really only goes for the strong ones, like New York or California. Promoters can simply bop over to a more lenient one, a regulatory backwater like Oklahoma or Florida. That’s exactly what Eddie Hearn did recently with Conor Benn.”

This is what boxing is and what boxing does, and despite its various and sundry problems, it still captures our imagination.

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Boxing Odds and Ends: Mikaela Mayer on Jonas vs. Price and More

Published

2 days ago

March 4, 2025

Arne K. Lang

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The marquee match on this week’s fight docket takes place on Friday at London’s historic Royal Albert Hall where Natasha Jonas (16-2-1, 9 KOs) meets Lauren Price (9-0, 2 KOs). At stake are three of the four meaningful pieces of the female world welterweight title.

Price, an Olympic gold medalist in Tokyo and arguably the best all-around female athlete ever from Wales, holds the WBC and IBF versions of the title. Liverpool’s Jonas, unbeaten in her last seven since losing a narrow decision to Katie Taylor, holds the WBA belt.

Southern California native Mikaela Mayer owns the other piece of the 147-pound puzzle. If Mayer can get over her next hump – a rematch with Sandy Ryan – she would be in line to fight the Price-Jonas winner for the undisputed title. She and Ryan will collide on the 29^th of this month on a Top Rank card at the Fontainebleau in Las Vegas.

We caught up with Mikaela yesterday (Monday, Feb. 3) after she had finished a strenuous workout at the DLX Gym in Las Vegas to get her thoughts on the Jonas-Price encounter. Mikaela has a history with Jonas. They fought in January of last year on Jonas’s turf in Liverpool and Mayer came out on the short end of a very close and somewhat controversial decision.

Price is favored in the 4/1 range. To the oddsmakers, it matters greatly that there is a 10-year gap in their ages. Natasha Jonas turned 40 last year. However, Mayer, who would tell you that female boxers as a rule peak later than men (they take less damage because they don’t hit as hard and they absorb fewer punches fighting two-minute rounds) believes that the odds are askew.

“In my mind, this is a 50/50 fight,” she says. “Price’s former opponents were right there to be hit. Jonas doesn’t have a lot of wear and tear and I believe she has better spatial awareness inside the ring. The key will be if she can handle Price’s movement. I can see Price winning but, in my mind, she is no shoo-in. I think it will be a close fight.”

Carson Jones

Bobby Dobbs, the former manager of Carson Jones, has set up a Go Fund Me page in the name of Jones’ mother to defray the boxer’s funeral expenses. The Oklahoma City journeyman, active as recently as 2023, passed away on Feb. 28 at age 38 following an operation for achalasia, a rare swallowing disorder.

We are reminded that among Jones’ 38 wins was a match that originally went into the books as a “no-decision.” Nowadays, it’s no big surprise when a victory is amended to a “no-decision” – the adjudication usually comes after the fact because of a failed drug test – but the opposite is very uncommon.

The bout in question happened on May 5, 2011 in a hotel ballroom in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Jones was defending his USBA welterweight title against Ohio campaigner Michael Clark.

In the second round, Jones landed a punch that hit Clark in the family jewels and Clark wasn’t able to continue. The Oklahoma commission overturned the “no-decision” upon learning that Clark had forgot to bring his groin protector.

Fighter of the Month

The TSS Fighter of the Month for February is Keyshawn Davis who unseated WBO lightweight champion Denys Berinchyk on Bob Arum’s Valentine’s Day card before a sold-out crowd at Madison Square Garden’s Hulu Theater. It was the first world title for Davis, the former Olympic silver medalist who had the noted trainer Brian “Bomac” McIntyre in his corner.

Davis was a solid favorite. At age 36, his Ukrainian opponent had a lot of mileage on his odometer (Berinchyk purportedly had in the vicinity of 400 amateur fights). However, Berinchyk was also undefeated (19-0) and wasn’t expected to be such an easy mark.

Davis decked Berinchyk with a left hook to the liver in the third round and ended the contest with the same punch, only harder, in the next frame.

A pre-fight story in Forbes called Keyshawn Davis a mega-star on the cusp. It remains to be seen if he has the personality to transcend the sport, but one thing that’s certain is that he has made great gains since his Oct. 14, 2023 bout in Rosenberg, Texas with Nahir Albright. That fight went the full “10” and although Davis won, it transmuted into a “no-decision” after he tested positive for marijuana, a substance banned by the hidebound Texas commission.

Ketchel

A note from matchmaker, booking agent, and boxing historian Bruce Kielty informs us that the Polish Historical Society of Grand Rapids, Michigan, is $1,025 short of the $2,000 required to produce a new concrete base at the tombstone of Stanley Ketchel at Grand Rapids Holy Cross Cemetery.

Ketchel, the fabled “Michigan Assassin,” was born Stanislaw Kiecel in Grand Rapids in 1886. A two-time world middleweight champion, he was the premier knockout artist of his era, scoring 46 of his 49 wins inside the distance.

Ketchel was murdered in 1910 while staying at the ranch of a wealthy friend near Springfield, Missouri. The great sportswriter John Lardner revisited the incident and Ketchel’s tumultuous career in a widely anthologized 1954 story for True magazine. Lardner’s opening sentence is considered by some aficionados to be the best lede ever in a sports story: “Stanley Ketchel was twenty-four years old when he was fatally shot in the back by the common-law husband of the lady who was cooking his breakfast.”

The collar of Ketchel’s tombstone is cracked, weather-damaged, and falling apart. Any donation, however small, is welcomed. Contributions made by check should include the note “Ketchel Monument.” The address is Polish Historical Society, P.O. Box 1844, Grand Rapids, MI 49501.

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