‘How To Box’ by Joe Louis: Part 1 – The Foundations of Skill

Published

2 years ago

April 25, 2023

How-to-Box-by-Joe-Louis-Part-1-The-Foundations-of-Skill

It’s still in print. You can log on to Amazon right now and buy one for yourself, renamed, repackaged, all shiny and new. But I like that mine is old. It comes straight out of Joe’s own era, has followed its own path through these past seventy years to find itself in my hands. It was printed late in 1948 in those perfect months that followed Joe’s eventual destruction of Jersey Joe Walcott in the rematch of their first controversial meeting, after his twenty-fifth straight title defence but before his ill-fated comeback. A legend, a hero, there had never been one quite like him, there arguably never would be again.

Heavily ghosted by Edward J. Mallory, How to Box was not exclusively in Joe’s own words, but it was a capture of his technical essence. Nobody, not Louis, not Mallory, certainly not I myself can take something as perfectly formed and improbable as the boxer born Joseph Louis Barrow and expect to produce a story fully told with only words. Homer himself, wonderful though his account of the boxing match between Epeus and Eurylas may have been, could not have conveyed the splendour of Joe Louis in full flow, so for me, the task is impossible.

But then, nor can I describe the feat of engineering that is The Ambassador Bridge. The nuts, though. The bolts. Hand me them one at a time and I can describe them to you. If we work at it long enough and hard enough, maybe we can begin to understand the process that brought it together, the building of the bridge that once allowed us to cross the water and visit the Joe Louis Arena in Detroit.

The nuts and bolts of Joe’s brilliant engineering are here in this book. If we could put this instruction manual to work for us and study the construction for ourselves, what might we find out? It’s an intriguing idea and one that wouldn’t leave me alone. The result is this close look at Joe Louis, based primarily upon How to Box but with conclusions drawn only from the fight films that travelled the same crooked path as the manual, all the way from the thirties and forties and into our possession. No doubt there will be blind alleys and false leads. I don’t apologise for them. Joe walked those roads too, striving for the perfection.

Legend has it that before beginning the fighter-trainer relationship that would help define him, Louis worked with one Holman Williams, then a promising professional from Detroit who boxed mainly out of Michigan. Williams, soon to be one of the greatest fighters ever to have lived, would never scale the championship heights as did Louis but nevertheless is credited by some with supplying Louis with perhaps the most precious gift he ever received—his jab. But Williams is also said to have taught Louis the rudiments of the defence and was supposedly the first man to encourage Louis to punch in combination. “Don’t throw one punch at a time and wait for the guy to fall,” Holman is said to have urged Louis. “Hit him again!” Passed down to us by the victim and those lucky enough to be in attendance comes the description of his first knockout combination, thrown by Louis at amateur Joe Thomas at the Detroit Athletic Club in 1932. A double jab was followed by a right hand to the body before the teenaged Joe Louis closed the blinds on Thomas with another right hand to the temple.

But his trainer for his move into the professional ranks, Jack Blackburn, would still have his work cut out for him. If Holman Williams was to be an unlucky fighter, Blackburn had written the book on it. One of the most brilliant boxers of his generation he had shared the ring with both Joe Gans and Sam Langford several times, getting the better of each at least once. But the fight game had not been good to him. In between matching the greats and the giants he faced in his time boxing as a lightweight and welterweight, Blackburn found time to find the bottle and find trouble. He was a bad, dangerous man with a dangerous heart.

When he first set eyes upon Louis, he famously sent him away saying, “a coloured boxer who can fight and won’t lie down can’t get any fights. I’m better off with white boys who aren’t as good.”

He changed his mind when he saw Louis punch.

“He was likely to trip over his own feet, but he could kill you with that left jab. I figured, man, if he can hit you that hard with a jab, wonder what he can do with his right?”

What Louis needed to learn from Blackburn, more than anything, was how to move. How to get balanced, how to move, how to box. He knew how to punch, but he didn’t yet know how to fight.

“Boxing is built upon punching and footwork,” says How to Box. “If the stance is too narrow for balance, move the right foot a few inches to the right to widen the stance; if too wide, glide the right foot forwards a few inches. Don’t lock the left leg but keep it straight.”

Freddie Roach described Joe Louis as the “best textbook fighter of all time.” Here we see the first great foundation of that inch-perfect style. Louis hardly ever made small adjustments with his left foot. Watching him, I sometimes get the impression he would prefer not to move it at all. His left jab is always perched over that lead foot, ready to be thrown. Many of Joe’s critics accuse him of being robotic, stiff, of lacking dynamism in his footwork. This is not a criticism without basis, but nor is it the whole story. He sacrifices dynamism upon the altar of destruction; he trades footspeed for handspeed; he swaps a natural establishment of range for naturally being in position to punch—always.

The description of footwork in How to Box is so simple but to see it in action is to understand why simplicity is so often more akin to genius than complexity. Louis does as he describes, leading with his left foot, “a few inches at a time, with the right foot following, always maintaining a proper stance.” Louis almost never abandoned the stance Blackburn drilled into him: The right arm crooked, elbow protecting the ribs, “both arms relaxed, ready to attack or defend…chin down.”

His left hand would famously float; Louis would have that error corrected for him, mainly by Max Schmeling but with more than a little help from James J. Braddock and Tommy Farr. But that stance was, for the most part, developed early and adhered to throughout a career that encountered more styles and types than any other fighter at the weight.

It was visible as early as February 21st ,1925 for Joe’s rematch with Lee Ramage. The first fight had seen Louis drop the boom with Ramage ahead on points. In the rematch, Louis would demonstrate the fundamentals that would take him to the title and then beyond. The ring is not Disney—there are no fairy tales. Every dramatic narrative is built upon the twin pillars of will and skill.

Ramage fought on the backfoot, having previously been hit many times by Louis and finding he did not care for it. As discussed, his footwork lacked dynamism, so Louis never tried to get that step ahead of the opponent. He tended not to pre-cut the ring, and avoided getting ahead of his man as he was circled. Rather, he kept his front toe perpendicular to his man’s backfoot, keeping the psychological and physical pressure firmly upon him, moving with him, the definitive stalker forcing the mistake, stressing balance both in the ring and in print.

“You must be able to move the body easily at all times so that balance will not be disturbed.”

On film, Louis dips as he moves onto Ramage, jabbing, and even when he flashes forwards driving his opponent to the ropes for the first time, Louis is not compromised. He facilitates brutal blows with his studied mobility and is within hitting distance again only seconds later. The second time Ramage comes crashing off the ropes, Louis rotates his torso as he punches, the foundations are so solid that he is able to utilise a plane of movement not seen again in the heavyweight division until Mike Tyson, at least not by a killing puncher. Tiny adjustments with the backfoot are enough to transfer his weight around his body to wherever it needs to be for the punches he is using to douse Ramage’s enthusiasm.

Ramage actually boxes well for much of the second half of the second round. He moves away, jabbing, he looks reasonably skilled, quite graceful. But Louis is so fundamentally correct that even were he not Ramage’s superior in every single way he would still be the master. He is so well balanced that he can call upon almost any punch from almost any position, whether he is dipping in and slipping a jab or moving back throwing clipping uppercuts as Ramage tries in vain to crowd him. He can commit to punches other fighters would be unable to utilize in similar positions having compromised themselves. Joe almost never compromised his fundamentals. This near perfection proved too much for Ramage after only two rounds as first a right hand and then a left hook laid him low.

Of course, there were limitations, and these were exposed by nobody so completely during the Brown Bomber’s prime as they were by Billy Conn. Conn recognized early that he would be trouble for Louis telling his trainer and partner in pugilism John “Moonie” Ray to “get me in with this guy! He wouldn’t be able to hit me with a handful of rice!” years before his first outing at heavyweight. Conn was right. Louis did struggle to hit Conn, for a variety of reasons. Most of these are related to Conn’s brilliance, but that’s a story for another day. Here we are interested in the great heavyweight champion.

Firstly, Billy’s footwork was every bit as disciplined as Joe’s. Going backwards he tended to use the same small moves as Louis did coming in, meaning that he minimized dramatic errors and dented Joe’s momentum. Louis forced his opponents to make the angles. He punished mistakes. He did not, as a habit, make these angles with his footwork, rather he made them with the virtual threat of his fists. He forced the opponent to make the angle. In and of itself, this is one of the hardest skills in boxing to master, but it does not pay to rely too heavily upon even the deftest of skills against a fighter like Conn.

When Conn did abandon his small moves in favour of big ones, they tended to be brilliantly judged and perfectly executed. Joe’s lack of dynamic footwork was exposed.

Conn was also very careful to punch Louis whenever the opportunity presented itself whilst he was going away. Grossly underrated as a puncher at heavyweight (fighting men weighing over 175 lbs. fifteen times Conn registered eight stoppages including one over Bob Pastor), Conn’s work prohibited Louis rushes.

On the inside, he set up a brick-wall defence and cuffed the champion, but his brilliance was not so prosaic. Repeatedly, Conn walked Louis in clinches, he tilted him, he pushed him to the side, he tugged upon his arms, he pushed his head into Joe’s face and chest. In short, he did anything and everything he could to interfere with Joe’s balance. He knew the importance of disrupting Joe’s foundation. Bereft of his most exquisite attribute Louis could not turn over his punches in the special way he had learned and get his power across. Conn survived those cuffing punches both on the inside and the outside where Conn’s perfect footwork and granite chin combined to make him the most elusive of targets for the killing blow. If this sounds like an easy fix, take note of the following—every fighter that tried it got knocked unconscious or something like it, including Billy Conn.

From How to Box:

“…when Billy missed me with a zipping left hook, I quickly crossed a right to his jaw and followed it by several straight rights that sent him crashing to the canvas. I had to wait for Billy to miss.”

I think Louis hits the nail on the head here. He is indeed reduced from forcing the mistake as he did in so many of his twenty-five successful title defences, to waiting for a mistake. But with Louis you would make only one.

“Clever footwork does not mean hopping and jumping around,” we learn from How to Box. “This will put you off balance and the slightest blow will upset you. The purpose of clever footwork is to give your opponent false leads…it also carries you out of danger when hurt.”

This is Louis in a nutshell: economy. Every movement has a purpose, there is no such thing as show. He is often derided for this and is sometimes compared negatively with the only other heavyweight to inhabit that stratosphere reserved for the true greats, Muhammad Ali. I don’t want to get into that too heavily here, but as a final word I want to say that in my opinion, Joe’s footwork is every bit as impressive, in its own way, as is Muhammad’s. Even if Louis had been technically capable of producing Ali’s own brand of genius, Blackburn would not have allowed it. Indeed, amongst the many other services he rendered, Blackburn took Louis down off his toes. The reasoning was simple—to perfect his balance and thereby maximize the kill on his delivery. This is what Blackburn means when he says that Joe Louis is a “manufactured killer, not a natural one.”

Louis, by moving conservatively, kept his powder dry for late round knockouts—KO11 Bob Pastor, TKO13 Abe Simon, KO13 Billy Conn, KO11 Joe Walcott—versus only three visits to the judges’ scorecards—UD15 Tommy Farr, SD 15 Arturo Godoy, SD15 Joe Walcott—in title matches.

No heavyweight had better footwork than Joe Louis given his individual style.

But having said that…it’s not why you watch Joe Louis fight. You don’t watch Joe fight for his footwork—Muhammad Ali, yes, Joe Louis, no.

You watch Joe Louis for a different reason. To quote Jack Blackburn:

“Your fists, Chappie. Let your fists be your judge.”

We’ll talk about his judges in Part 2.

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Arne’s Almanac: The First BWAA Dinner Was Quite the Shindig

Published

12 minutes ago

April 20, 2025

Arne K. Lang

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The first annual dinner of the Boxing Writers Association of America was staged on April 25, 1926 in the grand ballroom of New York’s Hotel Astor, an edifice that rivaled the original Waldorf Astoria as the swankiest hotel in the city. Back then, the organization was known as the Boxing Writers Association of Greater New York.

The ballroom was configured to hold 1200 for the banquet which was reportedly oversubscribed. Among those listed as agreeing to attend were the governors of six states (New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, and Maryland) and the mayors of 10 of America’s largest cities.

In 1926, radio was in its infancy and the digital age was decades away (and inconceivable). So, every journalist who regularly covered boxing was a newspaper and/or magazine writer, editor, or cartoonist. And at this juncture in American history, there were plenty of outlets for someone who wanted to pursue a career as a sportswriter and had the requisite skills to get hired.

The following papers were represented at the inaugural boxing writers’ dinner:

New York Times

New York News

New York World

New York Sun

New York Journal

New York Post

New York Mirror

New York Telegram

New York Graphic

New York Herald Tribune

Brooklyn Eagle

Brooklyn Times

Brooklyn Standard Union

Brooklyn Citizen

Bronx Home News

This isn’t a complete list because a few of these papers, notably the New York World and the New York Journal, had strong afternoon editions that functioned as independent papers. Plus, scribes from both big national wire services (Associated Press and UPI) attended the banquet and there were undoubtedly a smattering of scribes from papers in New Jersey and Connecticut.

Back then, the event’s organizer Nat Fleischer, sports editor of the New York Telegram and the driving force behind The Ring magazine, had little choice but to limit the journalistic component of the gathering to writers in the New York metropolitan area. There wasn’t a ballroom big enough to accommodate a good-sized response if he had extended the welcome to every boxing writer in North America.

The keynote speaker at the inaugural dinner was New York’s charismatic Jazz Age mayor James J. “Jimmy” Walker, architect of the transformative Walker Law of 1920 which ushered in a new era of boxing in the Empire State with a template that would guide reformers in many other jurisdictions.

Prizefighting was then associated with hooligans. In his speech, Mayor Walker promised to rid the sport of their ilk. “Boxing, as you know, is closest to my heart,” said hizzoner. “So I tell you the police force is behind you against those who would besmirch or injure boxing. Rowdyism doesn’t belong in this town or in your game.” (In 1945, Walker would be the recipient of the Edward J. Neil Memorial Award given for meritorious service to the sport. The oldest of the BWAA awards, the previous recipients were all active or former boxers. The award, no longer issued under that title, was named for an Associated Press sportswriter and war correspondent who died from shrapnel wounds covering the Spanish Civil War.)

Another speaker was well-traveled sportswriter Wilbur Wood, then affiliated with the Brooklyn Citizen. He told the assembly that the aim of the organization was two-fold: to help defend the game against its detractors and to promote harmony among the various factions.

Of course, the 1926 dinner wouldn’t have been as well-attended without the entertainment. According to press dispatches, Broadway stars and performers from some of the city’s top nightclubs would be there to regale the attendees. Among the names bandied about were vaudeville superstars Sophie Tucker and Jimmy Durante, the latter of whom would appear with his trio, Durante, (Lou) Clayton, and (Eddie) Jackson.

There was a contraction of New York newspapers during the Great Depression. Although empirical evidence is lacking, the inaugural boxing writers dinner was likely the largest of its kind. Fifteen years later, in 1941, the event drew “more than 200” according to a news report. There was no mention of entertainment.

In 1950, for the first time, the annual dinner was opened to the public. For $25, a civilian could get a meal and mingle with some of his favorite fighters. Sugar Ray Robinson was the Edward J. Neil Award winner that year, honored for his ring exploits and for donating his purse from the Charlie Fusari fight to the Damon Runyon Cancer Fund.

There was no formal announcement when the Boxing Writers Association of Greater New York was re-christened the Boxing Writers Association of America, but by the late 1940s reporters were referencing the annual event as simply the boxing writers dinner. By then, it had become traditional to hold the annual affair in January, a practice discontinued after 1971.

The winnowing of New York’s newspaper herd plus competing banquets in other parts of the country forced Nat Fleischer’s baby to adapt. And more adaptations will be necessary in the immediate future as the future of the BWAA, as it currently exists, is threatened by new technologies. If the forthcoming BWAA dinner (April 30 at the Edison Ballroom in mid-Manhattan) were restricted to wordsmiths from the traditional print media, the gathering would be too small to cover the nut and the congregants would be drawn disproportionately from the geriatric class.

Some of those adaptations have already started. Last year, Las Vegas resident Sean Zittel, a recent UNLV graduate, had the distinction of becoming the first videographer welcomed into the BWAA. With more and more people getting their news from sound bites, rather than the written word, the videographer serves an important function.

The reporters who conducted interviews with pen and paper have gone the way of the dodo bird and that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. A taped interview for a “talkie” has more integrity than a story culled from a paper and pen interview because it is unfiltered. Many years ago, some reporters, after interviewing the great Joe Louis, put words in his mouth that made him seem like a dullard, words consistent with the Sambo stereotype. In other instances, the language of some athletes was reconstructed to the point where the reader would think the athlete had a second job as an English professor.

The content created by videographers is free from that bias. More of them will inevitably join the BWAA and similar organizations in the future.

Photo: Nat Fleischer is flanked by Sugar Ray Robinson and Tony Zale at the 1947 boxing writers dinner.

A recognized authority on the history of prizefighting and the history of American sports gambling, TSS editor-in-chief Arne K. Lang is the author of five books including “Prizefighting: An American History,” released by McFarland in 2008 and re-released in a paperback edition in 2020.

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Gabriela Fundora KOs Marilyn Badillo and Perez Upsets Conwell in Oceanside

Published

14 hours ago

April 20, 2025

David A. Avila

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It was just a numbers game for Gabriela Fundora and despite Mexico’s Marilyn Badillo’s elusive tactics it took the champion one punch to end the fight and retain her undisputed flyweight world title by knockout on Saturday.

Will it be her last flyweight defense?

Though Fundora (16-0, 8 KOs) fired dozens of misses, a single punch found Badillo (19-1-1, 3 KOs) and ended her undefeated career and first attempt at a world title at the Frontwave Arena in Oceanside, California.

Fundora, however, proves unbeatable at flyweight.

The champion entered the arena as the headliner for the Golden Boy Promotion show and stepped through the ropes with every physical advantage possible, including power.

Mexico’s Badillo was a midget compared to Fundora but proved to be as elusive as a butterfly in a menagerie for the first six rounds. As the six-inch taller Fundora connected on one punch for every dozen thrown, that single punch was a deadly reminder.

Badillo tried ducking low and slipping to the left while countering with slashing uppercuts, she found little success. She did find the body a solid target but the blows proved to be useless. And when Badillo clinched, that proved more erroneous as Fundora belted her rapidly during the tie-ups.

“She was kind of doing her ducking thing,” said Fundora describing Badillo’s defensive tactics. “I just put the pressure on. It was just like a train. We didn’t give her that break.”

The Mexican fighter tried valiantly with various maneuvers. None proved even slightly successful. Fundora remained poised and under control as she stalked the challenger.

In the seventh round Badillo seemed to take a stand and try to slug it out with Fundora. She quickly was lit up by rapid left crosses and down she went at 1:44 of the seventh round. The Mexican fighter’s corner wisely waved off the fight and referee Rudy Barragan stopped the fight and held the dazed Badillo upright.

Once again Fundora remained champion by knockout. The only question now is will she move up to super flyweight or bantamweight to challenge the bigger girls.

Perez Beats Conwell.

Mexico’s Jorge “Chino” Perez (33-4, 26 KOs) upset Charles Conwell (21-1, 15 KOs) to win by split decision after 12 rounds in their super welterweight showdown.

It was a match that paired two hard-hitting fighters whose ledgers brimmed with knockouts, but neither was able to score a knockdown against each other.

Neither fighter moved backward. It was full steam ahead with Conwell proving successful to the body and head with left hooks and Perez connecting with rights to the head and body. It was difficult to differentiate the winner.

Though Conwell seemed to be the superior defensive fighter and more accurate, two judges preferred Perez’s busier style. They gave the fight to Perez by 115-113 scores with the dissenter favoring Conwell by the same margin.

It was Conwell’s first pro loss. Maybe it will open doors for more opportunities.

Other Bouts

Tristan Kalkreuth (15-1) managed to pass a serious heat check by unanimous decision against former contender Felix Valera (24-8) after a 10-round back-and-forth heavyweight fight.

It was very close.

Kalkreuth is one of those fighters that possess all the physical tools including youth and size but never seems to be able to show it. Once again he edged past another foe but at least this time he faced an experienced fighter in Valera.

Valera had his moments especially in the middle of the 10-round fight but slowed down during the last three rounds.

One major asset for Kalkreuth was his chin. He got caught but still motored past the clever Valera. After 10 rounds two judges saw it 99-91 and one other judge 97-93 all for Kalkreuth.

Highly-rated prospect Ruslan Abdullaev (2-0) blasted past dangerous Jino Rodrigo (13- 5-2) in an eight round super lightweight fight. He nearly stopped the very tough Rodrigo in the last two rounds and won by unanimous decision.

Abdullaev is trained by Joel and Antonio Diaz in Indio.

Bakersfield prospect Joel Iriarte (7-0, 7 KOs) needed only 1:44 to knock out Puerto Rico’s Marcos Jimenez (25-12) in a welterweight bout.

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‘Krusher’ Kovalev Exits on a Winning Note: TKOs Artur Mann in his ‘Farewell Fight’

Published

1 day ago

April 19, 2025

Arne K. Lang

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At his peak, former three-time world light heavyweight champion Sergey “Krusher” Kovalev ranked high on everyone’s pound-for-pound list. Now 42 years old – he turned 42 earlier this month – Kovalev has been largely inactive in recent years, but last night he returned to the ring in his hometown of Chelyabinsk, Russia, and rose to the occasion in what was billed as his farewell fight, stopping Artur Mann in the seventh frame.

Kovalev hit his peak during his first run as a world title-holder. He was 30-0-1 (26 KOs) entering first match with Andre Ward, a mark that included a 9-0 mark in world title fights. The only blemish on his record was a draw that could have been ruled a no-contest (journeyman Grover Young was unfit to continue after Kovalev knocked down in the second round what with was deemed an illegal rabbit punch). Among those nine wins were two stoppages of dangerous Haitian-Canadian campaigner Jean Pascal and a 12-round shutout over Bernard Hopkins.

Kovalev’s stature was not diminished by his loss to the undefeated Ward. All three judges had it 114-113, but the general feeling among the ringside press was that Sergey nicked it.

The rematch was also somewhat controversial. Referee Tony Weeks, who halted the match in the eighth stanza with Kovalev sitting on the lower strand of ropes, was accused of letting Ward get away with a series of low blows, including the first punch of a three-punch series of body shots that culminated in the stoppage. Sergey was wobbled by a punch to the head earlier in the round and was showing signs of fatigue, but he was still in the fight. Respected judge Steve Weisfeld had him up by three points through the completed rounds.

Sergey Kovalev was never the same after his second loss to Andre Ward, albeit he recaptured a piece of the 175-pound title twice, demolishing Vyacheslav Shabranskyy for the vacant WBO belt after Ward announced his retirement and then avenging a loss to Eleider Alvarez (TKO by 7) with a comprehensive win on points in their rematch.

Kovalev’s days as a title-holder ended on Nov. 2, 2019 when Canelo Alvarez, moving up two weight classes to pursue a title in a fourth weight division, stopped him in the 11^th round, terminating what had been a relatively even fight with a hellacious left-right combination that left Krusher so discombobulated that a count was superfluous.

That fight went head-to-head with a UFC fight in New York City. DAZN, to their everlasting discredit, opted to delay the start of Canelo-Kovalev until the main event of the UFC fight was finished. The delay lasted more than an hour and Kovalev would say that he lost his psychological edge during the wait.

Kovalev had two fights in the cruiserweight class between his setback to Canelo and last night’s presumptive swan song. He outpointed Tervel Pulev in Los Angeles and lost a 10-round decision to unheralded Robin Sirwan Safar in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

Artur Mann, a former world title challenger – he was stopped in three rounds by Mairis Briedis in 2021 when Briedis was recognized as the top cruiserweight in the world – was unexceptional, but the 34-year-old German, born in Kazakhstan, wasn’t chopped liver either, and Kovalev’s stoppage of him will redound well to the Russian when he becomes eligible for the Boxing Hall of Fame.

Krusher almost ended the fight in the second round. He knocked Mann down hard with a short left hand and seemingly scored another knockdown before the round was over (but it was ruled a slip). Mann barely survived the round.

In the next round, a punch left Mann with a bad cut on his right eyelid, but the German came to fight and rounds three, four and five were competitive.

Kovalev had a good sixth round although there were indications that he was tiring. But in the seventh he got a second wind and unleashed a right-left combination that rolled back the clock to the days when he was one of the sport’s most feared punchers. Mann went down hard and as he staggered to his feet, his corner signaled that the fight should be stopped and the referee complied. The official time was 0:49 of round seven. It was the 30^th KO for Kovalev who advanced his record to 36-5-1.

Addendum: History informs us that Farewell Fights have a habit of becoming redundant, by which we mean that boxers often get the itch to fight again after calling it quits. Have we seen the last of Sergey “Krusher” Kovalev? We woudn’t bet on it.

The complete Kovalev-Mann fight card was live-streamed on the Boxing News youtube channel.

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