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‘How To Box’ by Joe Louis: Part 5 – Defense
‘How To Box’ by Joe Louis: Part 5 – Defense
He was a master on defense.”—Nat Fleischer
The judgment of the founder of The Ring magazine is not to be ignored but nor can it be allowed to go unremarked that many of his most prestigious contemporaries disagreed with him, some quite vehemently. The great newspaperman Grantland Rice was amongst them:
“On the defensive side there is still a lapse between mind and muscle. A break in an important co-ordination.”
I have sympathy with both points of view. Louis is at heart an offensive machine. This is something of a cliché, but where certain high-end boxers are concerned—Dempsey, Louis, Tyson—it is applicable. Offensive machines are limited in defense, traditionally, a situation which is entirely natural. Getting the punches across becomes the most important thing for these men and in turn that determination makes the opponent nervous about punching—this is the first line of defense for any great hitter and Louis was no different. It was a brave man who planted his feet when sharing the ring with him. Nevertheless, even the most aggressive of boxers must have solid defensive technique to become successful at the highest level. As described in Part One—The Foundation of Skill, Joe laid some of the nuts and bolts of these techniques bare in How to Box, the manual released in his name after his triumphant return bout with Jersey Joe Walcott. Through Parts Two, Three and Four we’ve taken a close look at Joe Louis on offense using Joe’s ghost-written instructions in tandem with a detailed look at Louis on film, and putting defense under the microscope is going to be no different. In the other corner for this most difficult subject is one of Joe’s most difficult opponents—Jersey Joe Walcott.
Speaking in 1941 of the then absolutely primed version of Joe Louis, Billy Conn’s trainer Johnny Ray said before Louis-Conn I:
“You guys have got it all wrong. You don’t box Joe Louis. You can put all the boxers you like in front of him and he’ll find them. No, you need to fight Joe Louis. You need to fight Louis every minute of every round, you need someone who can take his punches and give him some back. That’s how you beat him.”
The great Conn came within touching distance of doing just that before succumbing to the inevitable. Now Walcott set out to find a combination of the two strategies described in Ray’s informed outburst that would be the past-prime champion’s undoing. His mission statement was nothing less than the literal perfection of boxing’s defining mission statement, one that will be repeated a thousand times in gyms across the world this very day in one form or another: hit and don’t be hit. Walcott spent fleeting, desperate moments in the pocket always looking for the exit just before Louis hit his stride, exchanged with him at distance but always trying to force Louis to lead in unfavourable moments, then vanishing in a series of sudden, unpredictable moves that left a fuming Louis resetting his stance over and over again. Louis does not seem to have landed a single straight right hand of real import in the twenty-six rounds spent in Walcott’s company. Readers of Part Three will understand the significance of this.
Jersey Joe stretched Louis to the absolute limit on offense but also on defence and in all likelihood it is amongst his worst performances in this regard, but this is a fight I wanted to take a closer look at before this series was concluded. So, I’m breaking one of my own rules and examining a fight of which apparently only highlights have survived—Louis-Walcott I.
In the opening moments of that fight’s first round, Louis demonstrates his most crucial defensive skill, the slip. In How to Box this is described as a technique “used against straight leads and counters. As your opponent leads with his left, shift your body about five or six inches to the right of the blow, making it fall harmlessly over your shoulder…sometimes it is only necessary to move your head to slip a punch.”
This is a key skill for Louis and one that allowed him to consistently out-jab opponents over the course of his career, even those who out-reached him.
After being caught with two clipping Walcott jabs early, Louis slipped the third in this manner. What is crucial to note about the Louis defence is that it is built specifically to facilitate offense. After the punch is slipped, How to Box tells us that we should find ourselves in position “for a blow to his unprotected left side.” This is the theory, in practice Louis comes out of the slip to throw a punch at Walcott’s right side before following it up with a short straight. It is Louis’ early warning that the angles Walcott will be showing will not be of the type he has been shown in the gym.
It’s also an early lesson in the way that Louis wove his complete offense together with his less astonishing defence to create a pattern of deterrent that affected every opponent he ever met.
Moments later, Walcott tried his first serious left hook and Louis demonstrated the duck. “Bend forwards at the waist, ducking his blow. As soon as you have ducked his blow, straighten up and at the same time counter with a blow to your opponent.”
Louis pulls this counter off beautifully, following a left uppercut to the body with a clubbing right hand around the back of Walcott’s head as Jersey Joe, already rocking a little, tries for his own duck. He doesn’t quite make it and backs up before unveiling the two-step that would cause Louis trouble all night, going away and coming back with a punch (usually a right), one big, horrible feint that Louis will fail to unpick in either fight. Later, swarming Walcott back to his own corner, Louis comes square and continues to throw blows even as Walcott blocks them on his gloves. Here we see the elemental weakness in the Louis defence—it is all but abandoned when he is in the full flow of an attack. Most offensive machines share this weakness. It is born of the absolute surety that exists in this extremely rare breed of fighter that they can outpunch any opponent, and that exchanges are therefore to be sought.
After going back to his boxing in the second, Louis shows a nice parry in the third. The champion’s curious habit of occasionally keeping his gloves tightly knitted at his chest is not entirely a matter of preparing his offense; it also allows him to move the “unit” the two gloves create up or down to catch straight blows that do not leave the opponent available for a counter. Nor does How to Box stress counterpunching after blocking blows. On occasions where the guard is made mobile to block opposition punches, the priority seems to move over to defence, perhaps the reason Louis did not use this strategy often. He can be seen primarily as a slipper and ducker of punches rather than a parrying or blocking fighter due to the lack of natural countering opportunities these earlier methods provide when compared to the latter, although such opportunities can of course be engineered. Early in the ninth Louis did exactly that. As Walcott moved forward and fired two-handed, Louis showed good flexibility, lifting his forearms which worked as an additional guard as Louis performed the block as described in How to Box:
“As your opponent leads, turn your body…If your opponent leads with a blow to the chin, use your shoulder to block it.”
Louis turns with this two-handed attack, tucking in his chin and lifting the relevant shoulder on each turn and when to his own surprise, Walcott “pops up” behind these shots right in Joe’s kill zone he improvises a pivoted hook which catches Jersey Joe on the mouth, helping him win the round.
In the fourteenth he can be seen parrying a Walcott jab and then firing off his own, not quite generating a counter but using his defence to neutralise a rare Jersey Joe lead before taking advantage and landing his own punch.
The fifteenth round of Louis-Walcott I may not be a round that in particular brings to mind matters of defence as Walcott ran and Louis chased him, but actually it is one of Joe’s better defensive rounds. He parries a Walcott jab in his very first action and slips two more before throwing his first punch, a left hook which glances off Walcott’s head. Louis is trying to box noticeably closer to Walcott now and his defence is paramount. Walcott spent most of the final round retreating and flashing up unpredictable punches when cornered or desperate, but Louis deals with most of these before firing back. Mobile and hard to hit, Louis demonstrates the truth of Johnny Ray’s statement of 1941 and his own immortal line before the Louis-Conn rematch: they can run, but they can’t hide.
The decision for this fight was by far and away the most controversial of The Bomber’s career and to this day the word used to describe it is “robbery.” For as long as we are discussing the fight, I have decided to take a brief look of my own at what seems at times to be established fact.
The 2012 Manny Pacquiao-Timothy Bradley fight will be, for many, the benchmark robbery for a generation. This is a result so seemingly without explanation that of the one-hundred and twenty-five media sources I have seen produce a scorecard we have one-hundred and twenty-one scoring in favour of Pacquiao, three scoring in favour of Bradley, and one scoring the fight a draw. That is a ratio of around about 1:30 against those seeing the fight any other way than a win for Pacquiao.
The Pittsburgh Press conducted a ringside poll of writers at the venue the night Louis decisioned Walcott and whilst the majority, twenty-four, had Jersey Joe the winner, some sixteen had it for Louis. This is a ratio of 2:3 against.
One media source reports a Bradley win for every thirty polled.
Two media sources report a Louis win for every five polled.
The point is not that Pacquiao was robbed and so Louis was not, the point is that those who did not see a win for Pacquiao in the first Bradley fight can be dismissed as statistical anomalies—they either made mistakes or sat in a corner of the stadium that would always give birth to a strange scorecard. In the case of Louis, he is backed by sixteen boxing men who know the fight game. If we include the judges amongst those polled, the difference between those who see it for Louis and those who see it for Walcott starts to look more negligible.
The widest media scorecard I have been able to source for Louis-Walcott was the AP card which had it 9-5-1 for Walcott. I was unable, as a primary source to uncover more than three ringside card that had Walcott winning any more than eight rounds. Those who stood in judgment over Louis in a surprisingly rabid press that following week typically did so based on a scorecard provided for them by a ringside reporter that had Walcott winning only six, seven or eight rounds. This is exactly what almost every single ringsider has Louis scoring.
But most interesting to me were the reports made by the two sources which, rightly or wrongly, hold the most weight in my mind when it comes to deducing the reality where close, un-filmed fights are concerned. The New York Times described Louis as having been “out-thought” and “generally made to look foolish,” but the newspaper also scored the fight for the champion because he had “made all the fighting, did most of the leading and, his two knockdowns notwithstanding, landed a greater number of blows.”
Nat Fleischer, scoring for The Ring, also saw it for Louis.
Louis, unquestionably the puncher in the fight, landed more punches according to the Times. Whilst the newspaper men ringside tended to believe that Walcott had won, there were many who felt that the exact opposite was the case, including the men who mattered. Referee Ruby Goldstein scored it 7-6-2 for Walcott, judge Marty Monroe had it 9-6 to Louis and judge Frank Forbes had it 8-6-1 for the champion.
The highlights we have available to us seem inconclusive with neither fighter really emerging as clearly the superior of the other. In the rounds I have used to describe the Joe Louis defence, one, two and four can be scored for Walcott and three, nine, fourteen and fifteen for Louis.
But even if we had the entire fight, all we would have is a modern eye trying to interpret a fight set in 1947 with their respect for the title, their heightened appreciation of aggression and disdain for retreat.
Louis was the aggressor, the puncher, the champion, and according to at least one reputable source the busier man. More than that, there were few ringside scorecards that mimicked the degree of outrage expressed by the press.
Over the years I’ve come to suspect—just to suspect—that the decision was a reasonable one.
I feel with certainty that this was no robbery. Walcott may have deserved the nod; he may not have; but either way it was close. Why, then, the controversy? It is a fact that the crowd booed Louis from the ring. This has lent credence to what has become a truth by repetition. Perhaps, like Louis himself, they were disgusted with the champion’s performance (disgust, according to Joe, that caused him to attempt to leave the ring before the verdict was even read). More likely, they had seen Louis bamboozled by an opponent that had seemed one step ahead of him throughout. But fights are not and were not scored upon aesthetics. If Louis was out-landing Walcott and enough of those punches carried enough vim to impress two of the three judges, Joe’s job was done.
Finally, the fight continued to garner attention in the press because the method for scoring boxing itself was on trial. Whilst Walcott had been awarded points for his two knockdowns in rounds one and four on the supplementary system, they had in reality only gained him two rounds on the cards and whilst judge Forbes actually awarded Louis more rounds, he awarded Walcott more points. When there seemed even a hint of a chance that the decision could be overturned on a technicality (it was claimed that Forbes should have reversed his decision based upon general impressions, permitted in a case where a judge awards more points but fewer rounds to a given fighter) the controversy continued to burn.
And it would burn until Louis doused it with an eleventh-round knockout of Walcott some six months later. But I think he deserved his win of December 1947, too, or at least I don’t consider that he was firmly beaten as the legend says. It was a close fight—so close that perhaps even a handful of punches could have turned it.
For Louis, then, his defence would at least once prove to be as important as his offense. Had Walcott landed even one more punch in the right round, perhaps Louis would have been a two-time champion of the world instead of the most dominant world champion in history, as he remains.
In the sixth and final part of this technical analysis we’ll take a closer look at this champion at his very, very best.
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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
Bakhodir Jalolov Returns on Thursday in Another Disgraceful Mismatch
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
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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