Category: Mike Tyson

Thurman, the man no more.

The news Keith Thurman will not be boxing the surging Tim Tszyu for the Australian’s WBO belt and the vacant WBC Junior Middleweight title this weekend due to a bicep injury caused barely a ripple of surprise to those who have followed the Florida man’s catalogue of sabbaticals in recent years. It is cruel luck perhaps, but nevertheless an entirely predictable development for a 35-year-old fighter once of incredible gift, seeking to push his body through the rigours of training camp for only the second time in two years and the third in five.

Thurman’s career, if this marks the end of his significance, is increasingly defined by what he has been unable to do as that which once came naturally to him.

Evidence of declension, from the vitality of his twenties to the dwindling returns of his thirties, was writ large on his face long before he withdrew from the Tszyu fight. There was age in his eyes. The luster of youth lost from his skin.

The elongated Sebastian Fundora, also from Florida, and aged 26, steps forward in Thurman’s stead.

Continue reading “Thurman, the man no more.” →
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Old man Wilder will ‘find’ Parker, eventually

Eventually, boxing always returns to the big men. Heavyweights transcend the traditional boundaries of boxing in ways Middleweights and Welters never can. Enthralling the masses; from trailblazer Jack Johnson, to Jack Dempsey, from Joe Louis to Mike Tyson and of course the greatest of them all, Muhammad Ali too.

On Saturday, the boxing circus will pitch tents in the sand and insanity of Saudi Arabia as the nation continues its sponsorship of sporting events to distract from the sadism and impossible affluence of its ruling class.

All eyes will be on a pair of heavyweight attractions sitting proudly on top of the deep and intriguing Day of Reckoning bill. American Deontay Wilder faces New Zealand’s Joseph Parker in a battle of former belt holders that functions as a qualifier to box the winner of Anthony Joshua and Otto Wallin.

There is much at stake here.

Continue reading “Old man Wilder will ‘find’ Parker, eventually” →
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Dubois can expose the Miller myth

Twice suspended for failed PED tests, Jarell Miller has still received an invitation back to the big time with a match versus Daniel Dubois

Article first appeared on Gambling.com

Dubois to win by decision 15/8 with BETVICTOR

On Saturday in Riyhad, Saudi Arabia, amidst the huge Day or Reckoning card, Daniel Dubois arrives at a crossroads in his boxing career. Triumph, and some of the lustre lost in defeat to Joe Joyce and Oleksander Usyk will be restored, defeat, and the suggestion Dubois lacks the ability and resolve to succeed at world-level will be confirmed.

Now aged 26, Dubois, 19-2 (18ko), was long-marketed by Hall of Fame promoter Frank Warren as the future of the division. The heir to the throne variously occupied by Fury, Joshua and Usyk.

The defeat to Joyce back in 2020, a knockout loss in which Dubois suffered a broken orbital bone around his eye and opted to kneel and take the 10-count when ahead on the cards, curbed excitement about his prospects. Warren too, seemed discouraged. It posed the question; is Dubois willing to risk, in the way the greats often must, to land the prize?

Continue reading “Dubois can expose the Miller myth” →
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Myth, mirth and miracles. Fury finished or unfocused?

Article first published at BigFightWeekend.com

Muhammad Ali turned 36 a few weeks before his loss to novice professional Leon Spinks. A man with as many gaps in his smile as fights on his ledger. Tired and compromised, Ali was a poorly coordinated confection of numb defiance and flickering memory by the early Spring of 1978. The shuffle, the rope-a-dope all danced and lumbered into view. No more than crowd-pleasing catchphrases from what had once been masterful soliloquies.

Spinks’ victory, following a paltry 7 wins and a draw from a little over 12 months as a professional by way of preparation, remains one of heavyweight boxing’s greatest upsets.

On Saturday, another ageing champion faced a novice. And surprise visited boxing once again.

Continue reading “Myth, mirth and miracles. Fury finished or unfocused?” →
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Eubank, nostalgia and the glow of the past

Article first appeared at BigFightWeekend.com

To each their own. Every generation venerates a new clutch of heroes. My grandfather was born in the era of Jack Dempsey, marvelled at Joe Louis and was a contemporary of fellow Doncastrian Bruce Woodcock, who could fight a bit. His voice whispered through the pages of the books I inherited on his passing in 1984 too, Ali was the best of them all the collection suggested. He was gone before Iron Mike tore through the late 80s and before the seeds of love for the sport he planted blossomed into interest.

For children of the 70s like me, it was all about Tyson; inescapable, unique, intoxicating. But he was also out of reach. Seen through the prism of highlights and delayed screenings. Domestically, it was Nigel Benn and Chris Eubank, with a fleeting dose of McGuigan, and a sprinkling of Big Frank.

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Veteran Wilder punches toward future greatness

The bigger they come, the harder they fall.
Bob Fitzsimmons, 1862-1917

It is the nature of the meandering river of life that the vistas and postcards of the past can seem more lustrous than our current view. That which has passed becomes richer for the embellishment our memory imposes and the present dulls as our optimism dissipates with grey hair and midlife. Applied to boxing, it exaggerates our heroes and denigrates their successors.

This manifests as “Tommy levels Floyd”, “nobody beats peak Iron Mike”, or for older observers, “nobody punched like the Brown Bomber”. Ask Eddie Murphy. These opinions root deeply, becoming fixed in the landscape of our outlook. It closes us to the brilliance of now. The genius around us. Things new can still be great and may one day, if we are spared long enough, be the fixations of our future. Best to embrace the enjoyment they provide as if still young ourselves, than diminish them in the kangaroo court of our rose-filtered nostalgia.

Saturday’s knockout win, accumulated with a single right hand that travelled around 18 inches, continued to confirm that future history will smile on Deontay Wilder in much the same way it romantacises those bygone gladiators.

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Joyce’s chin, otherworldly, is an asset and a deterrent

The weekend reluctantly succumbs to a grumbling Monday, children scramble onto back seats and the drizzle of late September sneers at those too lazy to cut the lawn the day before. In the ensuing silence, thoughts, ideas compete, ebbing and flowing for those of us wrestling with obligation, the should dos afforded by time and solitude.

Boxing lurches in to frame among the unwashed breakfast pots, the dogs that need exercise and the bill that needs paying. It isn’t always this way. Golovkin and Canelo III came and went leaving little fat to chew on by the Monday, despite the generational greatness of the pairing. A tired episode in a great rivalry. The money laden, but inferior, Godfather III if you will. Years too late.

Into the wash of their encounter stepped Shakur Stevenson, the next, next Pretty Boy. He has predecessors as would be successor to Floyd and his Uber-wealth. 25 years old and 22 ounces over the limit. He won. Cemented his status. But missing weight brought more headlines than the fight. The nature of the modern mediums. Words, failure, toxicity create more wake than quality, preparation, success.

And so it fell to the heavyweights in Manchester, England. The two nice guys called Joe, Joyce and Parker, met in a crossroads bout. Was this the top of Joyce’s arc or could he continue his climb versus Parker, a man who had soared with Joshua and Ruiz already? Expectations had been modest. Joyce, huge, lumbering but effective. Parker, stout, sharper and seasoned.

Both excelled. And their bruising encounter revealed a new player at the top of the division.

Continue reading “Joyce’s chin, otherworldly, is an asset and a deterrent” →
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Beyond reasonable doubt. Usyk chases confirmation, Joshua redemption

Article first published at Bookmakers.com

“Doubt … is an illness that comes from knowledge and leads to madness.” ― Gustave Flaubert 

Saturday’s heavyweight rematch between Anthony Joshua and Oleksander Usyk, a bout awash with possibilities and drenched in the oily wealth of its hosts, will anoint Tyson Fury’s successor following the Gyspy King’s insistence he has now retired. Other shiny and glib garlands will be draped about the victor of course but in the old money of boxing, either Joshua or Usyk will become, the man. 

Continue reading “Beyond reasonable doubt. Usyk chases confirmation, Joshua redemption” →
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Whyte goes all in for Fury chance

The higher I go, the crookeder it becomes.

Michael Corleone, Godfather III (1990)

Dillian Whyte is a good heavyweight. He isn’t Earnie Shavers, or Ray Mercer. He is, as the Acorn and Merciless were, a good heavyweight in an era that belongs to others. Whyte has compiled a resume that stands comparison with most of his own contemporaries. And a few of his predecessors too. His era isn’t the golden one of Shavers and his thunderous right hand but it has the potential to rival or surpass many of the decades that preceded the glorious 1970s. Besides, no fighter chooses his or her own time.

However history will remember Fury, Joshua and Wilder’s era, their collective defeats and the emergence of Usyk is unlikely to remove any of their names from above the door of the decade they’ve cohabited but Whyte has been a perennial presence. The demise of his showdown with Otto Wallin, a credible if unexciting fixture, became ever more predictable following Joshua’s decision to opt in on the contracted Usyk rematch and the WBC mandating a victorious Fury negotiate with the winner of Whyte and Wallin.

The risk to reward ratio of the Wallin fight changed. Dramatically.

Continue reading “Whyte goes all in for Fury chance” →
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And the band played on. Boxing’s voyage to the abyss

Rogers Morton, a prominent figure in American politics in the 1970s, once said, while serving as Campaign Manager for Gerald Ford’s ailing push for the White House and pressed on how he intended to salvage lost momentum; “I’m not going to re-arrange the furniture on the deck of the Titanic.” A quote that would outlive the Statesman, both in political influence and life, he would succumb to cancer in 1979, and one that became synonymous with actions deemed superficial and redundant in the face of impending disaster.

As a 58-year-old Evander Holyfield clambered back down the ring steps in Florida this weekend, a state which withdrew his license to box 17 years ago on the grounds of his diminished ability, it is easy to clamour for boxing to do something, to intervene. Thousands added their voices to the cause in the days before the ‘fight’, screened by Triller (no, me neither) and commentated on by former president and the doyenne of delusion, Donald Trump. They urged ‘boxing’ to change course, to come to its senses.

Gratefully, it took but a few seconds for Holyfield to be separated from his, if he wasn’t detached from them, or at least reality, when he arrived.

Continue reading “And the band played on. Boxing’s voyage to the abyss” →
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Povetkin, a nomad from another decade, rides again

Alexander Povetkin

Welterweights, lightweights, feathers, they’re all better technically, quicker, busier. But it’s impossible not to be drawn by the old dreadnoughts, the big bruisers, the heavyweights. This weekend fight fans can indulge the oldest of their pugilistic persuasions, as Russian veteran Alexander Povetkin offers Dillian Whyte a second opportunity to add his rusting hull to his resume.

Both men will hope to parlay a victory into a world title shot, the first for Whyte, the 27th for Povetkin. I exaggerate of course but there is a feeling of the perennial about the heavy-handed 41 year old. Briefly, he excited those searching in the detritus of the 1990s for a successor to the thrown abdicated by Iron Mike. For a moment or two it was a hefty clubber from New Zealand with a Don King do and then it was Povetkin.

Neither fulfilled the destructive promise of their youth. Tua grew ripe on the vine waiting for his mandated shot at Lennox and Povetkin, having first turned down a shot at Wladimir under the tutelage of Teddy Atlas, then slowed, thickened, like an over cooked borscht, and by the time he decided to say yes he wasn’t the threat he would have been when fresher and quicker.

If he beats Whyte again, he may get one more shot. And with his power, some natural, some acquired, one shot could be enough.

That’s the heavyweight appeal.

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Undisputed Heavyweight Championship clash close to becoming reality

Tyson Fury and Deontay Wilder exchange blows

By Hector T. Morgan

Fantasy fights have long been a source of debate among boxing fans. Cross generational contests divide followers; Ali and Tyson, Mayweather and Leonard, the idea never ages, the passions evoked never cool. In the modern era, a time of fewer fights between the sport’s great and good, boxing fans are often left with only the fantasy debate to decide who is the best between two fighters who co-exist. Politics, money, broadcast platforms, sanctioning bodies, fear, they all play their role in keeping the best prize fighters apart.

The news Tyson Fury and Anthony Joshua, the best two heavyweights active today, are on the brink of signing to box each other this summer is, therefore, a subject of both excitement and cynicism among those same boxing fans. Excitement about the contest, the all too uncommon clarity it will provide for the heavyweight division duels with the enduring suspicion that fate or politics will intervene once more.

It is a tantalising fight, but dare we believe?

Continue reading “Undisputed Heavyweight Championship clash close to becoming reality” →
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Ali v Frazier, 50 years on, still casts a shadow long enough to eclipse Fury v Joshua

Ali is down. Fight of the Century

I don’t think Clay will want one.

Joe Frazier answers the question of a rematch following his seminal victory over Ali in 1971.

I was born in the summer of 1973. Bawling my way in as a humbled United States left Vietnam, a few weeks before Nixon’s impeachment began and Great Britain joined the EEC it left acrimoniously in January. I arrived broadly equidistant between Muhammad Ali’s back to back encounters with Kenny Norton. I like to refer to Kenny as Kenny, I don’t really know why. Perhaps I hope it implies friendship. On that basis, Mr. Norton would probably be more appropriate, but I digress.

Kenny was of course the strapping enigma the Champ could never quite resolve, in those two fights or in their trilogy bout in ’76. By the time my interest in boxing was stirred, first by the emotive sight of Barry McGuigan walking through the mist and hot breath of Loftus Road to face Pedroza in ’85, and then the amalgam of Tyson, Balboa and Herol, Muhammad Ali was no longer an active fighter.

There he remained. Still waters. Frozen in time and placed out of sight by retirement, remembered only by the words and pictures contained on my, by then, late grandfather’s book case.

Continue reading “Ali v Frazier, 50 years on, still casts a shadow long enough to eclipse Fury v Joshua” →
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Benn, Bruno and Nicky Booth, and the lost boys of 2001

Back in 2001, British boxing had meandered into a strange, uncharted hinterland. An odyssey of greed and short-termism in the preceding five years reducing it to a role in the margins, a sporting outcast. Neglected, eroded and far removed from the roaring crowds of the preceding decades. The resurgence of stadium fights had faded to black, dissolving in to the night like the thousands who shuffled, stumbled and strode from the crumbling castles of Wembley and Loftus Road.

Images still lingered in the collective memory. Plumes of warm breath and cigarette smoke drifting on the midnight breeze, the last slurred rendition of ‘Bruno, Bruno’ absorbed by the rattle of taxis and tube trains beneath. In the crowd’s wake, plastic glasses and torn betting slips, the debris of a night, were swept from the aisles. The headaches and penitence of a thousand tomorrows still to unfold for the departing revellers and the fighters they came to see.

Continue reading “Benn, Bruno and Nicky Booth, and the lost boys of 2001” →
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Revisited: Quirino Garcia, the elephant and the castle.

We have no time to stand and stare. And stare as long as sheep or cows. No time to see, when woods we pass, Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.

W.H. Davies, poet, ‘Leisure’

Parking had been difficult, as was finding the venue itself, and as a result, I was late for the show. It was long since dark and the city still intimidated me despite my tailored attempt to project self-assurance and belonging. I broke into a jog between the pools of street light on my way to the Elephant and Castle Leisure Centre, London. It was late March, 2002. A cool night, I missed the entrance. Twice. No fluorescent signs, no limousines. Just a door, in the shadows, almost turning away from the glare of potential passers by negotiating crossings, blurting horns and the choke of car fumes.

Boxing inhabited a different world twenty years ago. One of Leisure Centres and bootlegged world titles. Smaller. Seedier. And virtually unrecognisable from the gigantic events we now enjoy.

Continue reading “Revisited: Quirino Garcia, the elephant and the castle.” →
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Boxing embraces the ‘two headed snake’ of nostalgia and celebrity

“‘Remember when’, is the lowest form of conversation”

Anthony Soprano (James Gandolfini), The Sopranos Season 6

The news Felix Sturm, once a credible middleweight, will fight again this month, aged 41 and a full four years after his final bout, albeit successfully for a title at the time, comes as no great surprise. Just another unnecessary swansong from a chorus line of by-gone prizefighters who can’t quite let go.

It is a timeless fable for grizzled pugs. From Jack Johnson to Sugar Ray, Tommy Farr to Smokin’ Joe, fighters have always returned, financially or emotionally motivated far beyond the reach of their prime. And for those that don’t, the comeback is never far from their mind, or the lips of an inquisitor. Whether champion or chump, intact or broken, there is always one more fight. As another old heavyweight out of Philadelphia, himself no stranger to punching for pay in his fifties, lamented to his confidant, Paulie; “There is still some stuff in the basement.”

Continue reading “Boxing embraces the ‘two headed snake’ of nostalgia and celebrity” →
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Knowing when to quit (featuring Iron Mike and Daniel Dubois)

I don’t need permission

Make my own decisions

Robert Barisford Brown, (1969- ), My Prerogative

There was an unerring symbiosis between Saturday night’s principle contests. The old and the new, the real and the forged, the premature and the belated. A pair of bookends to boxing’s top shelf of literature.

In London, unbeaten heavyweights Joe Joyce and Daniel Dubois duked it out to an 8 second TikTok loop of crowd noise for a prize as old as the gloved sport they excel in. While across the pond, Mike Tyson and Roy Jones Jnr., two fighters who predate Jurassic Park, tried to dig up the remnants of their glorious past against an LP of greatest hits for a belt even the WBC couldn’t produce in time.

Continue reading “Knowing when to quit (featuring Iron Mike and Daniel Dubois)” →
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But it’s Mike F****** Tyson

Take it from me,

It’s hip to be square

Huey Lewis, Songwriter, 1967-

I’ll have to whisper. So come a little closer. Now, look, this thing Saturday. Yer know, the fight. No, not that one. The other one. Yeh. That one. Well, I know all the hipsters have had their say and I know it’s all a bit silly, but, well, how can I put this?

I’m a little bit excited.

I know it’s wrong. I know I’m meant to rise above it. Look down on it. Reject it. Yeh, yeh, 54, I know. I know. But it’s Tyson.

Mike ******* Tyson.

Don’t tell me you’re not watching it.

Continue reading “But it’s Mike F****** Tyson” →
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Mike Tyson and Roy Jones; an exhibition of shadows

Roy Jones Junior the boxing elder

Even as your body betrays you, your mind denies it.

Sarah Gruen, Writer, Water for Elephants

On Saturday night, which is the 27th day of the 11th month of the 20th year of the 21st century, two of the most luminous talents of the preceding century, Mike Tyson and Roy Jones Jnr., will climb between the ropes for an 8 round exhibition. The boxing world, in all its enduring schizophrenia, will pray neither are the destroyer of men they once were, for fear of the damage they may still impart on each other, while simultaneously hoping that they are both exactly what they once were. The latter, for the affirmation such Peter Pan deliverance would offer those voyeurs who’s vintage they share.

What began as little more than the whimsical nostalgia of those older viewers, who digested the curated footage of Iron Mike training, to maintain fitness and ego, in the midst of their mindless morning scroll, has now taken on its own life force. Plucking Roy Jones Jnr. from a retirement he didn’t seem to accept he had to enter, despite a catalogue of hellacious knockout defeats noisily encouraging the step, has added steam to the push. Now boxing has an event, the inherent risk of which, to the two relics in the ring and the sport they graced in their youth, can not be truly assessed until the first bell rings.

Or maybe the last , or maybe for whom it tolls.

Continue reading “Mike Tyson and Roy Jones; an exhibition of shadows” →
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Wilder, the sense of loss and the loss of sense

We are the hollow men,

We are the stuffed men.

Leaning together

Head piece full of straw.

T.S. Eliot, Poet, 1888-1965

As weary eyed guests checked out of the MGM Grand hotel and post fight podcasts sieved through the detritus of the weekend like a hopeless gold rush miner searching for an undiscovered nugget, veteran reporter Lance Pugmire revealed deposed champion Deontay Wilder’s claim that the weight of his ring entrance outfit had stolen the sap from his legs and contributed to his downfall.

To the average Joe, it was a line without precedent and one met with universal dismay or good old fashioned laughter. Quite how above average Joes; Louis, Walcott and Frazier, would’ve greeted the revelation one can only speculate. Consensus might reasonably assume any responses that were printable would’ve been light on empathy.

Spare a thought for Don Rickles too, who will be fuming to have missed the chance to pen an entire 20 minute roast at the former WBC champion’s expense.

Continue reading “Wilder, the sense of loss and the loss of sense” →
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Deontay Wilder and his battle with truth and nostalgia

“I can only note that the past is beautiful because one never realises an emotion at the time. It expands later, and thus we don’t have complete emotions about the present, only about the past.” 
― Virginia Woolf

In a world of fake news, to which all facts become refutable, where opinion matters more than truth and being right is a state of mind rather than a resolved conclusion, it becomes ever harder to remain objective in our summation of fighters. Fighters like Deontay Wilder. These modern ills encourage closed thinking, nostalgia for times passed and the methods and ways that made them.

To crave that past is natural, to canonise those who loomed large within it likewise, but it is a flawed benchmark with which to measure those who swim in their wake. It is a story as prevalent in boxing as any other facet of life. The hurricane of content we are subjected to in the age of social media does tug at the anchor points of these beliefs but amid the din of those gales, we can all be guilty of becoming extremist in our view in order to be heard, clinging ever more tightly to the rigidity of our thinking. Continue reading “Deontay Wilder and his battle with truth and nostalgia” →

Boxing: Canelo seeking greatness an asterisks may deny him

Hagler Hearns Staredown

I wonder whether it is harder for fighters to etch their legend into our collective psyche these days. The saturation of coverage helps build brands, invites us to know our heroes better, to co-exist beside them. An invited voyeurism that can reveal struggle and educate fans to the risk and reasons that motivate prize fighters but also homogenise those we would otherwise propose possess special powers.

The price of this exposure, if there is one, is this puncturing of a fighter’s mystique, their sense of otherworldliness. Unfettered access has removed the robe of mythology we once wrapped our kings in. I’m not sure even Marvellous Marvin Hagler’s solemnity would have outlasted the chatter of video courtiers every pug with a pair of gloves is now exposed to.

Even the words; Hagler, or Tyson or Duran, still provide a frisson of the electricity fans once felt when they caught the first glimpse of their walk to the ring. Or when their hero’s eyes locked on to his prey.

It is harder for their modern day counterparts to leverage the same awe in their less active careers and, in the case of Saul Alvarez, one of this generation’s most gifted fighters, with the burdensome asterisks of a failed drug test forever attached to his name. Continue reading “Boxing: Canelo seeking greatness an asterisks may deny him” →

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Tyson Fury returns for carnival in Vegas – Preview and Tips

Tyson Fury

Article first appeared on Freebets.net

The earthquake caused by Andy Ruiz and inflicted on the heavyweight landscape continues to reverberate more than a week on from his astonishing triumph. Contenders are renewed and emboldened by Ruiz’s exploits. For a while, there will be a swirl of belief, of daring do to enflame those endowed with a shot at the sport’s leading lights in the months ahead.

Such was the completeness of Anthony Joshua’s denouement to the speed, guile and gumption of Ruiz that practically anything now appears possible.

Could an aftershock unseat another of the would-be trio of Kings? This weekend unheralded German Tom Schwarz will be the first to try as he attempts to fell the towering Tyson Fury at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas.

Boxing bookmakers offer some attractive odds for those willing to dream the impossible dream. Continue reading “Tyson Fury returns for carnival in Vegas – Preview and Tips” →

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Boxing fans must guard the gate to heavyweight history

“Any fool can tell the truth, but it requires a man of some sense to know how to lie well.”

Samuel Butler, Novelist – 1835-1902

The vacuous melange of bullshit, fabrication and bluff boxing fans endure grows more tiresome by the day, the month, the year. However ‘casual’ or ‘steady’ you define your own relationship with the old show girl, ‘it’s complicated’ is likely the most apt summary of the connection.

Where certainty should be available, in the places most sport’s host facts and truth, black and white, boxing has only grey, caveats, asterisk. It is a tired rumination. A frayed thread tugged on by good writers and bad ones. Despite the magnatism of the ‘modern problem’ narrative to this unwelcome reality, boxing has always been a cocktail of the bewitching and bewildering. In 135 years of the gloved era, since John L Sullivan fought Dominick McCafferty, a fight the ‘Boston Strong Boy’ won in the seventh round of a six round fight, and that isn’t a typing error, sport’s ultimate prize has rarely existed in the nirvana our nostalgia insists it did. Continue reading “Boxing fans must guard the gate to heavyweight history” →

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Heavyweights beware, Time is Gonna Pass You By

Tobi Lark, aka Tobi Legend, once sang, ‘Time is gonna pass you by, so quickly and it waits for no man‘.

Not a theme exclusive to the songwriter, John Rhys, of course and, tangentially, it was serendipitous to learn Rhys was born in the sleepy Suffolk town of Saxmundham, a place a Sunday afternoon drive from my own adopted home, particularly given the sophistication and significance of the song. Rhys moved Stateside as a youngster and would become a distinguished music producer in Detroit and Los Angeles I discovered. Perhaps the influence of Michigan’s blue-collar ‘Motor-town’, historic home of the Ford motor company and Motown Records of course, as opposed to the coastal market town of his birth, explains the soul and beat in the tune and is why it resonated so deeply with a generation of British youngsters.

The thumping cocktail of melancholy and triumph in the Northern Soul anthem embedded Rhys and Legend’s sentiment deep into the psyche of a receptive audience in the 1970s. Tracks like ‘Time is Gonna Pass You By’ entranced a communion of working class kids; coal miners, steel workers, bakers and candlestick makers, longing to escape Lowry skylines, and the drudgery of daily life to converge, via all-night pilgrimages, to clubs and dance halls across the North of England.

Continue reading “Heavyweights beware, Time is Gonna Pass You By” →

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Fury, Wilder and Joshua; the normality of avoiding risk

Patterson finally agrees to Liston defence

Coincidences can prove jarring, awakening us from the mundanity of our rituals, sometimes they’re not evident without the spectacles of hindsight and occasionally the happenchance of concurrent events or unexpected meetings of people, things, occurrences pass by unnoticed. Just such serendipity brought together two different eras in the heavyweight division for me today and in doing so offered a salve to my throbbing suspicion that Tyson Fury’s alignment with Top Rank and ESPN will steal away a heavyweight era barely rediscovered beneath a layer of Ukrainian dust. Continue reading “Fury, Wilder and Joshua; the normality of avoiding risk” →

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BoxingWriter.co.uk Fighters of the Year 2018

Tyson Fury

It is said that time feels increasingly fleeting with the passing of every year. A lament often aired during the Christmas frivolities, as the day itself ‘cannonballs’ in whilst our minds are still fresh from collecting spent rockets and eating the last of the Halloween Haribo. Certainly for those of us wrestling with middle life, the sticky toffee that holds the melange of children, grandparents and other assorted acquaintances together, the reflection brought on by year end arrives all too quickly.

Add in an interest in the world of boxing, a niche within the Venn diagram of human existence once obscure and peripheral but now experiencing a population boom, and the pace is quickened still further. No weekend in the boxing fan’s diary is ever clear, perhaps save the one forthcoming, and the platforms and mediums for indulging their passion grows by the day. There is barely time to pause for breathe between a Spring time heavyweight showdown in a football stadium and a Featherweight dust up on the brink of New Year.

But, just as the charity pleas that interrupt our Christmas viewing and draw us back from the excess of our indulgence and before we dare to complain, gratitude should be our only sentiment.

Continue reading “BoxingWriter.co.uk Fighters of the Year 2018” →

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Johnson goes around to go a round. Dubois learns much from wily veteran

There is an inherent sadness in the face of a heavyweight gatekeeper, of which Kevin Johnson is currently the foremost practitioner. The brow is heavy, eyes dark and the breathing laboured. Aged 39 now, and with features flattened and softened by years of fists crashing in like waves against a pier, the midriff a little broader, the scales leaning a little further, Johnson cuts a forlorn figure.

In the latest instalment of his decline from unbeaten fringe contender, which he was in 2009 when he fought his only world title fight against Vitaly Klitschko, the grizzlier of the Ukrainian bears, Johnson dipped and rolled to a 10 round shut out defeat to Daniel Dubois. Continue reading “Johnson goes around to go a round. Dubois learns much from wily veteran” →

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Joshua finds more equality than expected in veteran Povetkin

You don’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you might just get what you need.

Michael Jagger and Keith Richards (c) 1968

Dominance is an elusive quarry. And in boxing, I maintain, it is unwelcome. I’ve struck upon the notion that only in equality can greatness be forged; Ali needed Frazier, Holmes needed someone he didn’t have. On Saturday night, Anthony Joshua, the type of gentleman champion British fans so adore, emerged victorious from a difficult heavyweight defence with his titles in tact and most of the adoration suckled. The fight revealed a relative equality with his contemporaries that will suit his own quest for historical significance.

For those of us commenting and watching from the safe side of the ropes, his pursuit of that legacy will be all the more enjoyable for the competition. Continue reading “Joshua finds more equality than expected in veteran Povetkin” →

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BoxingWriter Archive: “Hit ‘im wiv the uppercut John!”, Danny Williams prevails

It is now more than 10 years since I began writing here and capturing articles and columns I’d written for the great, good and mediocre platforms that have come, gone and succeeded across print and digital during that time. The words were a little more tangled back then, but they do serve as a wonderful aide memoire for nights I’ve spent at the fights. This piece was a meander through the fight between two of British Heavyweight Boxing’s most recognisable characters; Danny Williams and John McDermott. A controversial affair, fought long before football stadia were the norm and when Leisure Centres were very much the home of British boxing.

First published on 23rd July 2008

Being at the fight is a special experience. True, television coverage offers you multiple camera angles, proximity and the benefit of replays for those crucial moments but no matter how effective your Dolby surround sound is, or crystal clear your high definition LCD presents the pictures, it cannot beat being there.

Danny Williams’ absorbing victory over Big John McDermott last Friday was a classic case in point. The Sky team of Adam Smith and Jim Watt had McDermott clearly winning the bout in their commentary and in doing so illustrated just how subjective scoring a fight can be. Continue reading “BoxingWriter Archive: “Hit ‘im wiv the uppercut John!”, Danny Williams prevails” →

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