Tag: muhammad ali

What’s going on? Fury, KSI and a night in the MisFits abyss

Article also appears at BigFightWeekend.com

I suppose Marvin Gaye didn’t really care about Cassius Clay recording an album at Columbia Records in 1963 or Smokin’ Joe Frazier singing First Round Knockout for Motown in 1975. Hard to imagine Marlon Brando was unduly concerned that Jake LaMotta played the bartender in The Hustler or that Tupac worried about Nigel Benn’s collaboration with Pack on the 1990 song Stand and Fight. It only made 61 in the UK Charts after all.

And so, perhaps, boxing, the sprawling, dimly lit dystopia that it is, shouldn’t worry too much about MisFits and the entertainment it imparts to those dimly lit enough to pay for it. Aside from the copious amounts of money MisFits boxing generates it also appears uniquely able to both entice the casual and enrage the aficionados with the ease of a Bill Nighy suit fitting.

The weekend’s bill in Manchester showcased two of the niche’s preeminent forces; Tommy Fury, famous for sharing a father with Tyson Fury and his appearance on a reality show and KSI, who is good at video games and has ‘form’ in this peculiar space. A bizarre schism in which boxing, WWE and the world of YouTube influencers co-exist in an orgy of nonsense.

Continue reading “What’s going on? Fury, KSI and a night in the MisFits abyss” →
0

In the footsteps of Ali. Katie Taylor eyes Croke Park crescendo

Sometimes my feet are tired and my hands are quiet, but there is no quiet in my heart.
W.B. Yeats, Irish Poet, 1865-1939

Katie Taylor answered in her characteristic manner. Certain. Humble. Promoter Eddie Hearn waxed lyrical. Ignoring the boos of progressively deeper octave; “Ireland, Croke Park. Serrano. Has to be. If not, someone else. But it is Ireland next.” Taylor’s Irish eyes smiled, warming to a familiar squint. Sweat still springs. Cheeks thickened. Her aching hands resting on silk hips. As the questions were posed and the cliches shared, hundreds still loitered among the strewn plastic cups and the Saturday night spilt at their feet. Taylor had done as expected; beating the tall, organised Argentinian Karen Elizabeth Carabajal for all the Lightweight belts by unanimous points decision. Knockouts, the violent climax ticket buyers crave still stubbornly elusive.

Still friends and strangers sway, arms entwined, a joyful scrummage. The shrewd and restless twist their necks to listen as they clambered for the exits. The nocturnes and neon of the London night, the rationed taxi cabs and their prodigal sibling of the morning’s regret quickening their stride. Irish tricolours stretch and fall. Cheers, drunk with vowels tumble down toward the ring and the garden of microphones.

Katie Taylor fills arenas. And her eyes are on the biggest of all. One with both history and meaning for the people of Ireland.

Continue reading “In the footsteps of Ali. Katie Taylor eyes Croke Park crescendo” →
0

“I coulda had class”. Fighters, films and the fix

The Prizefighter and The Lady

For cinema goers, the image of a boxer being coerced into losing a fight or consoled in the aftermath, is all too familiar. A convenient vehicle deployed by film makers, since the advent of ‘talkies’ in the 1920’s. From John Wayne to Charlie Chaplin, actors have been knitting their brows as earnest pugs buckling beneath the guilt that ensues. Electing to forgo the integrity they cherished, in exchange for easy money or the promise of richer fruit down the line, is a choice much easier to reject in theory and detached from the starkness of life as a prizefighter from the 1930s to the late 1950s.

As Brando immortalised in The Godfather, fighters, like others in position of influence and value, were made offers they couldn’t refuse.

Continue reading ““I coulda had class”. Fighters, films and the fix” →
0

The life and times of Henry Cooper

Henry Cooper, cut, bleeding but unbowed

This article first appeared on BritishVintageBoxing.com

Two minutes into the opening round of Henry Cooper’s first fight with Muhammad Ali, then Cassius Clay, the proud Englishman snorts hard and draws deeply, he is beyond Clay’s reach and permits himself a momentary pause. He knows he has started strongly. His eyes narrow, focussed on the American quarry before him, his nostrils flaring wide as he sucks air from the cool London night. His pale chest heaves.

Thin black leather shoes mold tight to his feet, glistening like wet paint. They slide and sweep, hop and reset to the doctrine of boxing, those strangest of dance steps. Cooper’s body is taut, narrow and sinewy, his gloves small and almost cuff less. Thinning hair is cropped short, pointing skyward, exaggerating the urgency of his actions. Battleship grey eyes glare from the shadows of a chiselled brow above. A wedge of protruding bone that juts forward, straining skin and tissue. It is a genetic anomaly that has betrayed him before and would again, in countless wars as yet unfought.

Continue reading “The life and times of Henry Cooper” →
0

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” →
0

Leon Spinks, 1953-2021 Former Heavyweight Champion of The World

Leon Spinks

“But I ask Mr. T, ‘Where’s Leon?’ And Mr. T says, ‘I don’t know.’

Butch Lewis, speaking to Thomas Hauser, ‘Muhammad Ali: His Life and Times’

Leon Spinks was The Heavyweight Champion in 1978. He was Olympic Champion in 1976.

Two facts that are indisputable. Representing two mountains tops few stand upon. It was rarified air Leon Spinks was breathing for a time. Grinning through much of it. A young man with the boxing world in the palm of his hand and the rest of it knocking at his hotel room door. He met most of both with love and that unique smile of his. Boxing taught him to trust few of them and his fame was a blessing and a burden in the days beyond 1978.

He will be remembered always, not as the greatest or for enduring greatness, but because for a night in 1978 he ‘put it on Ali’ for 15 rounds and won the title, back when it was still referred to, and was, THE title.

Continue reading “Leon Spinks, 1953-2021 Former Heavyweight Champion of The World” →
0

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” →

Moving on up. Ali, Mayfield and Joshua’s all too familiar crossroads

Muhammad Ali

“We planned and worked hard, from the very start
Tried to make him better, than all the rest
But the brother proved to be so much less.”

‘Eddie Should Know Better’ by Curtis Mayfield (1972)

Curtis Mayfield would’ve been 77 today, like his friend Muhammad Ali he was born in 1942, and the “gentle genius”, as he was often referred, passed away on Boxing Day in 1999. His legend, as one of the greatest musicians, songwriters and innovators of the century, was secured long before being struck by falling rigging while performing in Brooklyn in 1990. An accident that would paralyse him from the neck down.

He and Ali were both powerful social commentators, transcending their area of excellence in lives in the public eye that ran in parallel and through some of the most turbulent episodes in modern American history. In 1958 a 15 year-old Mayfield joined The Impressions a short two years before the then Cassius Clay flew off to the Rome Olympics, the musical pioneer’s passing came just three years after Ali’s iconic opening of the 1996 Atlanta games. An event that marked the beginning of the end for the century’s most famous face, for one last time he was able to demonstrate his courage and defiance, fighting, inch by inch, the symptoms of Parkinsons to deliver the Olympic flame.

Continue reading “Moving on up. Ali, Mayfield and Joshua’s all too familiar crossroads” →
0

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” →

1

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” →

0

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” →

1

The extraordinary and ancient Pacquiao makes accomplices of all of us

Pacquio and Roach

It is the way of things that the fresh-faced heroes of our youth, who once charged the ramparts of boxing’s established names in our stead, now find themselves clinging to the last castles of their own generation. A month ago, notification Manny Pacquiao’s December birthday cake now required 40 candles spilled in to my consciousness and caused momentary pause in the day’s proceedings.

For so long, Pacquiao’s dancing feet, blurring fists and relentless aggression represented the new, the urgent, the usurper of the established. Overcoming and occasionally wrecking totems of pay-per-view, Pacquiao swatted aside the Mexicans Featherweights (more often than not) and a series of champions presumed to be too big or too strong for the diminutive Philippine.

This success vaulted him beyond the vanquished, planted him in the Hall of Fame and encouraged us to overlook the fact the one time Flyweight was now into his thirties and far beyond his beginnings. [3min read] Continue reading “The extraordinary and ancient Pacquiao makes accomplices of all of us” →

0

BW Archive – Farr: “Ali wouldn’t have hit Joe Louis on the bum with a handful of rice!”

First published August 29th 2008

Tommy Farr said that and who am I to argue? Tomorrow will mark the 71st anniversary of his courageous but ultimately unsuccessful attempt to dethrone the newly crowned heavyweight champion Joe Louis. The humble ‘Tonypandy Terror’ is long remembered for giving the legendary ‘Brown Bomber’ an arduous first defence of his heavyweight title and for the unflinching resolve he demonstrated in doing so.

His effort was as herculean as it was unexpected to ringside observers. Those hunched around the family wireless back in Britain, were moved to believe he’d done enough to topple the great champion.

Continue reading “BW Archive – Farr: “Ali wouldn’t have hit Joe Louis on the bum with a handful of rice!”” →
4

The grip of nostalgia, the theft of perspective. Fury v Joshua could be Ali and Frazier.

Although age usually brings a degree of wisdom, to those of us blessed to accumulate the years and decades, it also brings with it the inherent risk of becoming a nostalgic. A condition without physical pain, but one that can effect your eyesight and reason. Too often we, the royal we, because I’ve succumbed as much as the next man, unless the next man is dear old Colin Hart, apply a rosy hue to all things by gone, to the events of history and the heroes and villains who acted in them. This is most virulent around instances and characters we bore witness to in our formative years, but not exclusively so.

Boxing, like every other aspect of life, suffers from this phenomenon. I’ve seen the argument for Harry Greb being the best Middleweight of all time, and read the case for Jack Johnson being the finest heavyweight who ever graced the squared circle to name but two examples. Opinion with merit of course, but based almost entirely on still photographs and a precious few seconds of actual recorded action.

The most common manifestation among those of us with grey at the temples is the summary dismissal of any fighter active today if matched with their historic forefathers.

Continue reading “The grip of nostalgia, the theft of perspective. Fury v Joshua could be Ali and Frazier.” →
0

Golovkin v Alvarez: Boxing returns to its Middleweight touchstone

Gennady Golovkin

Every mans got to figure to get beat sometime

Joe Louis, 1914-1981

The weekend super-fight between Gennady ‘GGG’ Golovkin and Saul ‘Canelo’ Alvarez from the T-Mobile Arena, Las Vegas, returns boxing to the bosom of those who embrace it through the good times and the bad. A type of ardent disciple that nods and purses lips at the mention of James Toney or smiles and rub his or her hands together at the memory of Smokin’ Bert Cooper or Paul ‘Scrap Iron’ Ryan.

Continue reading “Golovkin v Alvarez: Boxing returns to its Middleweight touchstone” →
0

Boxing: Mind games; O’Sullivan and Eubank Junior seek an ‘edge’

Spike O'Sullivan faces up to Chris Eubank Jnr.

“Inside his head”, “gotten under his skin”, “psychological advantage”. The mental aspect of success in sport has never been more widely acknowledged, nor has the quest to attain an ‘edge’ ever been more widely contested.

Continue reading “Boxing: Mind games; O’Sullivan and Eubank Junior seek an ‘edge’” →
0

Boxing: The Ali Files by Norman Giller – A review

The-Ali-Files-1

Within the pages of The Ali Files, from the pen of the prolific Norman Giller, there is a gift for boxing fans young and old. Particularly those for whom Muhammad Ali is an experience afforded by the proxy of film or television interview or those of us desensitised to his brilliance by time and the ensuing mythologising and marketing of his story.

In The Ali Files, Giller has returned Muhammad to his rightful home. The ring. The place where the story began and where his legend was hewn. It serves to refresh us all, including the great man himself.   Continue reading “Boxing: The Ali Files by Norman Giller – A review” →

0

Wladimir Klitschko, dominance and the burden of proof

Wladimir Klitschko

Historically, dominance is a fleeting experience in the heavyweight division. Perhaps, thankfully fleeting. In the last century we’ve seen a number of periods in which one fighter reigned over the sports blue ribbon division. Louis, Marciano, Holmes, Tyson. An exalted list of greatness. Once in a generation fighters who destroyed their contemporaries and illuminated their respective eras. Something else unified those luminaries; the lack of a defining opponent.

Wladimir Klitschko, who turns 38 ahead of his next defence, is in the Autumn of a career even by today’s extended measure. Like those illustrious greats he finds himself searching for an opponent who will offer triumphant definition to his manicured statistics. Without one he is at risk of being remembered for a defeat to Lamon Brewster in 2004 or a slew of moribund victories similar to the one he will accrue in April when he tackles the over-matched Alex Leapai.

Continue reading “Wladimir Klitschko, dominance and the burden of proof” →
0

Boxing: Povetkin still looking for the World but now without an Atlas.

Muhammad Ali was 32 years old when he Rumbled in the Jungle in 1974. His victory considered all the more miraculous given his veteran status and the power of youth presumed to reside with George Foreman.  There are many who feel he should have retired at that zenith. How times change. On Saturday night another 32-year-old, Alexander Povetkin, he of the callow face and quiet demeanour, will belatedly try to step from the shadows of the brothers Ukraine. Continue reading “Boxing: Povetkin still looking for the World but now without an Atlas.” →

0

Flying over the cuckoo’s nest for the last time? Oliver McCall defeated

Anyone with a passing interest in heavyweight boxing over the past twenty years will hold a mental image of one sort or another of heavy punching former WBC champion Oliver McCall.

Whether it be the crunching right-hand which felled Lennox Lewis, his emotional implosion in the rematch or the various drug fuelled episodes which have blighted his attempts to construct another run at the championship he lost to a grateful Frank Bruno in 1995. One of them will be reside with you.

Last night at the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel he dropped a clear decision to peripheral contender Timur Ibragimov, a loss that spells the end of any championship hopes the now 45-year-old may have held.

Continue reading “Flying over the cuckoo’s nest for the last time? Oliver McCall defeated” →
0

Boxing: Mayweather, the showmen who leaves them wanting more

Presently, there is no hotter commodity in boxing than Floyd Mayweather. Fresh off a crushing victory over Shane Mosley I can no longer summon an obstacle which bears scrutiny to the now overwhelming argument that Floyd Mayweather deserves to take a place among the sport’s all time greats. Mayweather’s name can sit snugly among the Ali, Armstrong and Leonard’s as one of the finest prizefighters ever seen. In fact, the only thing which could be more commercially desirable than the Pretty Boy right now…is a retired Pretty Boy. Continue reading “Boxing: Mayweather, the showmen who leaves them wanting more” →

0

Old? Check. Fat? Check. Unambitious? Check. Brian Nielsen next for Vitaly?

Did you hear the one about Vitaly Klitschko and the hungry, young contender? No, nor did I. Admittedly, Vitaly Klitschko hasn’t fought during a particularly glowing period for heavyweights. His tenure, interrupted by a now mysteriously cured knee problem, as the leading heavyweight began when Lennox Lewis retired and has continued through soporific contests with Danny Williams, Kirk Johnson, Corrie Sanders, Sam Peter, Juan Carlos Gomez, Chris Arreola and latterly Albert Sosnowski. So maybe, the revelation Danish pastry Brian Nielsen is making a comeback aged 45 will be welcome news in the Klitschko castle if nowhere else. Continue reading “Old? Check. Fat? Check. Unambitious? Check. Brian Nielsen next for Vitaly?” →

0

Manny from Heaven set for fair-weather Floyd

So the scene is set. Boxing has risen from the canvas to offer the viewing public a fight of such dramatic potential it already draws comparison with the magnetic contests boxing was once able to supply from a position of long forgotten significance on an annual basis.

Manny Pacquiao, the Filipino with the smile and an entire people in his corner, neutralised Miguel Cotto with such aplomb last weekend he is now widely projected as the sport’s pound for pound number one. That most unhelpful of yardsticks. And in Floyd Mayweather, he has an opponent of equal brilliance and renown against whom to push his abilities to their limit and in doing so, just maybe, entice and ignite a whole new generation of prize fight followers.

Continue reading “Manny from Heaven set for fair-weather Floyd” →

5

David Haye, boxing’s new Barnum, continues to sell

valuev9If promoting a fight is craft, then David Haye has used every tool in the box to generate interest in this Saturday’s fight with Nicolay Valuev. He is an effervescent self-promoter who has used eye-catching gimmicks, distasteful commentary about Valuev’s personal hygiene, appeared on every talk-show, press event and personal appearance in order to force this fight to transcend the confines of the boxing audience. And, glory be, its working. Continue reading “David Haye, boxing’s new Barnum, continues to sell” →

0

The art of attracting web hits: Put Tyson in the title

tysonbandwHe remains a media phenomenon, even now two whole decades removed from the last of his boxing peak and with a whole generation of boxing fans for whom he was never a consensus world-champion now fully grown. The time when the word Tyson was part of the language of the playground, of bars, of water-coolers (not that they were present in Blighty til after he lost) alongside Rocky Balboa is a distant memory. Tyson’s name became short-hand for power, speed, aggression, brutality and pain. Today’s vague, shallow and generally transparent suggestion that the 43 year-old may yet return to the ring only serves to prove the fascination with Iron Mike has proven timeless. Continue reading “The art of attracting web hits: Put Tyson in the title” →

1

Audley, Audley, Audley

Love him, hate him, ignore him, beat him, write him off, mock him, chastise him, heck, tie an anvil to each ankle and drop him in the Thames. It wouldn’t matter, Big Audley would still be believing, still fighting, still chasing the dream. I’m beginning to think Harrison has special powers, the hide of a Rhino, the defiance of the Black Knight and will of Arnie’s Terminator.  Despite being jeered to and from the ring, despite failing to overwhelm a man he outweighed by 3 stone and despite the proximity of his 37th birthday, Audley will not give up. Continue reading “Audley, Audley, Audley” →

0

Don King signs Barrera, does it still matter?

In any consideration of those who transcended boxing over the past 30 years and found a place in the consciousness of the general public; Ali, Foreman and Tyson would surely stand head and shoulders above even Sugar Ray Leonard, Prince Naseem Hamed and Oscar DeLaHoya. Though not strictly a sporting figure, having never seen combat inside the ring, I think the man who stood between Ali and Foreman back in 1974 and who oversaw much of the money-making period of Mike Tyson’s career is arguably boxing’s fourth most recognisable face, Don King. Does this week’s signing of Barrera show an ebbing significance or  the beginning of a renaissance for boxing’s most infamous promoter?

Continue reading “Don King signs Barrera, does it still matter?” →

0

Boxing: Acquiring a taste for Rocky Marciano

Rewind five years; amid the period of heavyweight history dominated by Lennox Lewis and Vitali Klitschko, with towering contenders like Jameel McCline, Wladimir Klitschko, Michael Grant, Henry Akinwande, Hasim Rahman, Nicolay Valuev and Andrew Golota and it was increasingly easy to dismiss the chances of bygone greats like Rocky Marciano and Gene Tunney, or even through to Joe Frazier, emerging victorious in any fantasy match-up. Continue reading “Boxing: Acquiring a taste for Rocky Marciano” →

2

Boxing: Usain Bolt, Muhammad Ali and the impossible comparison

The astonishing performances of Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt broke the consciousness of almost the entire population of the world this week. Only the Olympics and perhaps the football World Cup offer such global exposure [alas the heavyweight championship has long lost this broad appeal], and though I doubt he could run backwards as fast as his contemporaries in the Olympic boxing ring, the question of his place amongst the greats of the track is unquestionable. The clock doesn’t lie. Bolt is faster than anyone who ever lived. Such cross generation comparison in boxing, provides no such clarity.

Continue reading “Boxing: Usain Bolt, Muhammad Ali and the impossible comparison” →

1

Boxing: Behind the smile, Ali Nuumbembe

First published at TheSweetScience.com

14th November 2005

AliIf it’s true that boxing sold its soul to television networks a generation ago, eagerly snatching pay-per-view’s 30 pieces of silver and prostituting itself on the behest of an array of clandestine figures and their grubby titles. The story of Ali Nuumbembe, a Namibian welterweight, and philanthropic publican Chad Parker with whom he plots a path to boxing glory from the obscurity of a refitted caravan in Glossop, England, will help remind fans that for all its faults, boxing remains the sport “to which all other sports aspire.”

Continue reading “Boxing: Behind the smile, Ali Nuumbembe” →

1

Create a website or blog at WordPress.com

Up ↑