by Jesse Ian Lardies Sometimes a fighter's professional campaign is met with equal measures of success and good fortune, other times a boxer's plight is marred with enough controversy and tragedy to fill an entire resume. Occasionally in life there is a mixture of all these elements, a successive divergence into two approximately equal divisions. Paul Williams is a man who … [Read more...]
The return of Cotto the Hunter– But can he handle prey like Mayweather?
Miguel Cotto (37-2, 30 KOs) may be a decided underdog coming into this Saturday's showdown with Floyd Mayweather (42-6, 26 KOs) at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, but the Puerto Rican battler will be in a much better place, psychologically, than at any point since 2008. Cotto's familial cycle of strife and reunion seems to have calmed and, even in the gym, things have settled … [Read more...]
The Boxing Tribune Year-End Awards: 2011
2011 was a mixed bag for fight fans. Marred by poor officiating, awful judging, and stifling promotional politics, boxing could easily have drifted into a dark era of malaise. Instead, the sport proved, once again, that there's nothing wrong with boxing that can't be fixed by what's right with boxing. The rise of quality stars in their twenties is slowly, but surely forcing … [Read more...]
Nothing’s Gonna Ever Keep You Down: The Southpaw
By Fox Doucette Nothing defines a fighter like how he responds to his first loss. Some guys, they step into the ring with a big gaudy record, get promptly deposited on their ass, and next thing you know they're fighting some construction worker at a fairground in some podunk nowhere and telling anyone who will listen how they used to fight on TV back in the day before losing … [Read more...]
Cotto, Boricua Nation, the Garden, and One Writer’s Night in Puerto Rico North
By Gary Purfield Let’s get this out in the open before I start. This is not a coverage or news piece of Cotto-Margarito. This is more an editorial about my night at Madison Square Garden. I was a paying customer sitting in the seats to get the full experience of a Cotto fight and the Puerto Rico-Mexico rivalry from the stands, it was truly incredible to see how fans where … [Read more...]