The absence of pageantry. If not the absence, then a poorly executed attempt at the usual poorly executed attempts—a simulacrum, a knock-off. And yet it befits the event: because what makes this an event is […]

Did the pregnant pause put him on edge? If you were him, Terence Crawford, in the ring in BMO Stadium in Los Angeles, your wrist held anticipatorily by referee Jack Reiss, how confident would you […]

Boxing has a new undisputed heavyweight champion, and with him, a return to normalcy, to the kind of certainty our sport often resists, a bit of the obvious in the realm of perpetual debate. Oleksandr […]

What could be said with some confidence Saturday morning, and perhaps no less confidently today, is that super welterweight Tim Tszyu has arrived. We know this not because Tszyu was to participate in a fight […]

There is a right way for titles to change hands, a right way to consolidate them: in a manner expeditious as it is violent, captivating as it is definitive. This is the only way Naoya […]

There was a time when the opponent hardly mattered, when he might charge admission to watch him box his shadow, pummel a heavy bag, harrow a skipping rope. But the opponents mattered to him then, […]

Plenty laughed in November, malicious little chortles at a rare moment of weakness from a fighter who seemed without any. Terence Crawford heard them. They questioned his nerve, his heart, and through that jaundiced lens, […]

It was a harbinger of his undoing, that talk of toughness, that little kindness from the commentary team offered barely fifteen minutes into the action. And true too. But the timing of that gesture was […]