Articles by Jimmy Tobin

A proliferation of titles plagues boxing. The ticks and leeches who sanction championship belts, who create newer ones in the hope of tapping fresh veins—we should be rid of them. Let’s accept that as true. […]

1. Maybe they thought him too green, too inexperienced, susceptible to the pressure of the moment and its greater expectations. Maybe they looked at his record, the paltry eleven knockouts in nineteen fights, and thought […]

ESPN ran an odd graphic during its broadcast of the fight between Shakur Stevenson and Oscar Valdez from the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas Saturday. Along with the standard tale of the tape […]

Something is reassuring about the end of the improbable. Yordenis Ugas was and is an incredible story. That story culminated last August when Ugas (replacing the injured Errol Spence) made a full-time politician of Manny […]

The champion on the comeback trail knows this much: he was a champion. His return to glory culminates in the familiar; it confirms expectations and estimations alike. But what of the fighter who fell short […]

Don’t be fooled. The orange expanse, black piping, white spots that Mullerian mimicry isn’t quite deception, but one is not the other. They are both toxic; they patrol similar territory, each is striking in its […]

There are the lights to contend with, their heat and burst, their merciless illumination. The pressure of the moment, too, pregnant with disaster, ready to rewrite, to unmake. And the dialogue, unpredictable, violent, violently unpredictable. […]

What is a winning strategy in boxing? One that maximizes a fighter’s chances of victory; a calculation incorporating strengths, weaknesses, tendencies, proclivities, even considerations of popularity, geography. And risk. Because such strategies do not exist […]

What did Mark Breland think? The towel that saved Deontay Wilder from Tyson Fury in their rematch. Breland threw it; it cost him his job. Would he have thrown it in the eighth round Saturday? […]