Category — Boxing

We had a previous engagement Saturday night, meaning we’d miss the Miguel Cotto-Antonio Margarito fight. We knew how it would end. Not pretty probably for either fighter, but particularly for Margarito. He took more than a year to recover from the Manny Pacquiao beating and now Cotto was swinging for the fences and revenge and that eye Pac Man permanently damaged.
Fight expert David Beilstein, 1 of our all-time favorite point guards and huge Max Kellerman fan, went all Larry Merchant for us.
“Cotto won the boxing match. The ref-doctor called it, but Margarito walked him down the whole fight. Margarito’s eye swelled shut after he clearly got nailed, but he never stopped. Margarito just wouldn’t quit. They could have fought 30 rounds and Margarito wouldn’t have quit. I’m not a Margarito fan, but still, he got hit, but wouldn’t stop.”
And Cotto?
“If I was Cotto, I would just walk away from the game. Go home. Play with your kids. Open up a great pizza place. Hire a good manager to run the joint. Invite the family and friends once or twice a week, sip some wine, tell some stories and lies about when you were the shit, but please, go home and retire already. Brain damage is just around the corner.”

Miguel Cotto is a slight favorite to defeat Antonio Margarito in their junior middleweight title bout Saturday night at Madison Square Garden. But Cotto, who lost to Margarito in 2008, when the latter was suspected of using loaded gloves, not only wants to beat Margarito he wants to hurt him something fierce. Cotto has his sights set on that bad eye Margarito now has courtesy of the beating Manny Pacquiao gave him.
ESPN.com

The former heavyweight contender, who battled Ali and Foreman and was considered 1 of the hardest punchers in the division during the 70s, passed Saturday after complications from a stomach abscess. He was only 70.
Denver Post

For what? Seriously.
Just as we’ve suspected, Bob Arum continues to hold up the Manny Pacquiao-Floyd Mayweather fight. He hasn’t been the only problem, but he’s become the biggest 1. Remember, he hates Mayweather.
As Oscar De La Hoya says, for the sake of boxing Bob, step aside and let saner heads prevail.
ESPN LA

Though Pac Man won the 3rd fight between these 2, his star dimmed a bit.
Manny Pacquaio is taking more of a beating outside the ring than he did inside it Saturday against Juan Manuel Marquez. Despite earning a majority decision, it seems a majority of writers and fight fans believes Marquez won the fight. Interestingly, Pacquiao threw and landed more punches than Marquez, but that hasn’t stopped many to claim Marquez was robbed.
But a 4th fight between the 2? I don’t think so.
Thoughts?
ESPN.com

Many folks believe Juan Manuel Marquez won his latest battle with Manny Pacquiao in Las Vegas Saturday night, but others believe Marquez didn’t do enough to beat the champ. Regardless, will this be enough for Pacquiao to lure Floyd Mayweather? Plenty of boxing fans believe after this performance, Pac Man is made to order for Mayweather. Best counterpuncher in the business, they say, meaning Pacquiao doesn’t have a chance. It seems curious that all of a sudden Mayweather would drop Manny like a bad habit.
So why does he keep running?
Bad Left Hook

Much was made of a buffed Juan Manuel Marquez at today’s weight-in in Las Vegas. Doesn’t matter. Manny Pacquiao will drop him like a sack of potatoes since Marquez insists he won the 2 previous bouts. Just another notch in Pacquiao’s belt.
Pac Man in 5.
N.Y. Daily News

Mike Tyson adds to his comedic resume with an impersonation of presidential candidate Herman Cain.

It will make you laugh and it will make you cry.
I’ve been kinda pouring through Joe Frazier pieces all day. Can’t help it. Frazier and Ali was the best thing in sports when I was a kid growing up in Boley.
This piece, published in 2009, is an excellent read and 1 of the best I’ve read in the past 24 hours. A taste: “Frazier is driving his white Cadillac Escalade, with a handicapped placard hanging off the rearview mirror. He hits the gas and the vehicle flies to the next stoplight, where he brakes hard. Approaching one light, he brakes and also slips the car out of gear to help stop it and avoid read-ending a car that has stopped short in front of him. He explains in matter-of-fact fashion that some people think that kind of thing strips the transmission, but how they’re actually dead wrong about that.”
USA Today

In my eyes, the image above is 1 of the greatest of all time.
The tributes, stories and the occasional lies that accompany some of those stories keep pouring in for the late Joe Frazier, who lost his bout with liver cancer Monday at age 67. What’s the saying? Life’s a bitch and then you die. Frazier could relate.
I was an Ali guy. It started when I was 5, when I overheard my old man bragging about this boxer named Cassius Clay.
“That nigger’s bad!” I can still hear him shouting, the ultimate compliment a black man could receive back in the day. It was 1963.
Initially, Sonny Liston was the enemy for Ali. Then Frazier became the ultimate 1. Ali said so far too often, so it had to be true. But as I grew older and learned to appreciate the legendary Smokin’ Joe, how he could slip punches and bust up bigger men with a ferocious left hook, I realized he was more like me—like him, I grew up a country boy—than Ali could ever be. Still, I related more to Ali. He was God.
Frazier wasn’t but he knew how to tweak God. As George Foreman famously said, Frazier was the only boxer who got angry when you didn’t hit him.
We’re saddened by his death, but we’re thrilled to read and listen to the numerous tributes and stories. We just wanted to pay our respects in a small way to 1 of the greatest of all time.
RIP.