0 comments by Andrew Harrison on 5/22/2014
When Gary Sykes heads to the ring to contest the championship belt he once held, the one he promised his young daughter, Layla, that he would recover, he will do so unaccompanied by a national audience in this, the biggest fight of his life. Good looking, genial, accomplished, Sykes, a high-octane junior lightweight, has been […]
0 comments by Andrew Harrison on 5/18/2014
It is becoming something of an undesirable British tradition of late for an officiating howler to encroach upon headlines that ought to have been the sole preserve of the boxers over whom they stood watch. At Leeds Town Hall on Saturday, Doncaster’s Michael Alexander became the latest native referee to bungle a crucial call when […]
0 comments by Andrew Harrison on 5/8/2014
Sheffield junior featherweight Kid Galahad, 16-0, 8 KOs, will attempt to sew another badge on his rucksack this weekend when he vies for Commonwealth honours against imported Aussie wildcard Fred “The General” Mundraby, 15-1-1, 7 KOs. Having already secured British and European awards in successive fights (he has since discarded the Lonsdale belt), the tricksy […]
0 comments by Andrew Harrison on 5/1/2014
Like all teen stars, Amir Khan seems to have been around forever. It is nigh on a decade since an unknown 17-year-old lightweight boxer from Lancashire captured the hearts of a nation. His gallantry at the Olympic Games in Athens returned an unexpected silver medal. And while the Val Barker trophy for the tournament’s most […]
0 comments by Andrew Harrison on 4/20/2014
Six rounds in 28 months turned out to be insufficient prep-work for lightweight John Murray against his cross-town rival Anthony Crolla — who reached his peak in Manchester, Saturday. For a handful of rounds, Murray, in furious form, suffocated Crolla with a brand of total war that bordered on the psychotic. Crolla, though, showed courage, […]
0 comments by Andrew Harrison on 4/17/2014
The Murrays moved around a lot when their eldest son, John, was a kid. As perpetual newbies on a series of Manchester sink estates, the boys, predictably, caught the attention of Levenshulme’s local toughs and ne’er-do-wells — who were hell-bent on clarifying the area’s social hierarchy with them. The buck would usually stop with John; […]
0 comments by Andrew Harrison on 4/4/2014
On Friday night, at home in Belfast, junior featherweight contender Carl Frampton (18-0, 13 KO) hit Hugo Cazares (40-8-2, 27 KO) so hard with a left hook that the waspish Mexican neglected the referee’s count in order to moon over the city’s new hero. As the third man, Victor Loughlin, tolled six, Cazares — sporting the expression of […]
0 comments by Andrew Harrison on 3/30/2014
NEWCASTLE, ENGLAND – Martin Ward had offered to give his right hand in exchange for Stuart Hall’s recently acquired world bantamweight title belt, yet before a passionate crowd at the Metro Radio Arena on the banks of the River Tyne, Saturday, he wasn’t even afforded the chance to throw one. At the end of a tense opening session, […]
0 comments by Andrew Harrison on 3/24/2014
In a suburban Leeds gym, a boxer punches out a percussive rhythm akin to a death march. In an adjacent room close to the entrance of this triangular, bone-coloured building, I’m talking to a ghost. John Murray isn’t supposed to be here. In November 2012, Murray, a former British and European lightweight champion, was tapering […]
0 comments by Andrew Harrison on 3/23/2014
Sheffield prospect Kid Galahad, 16-0, 8 KOs, roundly outboxed Spanish import Sergio Prado, 9-4-1, 3 KOs, to claim the European junior featherweight title, Saturday, live on terrestrial TV. The Qatar-born 24-year-old — who secures an alphabet world ranking with the win — wasn’t as much as scuffed throughout 12 rounds of adept technical boxing at […]
0 comments by Andrew Harrison on 12/19/2013
“I saw Gary as clear as day. I know it sounds like a movie script, but I saw my brother. He told me to get up.” Everything struggles to live, yet it is in surviving our own individual struggles that true strength is forged. Barnet middleweight Darren Barker had known the worst of times; after […]
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0 comments by Andrew Harrison on 12/8/2013
(Felix Sturm stands over a discombobulated Darren Barker, left; photo credit: AP) The grim prospect of facing Gennady Golovkin – Kazakhstan’s modern-day take on Grendel’s mother – is one that influences his middleweight contemporaries in myriad ways. Faced with the ultimatum of either boxing Golovkin or finding himself an alternative 160 lb. world titlist by […]
0 comments by Andrew Harrison on 11/24/2013
(via) Referee Howard Foster curtailed a national drama in Manchester Saturday night with a call that was every bit as anti-climactic as a power cut during soap hour. George Groves, 19-1, 15 KOs, a King Rat figure heading into his super middleweight grudge match with Carl Froch, had been a revelation – dropping his iron-clad […]
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0 comments by Andrew Harrison on 11/17/2013
Hoping to make a noise Saturday night, and in doing so, gain ground on domestic front runners Carl Froch and George Groves, James DeGale, once the biggest din in England, boxed in a vacuum instead — despite the fight going out on national TV. While the American Andre Ward put further daylight between himself and […]
0 comments by Andrew Harrison on 11/1/2013
Knockout artists Gennady Golovkin and Curtis Stevens collide in New York Saturday, and so what better time to revisit our annual showcase of boxing’s hardest punchers? The following ratings compile the finest knockout-to-fight percentages in the sport (all fighters must be top-10 world rated by the Transnational Boxing Ratings Board in order to qualify). 1. […]
