INSIDEBOXING.COM ( November 6, 2002) - It was a bad run for Mickey Ward. Four fights, four losses.  Tomato-can numbers, retirement time.

They were against tough guys, but so what? They were still heartbreakers, still losses. And that’s all that counts.

Losing always stings. Put four losses back-to-back and you start working overtime on the asphalt paver, stopping by Lenny’s Bar for a cold one on the way home. More

INSIDEBOXING.com (October 25, 2002) - That contented belch you just heard sprung from the belly of Felix Trinidad, proud new  owner of an extra 30 pounds.
   Who can blame him if he’s ballooned up to 190? He deserves a few more trips through the buffet line, another healthy helping of strawberries on his shortcake.
     Don’t let anyone fool you. The toughest part of the fight game is passing on the cherry cobbler during two months of training. More

        WBA super-featherweight champ Acelino “Popo” Freitas has this unfriendly habit of knocking guys on their butts shortly after he shakes their hand and gives them a friendly nod. It’s kind of a ritual with Freitas, a way of  cutting his workday short so he can spend more quality time with his wife.
    Freitas (31-0, 29 KOs), who comes from Brazil where he’s already considered a national treasure, started his career with 29 straight knockouts, 22 of those fights ending inside three rounds. Those are “early” Mike Tyson numbers and would be pretty impressive if you were talking about heavyweights. It’s almost unheard of when you’re talking about guys who weigh 130 pounds.

    You might want to grab a seat and watch this fight.
   Sure, the pay-per-view Futility-fest between Eric “Butterbean” Esch and Larry “AARP” Holmes will probably be beckoning, trying to pull you in like a carnival sideshow featuring a three-headed dog. But you might want to pass on the freak show and tune into an actual prize fight.
    John Ruiz and Kirk Johnson are two of the better heavyweights in the world, though most of the world doesn’t know it yet. They’ll be fighting on the same night - Saturday - as the carnival act, the real fight scheduled to start a little later.
   For those of you who don’t know a Kostya Tszyu from a sneeze, Ruiz holds the WBA heavyweight title thanks to a 1-1-1 record against Evander Holyfield. Fight Holyfield three consecutive times and come out of it in a dead heat, and you’ve done something to be proud of.

    Word is, heavyweight Lance Whitaker has dropped the name Goofi from his bio sheet.
     Smart move, Lance. Why you chose that snappy name in the first place is your own crazybusiness, but getting rid of it now might not be a total loss. I know where you might be able to peddle it for a few bucks. Lennox Lewis is in need of a new nickname. That’s because on boxing’s Smart-O-Meter, he registers a zero.
       Goofi Lennox Lewis. I like that.
       His recent claim that Wladimir Klitschko isn’t tough enough to fight him is like saying to the neighborhood bully that you’d kick his butt, but you’ve got your good clothes on. It’s telling the guy who cut you off in traffic that you’d like to teach him some manners if you weren’t already late for work.  More

 Whew, close one.
     Tuesday night in Las Vegas,  Marco Antonio Barrera and Erik Morales ran into each other in the valet parking area at the MGM Grand.
    Apparently, Barrera was arriving in a van from his training camp in Big Bear, Calif., and Morales was returning from his workout at the Top Rank gym.
     Talk about coincidences
     According to Fight News, disaster was avoided when Morales was kept inside his own air-conditioned van while Barrera checked into the MGM.  More

INSIDE BOXING (June 4, 2002) - The fight game has always been treated like an interloper at a fancy ball, a nuisance with white socks, poor table manners and a forged party invitation. He’s a fun guy to watch from a distance but you don’t want him joining your country club.
       Most of the fight crowd doesn’t attend the ballet or the opera or expect too much in the way of amenities. They don’t know Hamlet from ham and eggs, but they understand the old three-knockdown rule and why you don’t always go to the scorecards... More

Keep your fists high and your chin tucked, Hasim. Take out extra insurance, schedule a long vacation and make sure you have a copy of your dental records safely tucked away,  just in case.

Like a pampered  ‘67 Mustang, Evander Holyfield still has a little kick left in him, a little bit of that sting that the great ones are always slow to lose.

At 39, Holyfield should be 30 pounds fatter and two seconds slower. He should be taking afternoon naps, slow walks and afternoon medication for sore joints...(More)

A prize fight? Naw, this was a resurrection, a little fistic CPR administered to a dying sport that was miraculously brought back from the dead.

The next time you wonder what all the fuss is about - why some of us think this sport is so special - remember Mickey Ward and Arturo Gatti. Remember how they single-handedly brought the fight game back to life, grabbed it by the shirt collar and jerked it back to its feet.

Suddenly, boxing is off life support and looking for a ride back to town. At least for now...(More)

This isn’t a fight as much as it’s a simple lesson in life, a little reminder that there are still guys out there who fight for more than just money.

Arturo Gatti and Mickey Ward shouldn’t be fighting next to a casino in Connecticut on Saturday night. They should be fighting bare-fisted in front of 80,000 fans in an outdoor  arena in Reno or Tonopah. They should be going 40 or 50 rounds instead of 10, guys in straw hats and starched white shirts cheering them on, sweating under a hot sun, chewing on cigar butts and betting between rounds which fighter will go down first.

INSIDE BOXING (May 6, 2002) - Must have been a wild night in Maui.

Get a bunch of reporters together on a beautiful island, put them in a single room, toss in the Beast from Brooklyn and wait three hours.

Tell me there isn’t going to be a lot of  late-night story-telling over strawberry daiquiris when that door finally opens.

Mike Tyson?  He’s boxing’s answer to Attila the Hun, though Attila didn’t have the bad reputation Tyson has.  And we didn’t have to listen to the crazy Hun rant and rave on the evening news about the villages he and his men were going to plunder and pillage...(More)

Did you see it? It was there for 12 busy rounds, draped across the sloping
shoulders of featherweight Manuel Medina on Saturday night, dragging him down,
robbing him of a fight and a night that both should have been his.
      It’s not really visible, but you can’t miss it. It pops its ugly head up every time a
well-known fighter takes on a not-so-well-known fighter.

The best fighter in the world has a nightclub act, a basketball fetish, a role in a movie and the quickest set of hands this side of Bennie the Pickpocket.

The best fighter in the world talks too fast, says too much, thinks he can sing and would like to play in the NBA when this crazy boxing gig is over...(More)

The thing about Mike Tyson is, you don’t know whether to laugh at him or call in the National Guard. You don’t know if you should ignore his act or hide your wife and kids.He’s always out there dancing on the edge, swaying back and forth between impending doom and a Sports Center highlight.
     Say this for the guy. He’s kept the heavyweight division alive, if only by threatening to destroy it...(More)

He had some rough times near the end, cruel moments when the thought of dying swarmed over him, smothered him, scared him.

But mostly, he talked about living, about all the things he’d seen and done, the places he’d been, the places he still wanted to go.

Jay Edson died of pancreatic cancer Monday night at his home in Naples, Fla. He died just hours before he was scheduled to fly to Hawaii on a vacation with his wife, Georgia. He was 77, hoping against tough odds that he would see 78...(More)

Hasim Rahman is a carnival pony caught in the starting gate at Belmont.  He's not really supposed to be there but it's too late to stop the race now.

He's like the quiet guy on your high school football team who always played second string and was always running the other team's plays. You didn't even know his name until the night he somehow got in the game and recovered a fumble in the end zone to win the championship... (More)

It's too early to tell if the mellowing of Mike Tyson actually has set in, but I wouldn't bet the house on it. Old dogs don't take well to learning new tricks. Tyson? He's a mad dog. Just because he stopped snarling doesn't mean he stopped biting... (More)

That bitter taste? It's crow, served cold and tart. Some of us had it for  breakfast Sunday morning, tried to choke it down with a sip of humility.  It didn't help.

My serving was especially tough. I thought Felix Trinidad was like Superman:  indestructible with good hand speed, a hard chin and enough power to stop a locomotive. His fight with Bernard Hopkins was just a quick stopover on his glorious ride toward a showdown with Roy Jones... (More)