Free Republic

Via Mediaite, it’s big news when the U.S. Senate majority leader says he thinks a major fight was fixed and that Congress should spring into action to solve the problem. Or at least, it would be: As you’ll see, he’s actually not saying that he thinks it was fixed. On the contrary, he thinks the outcome was the result of poor judging, not fraud. In which case … why the hell is he using this as an excuse to promote some sort of new federal boxing statute? It’s Rahm Emanuel’s infamous line about not letting a crisis go to waste,...

Cuban boxer Teofilo Stevenson, the three-time Olympic heavyweight champion with a devastating right hand and a gentlemanly demeanor, has died. He was 60.

LAS VEGAS -- Timothy Bradley promised to shock, though the biggest shock in his fight with Manny Pacquiao came from the judges' scorecards. In a fight Pacquiao seemed to have in hand, two judges decided otherwise, giving Bradley a split decision Saturday night and ending the Filipino fighter's remarkable seven-year unbeaten run. Promoter Bob Arum fumed, the crowd at the MGM Grand arena booed, and Pacquiao seemed stunned when the decision was announced. Arum said there would be a November rematch, though he blasted the way the decision went down. "I'm going to make a lot of money on the...

LAS VEGAS -- Timothy Bradley promised to shock, though the biggest shock in his fight with Manny Pacquiao came from the judges' scorecards. In a fight Pacquiao seemed to have in hand, two judges decided otherwise, giving Bradley a split decision Saturday night and ending the Filipino fighter's remarkable seven-year unbeaten run. Promoter Bob Arum fumed, the crowd at the MGM Grand arena booed, and Pacquiao seemed stunned when the decision was announced. Arum said there would be a November rematch, though he blasted the way the decision went down. "I'm going to make a lot of money on the...

Manny Pacquiao scored his greatest victory seven months ago. Not in the boxing ring, but in a Philippines church. Having been blessed with a successful boxing career, a beautiful family, and fame and fortune, the pugilist nearly threw it all away on riotous living – hard drinking, non-stop clubbing, heavy gambling and serial philandering. But the boxing game’s only eight-division world champion was convicted by the Holy Spirit following his bout this past November with Juan Manuel Marquez. Not because his long suffering wife, Jinkee, was ready to kick him to the curb. But because Pacquiao took to heart the...

CNN’s Fareed Zakaria to Boxing Champ Manny Pacquiao: "You know, there are reports, your Forbes magazine, other places say you make tens maybe more millions of dollars, $40 million one year. Philippines is a very poor country. Do you think that there is some, there is something wrong with somebody, with somebody in the Philippines making that much money when people are starving in your country?"

Boxer Johnny Tapia has reportedly died. Family members say Albuquerque police were summoned to Tapia's house at 7:45 PM Sunday by a family member who discovered the body. Cops say the death does not appear suspicious, but an official cause has not been determined.

The Grove shopping mall in Los Angeles has banned boxer Manny Pacquiao over comments he made about gay marriage, but the boxer said he was misquoted. "Based on news reports of statements made by Mr. Pacquiao, we have made it be known that he is not welcome at The Grove and will not be interviewed here now or in the future. The Grove is a gathering place for all Angelenos and not a place for intolerance," the Grove said in a statement. In an interview with National Conservative Examiner, Pacquiao addressed President Obama's recent endorsement of gay marriage. "God's words...

Update, 8:30 p.m.: Pacquiao is "not welcome at The Grove and will not be interviewed here now or in the future." Full statement at the bottom. ==================================== Update, 6:50 p.m.: "We're canceling the event," says Grove spokesman Bill Reich. "Manny Pacquiao is not coming to the Grove." And thus the backlash begins. ==================================== Professional boxer Manny Pacquiao and "Extra" host Mario Lopez were blowing up Twitter today about their 3/3:30 p.m. interview at the Grove on Wednesday. But mall executives tell LA Weekly that the event may be called off. Pacquiao told the National Conservative Examiner over the weekend that...

This brutal knockout blow turned a boxer's face to mush - making him look more like jelly than a prized jouster. Tony Pietrantonio came crashing to the canvas in the 31st second of the third round following the devastating right-hander from fellow U.S. light heavyweight Lavarn Harvell. Harvell, 23 - dubbed Baby Bowe because of his resemblance to former heavyweight champ Riddick Bowe - said: 'I felt that punch all the way up my shoulder and back, so I knew he wasn’t getting up.

Boxing suffered a great loss Sunday when the sport’s legendary journalist and historian Bert Sugar died at Northern Westchester Hospital in Mount Kisco of a heart attack following a lengthy battle with lung cancer. He was 74.

Will Pacquiao v. Mayweather ever happen? Who turns down a $50 million guarantee that could be turn out to be more than $100 million? Floyd Mayweather Jr., that's who. According to ESPN.com, Manny Pacquiao's camp approached Mayweather with their latest offer for the much anticipated fight between the world's two best boxers. Pacquiao's offer includes a split of the Pay-Per-View (PPV) revenue with the winner taking home 70%.  With the fight estimated to draw $150 million in PPV revenue, that would means more than $100 million to the winner and about $50 million for the loser. And that doesn't...

Dave Charnley, one of the best British boxers never to win a world title, passed away on Saturday morning after a short illness. He was 76. The 'Dartford Destroye'r is widely considered to have been robbed in his second challenge to world lightweight champion Joe 'Old Bones' Brown in London in 1961.

Angelo Dundee, the brilliant motivator who worked the corner for Muhammad Ali in his greatest fights and willed Sugar Ray Leonard to victory in his biggest bout, died Wednesday in Tampa, Fla. He was 90.

Utah's gentleman bruiser, Don Fullmer, 72, who fought some of the world's most famous boxers and came within a single fight of a world title himself, died peacefully Saturday morning surrounded by the prize he valued most — his family. Fullmer and his boxing brothers, Gene, the oldest and a world middle weight champion in 1957, and Jay, second oldest who left the sport with a 20-5-2 record after an eye injury, put Utah on the international boxing stage in the 1950s and '60s.

DENVER — Heavyweight contender Ron Lyle, who fought Muhammad Ali for the title in 1975 and later battled George Foreman, has died in Denver at age 70.

When boxing great Joe Frazier died last week, the media managed to say nice things about Smokin' Joe without ever detailing how they and their chosen one of the moment, Muhammad Ali, conspired to ruin Frazier's life. I got a sense of this in March 1971, when my friends from grad school and I drove from Purdue to watch a large screen presentation of the first Ali-Frazier fight. Given the imperatives of student poverty, we headed not south to Indianapolis, which was 40 miles closer, but north to Gary, which was five dollars cheaper. The moment we walked into the...

Manny Pacquiao escaped Saturday night with a win at the MGM Grand arena in a decision that left Juan Manuel Márquez fuming once again. The Filipino sensation, considered the world's best pound for pound fighter, was taken to the limit before winning a majority decision that infuriated Márquez and most of the sellout crowd. While close, the win helped Pacquiao continue a remarkable run that has made him the most exciting fighter in the sport. In a bruising battle against a counterpuncher who was both accurate and fast, Pacquiao needed the final round on two scorecards to pull out the...

It is appropriate to set aside this journal’s customary business now and then to pay tribute to class and loss away from baseball. If you think that boxing is a profession, if not necessarily a sport, to which class is an unwelcome intruder, you may not have known Joe Frazier, who died of liver cancer at 62 on Monday. Or, at least, you may not really think that class was beaten out of the profession once and for all by the third and last of his showdowns with Muhammad Ali. “I heard somethin’ once,” Ali told Sports Illustrated‘s Mark Kram,...

‘Don’t you know I’m God?” taunted Muhammad Ali, in the first of the epic trilogy of heavyweight prizefights with Joe Frazier that defined the early 1970s. Ali even took to accompanying each word — Don’t — you — know — I’m — God? — with a swing of his fists, unleashing another flurry of his lightning-fast punches. Frazier, undaunted, singularly unaffected by Ali’s sophomoric doggerel and sophisticated psy-ops, kept boring in on his opponent, a steady, bobbing, weaving machine, and spat back through his bloodied mouthpiece: “Well, God, you gonna get whupped tonight!” And very near the end of that...