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Discusses the origins and evolution of the sport of boxing, as well as memorable events and key personalities in the game's history.
Paints an unvarnished picture of the 24 greats who have ruled the sport's most glamorous division - the Heavyweight Champions of the World. Tells all the inside stories of the great ring bouts, the men who fought those grueling rounds, and the men who made and managed the champs.
For much of the twentieth century, boxing was one of America’s most popular sports, and the heavyweight champions were figures known to all. Their exploits were reported regularly in the newspapers—often outside the sports pages—and their fame and wealth dwarfed those of other athletes. Long after their heyday, these icons continue to be synonymous with the “sweet science.” In The Boxing Kings: When American Heavyweights Ruled the Ring, Paul Beston profiles these larger-than-life men who held a central place in American culture. Among the figures covered are John L. Sullivan, who made the heavyweight championship a commercial property; Jack Johnson, who became the first black man to claim the title; Jack Dempsey, a sporting symbol of the Roaring Twenties; Joe Louis, whose contributions to racial tolerance and social progress transcended even his greatness in the ring; Rocky Marciano, who became an embodiment of the American Dream; Muhammad Ali, who took on the U.S. government and revolutionized professional sports with his showmanship; and Mike Tyson, a hard-punching dynamo who typified the modern celebrity. This gallery of flawed but sympathetic men also includes comics, dandies, bookworms, divas, ex-cons, workingmen, and even a tough-guy-turned-preacher. As the heavyweight title passed from one claimant to another, their stories opened a window into the larger history of the United States. Boxing fans, sports historians, and those interested in U.S. race relations as it intersects with sports will find this book a fascinating exploration into how engrained boxing once was in America’s social and cultural fabric.
It was 1976 when Leon and Michael Spinks first punched their way into America’s living rooms. That year, they became the first brothers to win Olympic gold in the same Games. Shortly thereafter, they became the first brothers to win the heavyweight title: Leon toppled The Greatest, Muhammad Ali; Michael beat the unbeatable Larry Holmes. With a cast of characters that includes Ali, Holmes, Mike Tyson, Gerry Cooney, Dwight Qawi, Eddie Mustafa Muhammad and dozens of friends, relatives, and boxing figures, ONE PUNCH FROM THE PROMISED LAND tells the unlikely story of the Spinks brothers. Their rise from the Pruitt-Igoe housing disaster. Their divergent paths of success. And their relationship with America. The book also uncovers stories never before made public: the big paydays, the high living, the backroom deals. It’s not afraid to tackle an issue rarely discussed: Does the heavyweight title deliver on its promise to young men in the inner city? This is the definitive story of Leon and Michael Spinks. And a cross-examination of heavyweight boxing in 20th century America.
This work covers the individuals and events of what most consider to be the greatest era in boxing history. The first chapter compares the 1970s to all other eras, from the early 1900s and Jack Johnson to the present day and the Klitschko brothers, proving through an established set of criteria that the '70s stand above all other eras. The second chapter focuses on the tumultuous 1960s and the circumstances that led to the blossoming of unprecedented competition. The remaining ten chapters cover the years 1970 through 1979, revisiting the people and the rivalries of an era that produced Ali, Frazier, Foreman, Norton and Holmes, boxers known to people who didn't even follow the sport.
A fully illustrated and researched update to a classic reference guide includes entries for all of the inductees in the Boxing Hall of Fame through 2006, in an official record book that lists key facts and figures while providing numerous action photographs. Original.
"[The dramatist] has used his hero, a fighter based on the first Black heavyweight champion of the world, Jack Johnson ... as a symbol in part of Black aspiration"--Back cover.
Covering Mike Tyson's rise through the amateur and professional boxing ranks, this book follows the Brooklyn native from his early years as a young criminal in Brownsville to his 1988 heavyweight unification match with Michael Spinks. The book focuses on the Catskill Boxing Club--where boxing guru Cus D'Amato trained the 210-pound teenager in the finer points of the sport and developed his impregnable defense--and on his home life with D'Amato and surrogate mother Camille Ewald and the other young fighters who lived with them. Tyson's boxing education began in the unauthorized "smokers" held every week in the Bronx, matching his skills against older, more experienced fighters. He won the 1981 Amateur Heavyweight Boxing Championship in Colorado Springs at the age of 14 and repeated the amazing feat the following year. By 1985, finding no other challenging amateur competition, he was forced to join the professional ranks where, in November 1986, he became the youngest heavyweight champion in boxing history. Less than two years later, he unified the crown, establishing himself as one of the most dominant heavyweight fighters the sport had ever seen.
**New edition updated with a foreword by Manny Pacquiao.** A celebration and memorial of the greatest era of heavyweight fighters from 1962 to 1997, as witnessed ringside by an International Boxing Hall of Fame sportswriter. Once upon a time, of all the memories made in ballparks and arenas from California to New York, there was nothing to rival that magic moment that could grab a heavyweight fight crowd by its collective jugular vein and trigger a tsunami of raw emotion before a single punch had even been thrown. That’s the way it was when the heavyweight giants danced in the boxing ring during the golden eras of the greats Ali, Frazier, Holmes, and Spinks, to name a few. There will never again be a heavyweight cycle like the one that began when Sonny Liston stopped Floyd Patterson and ended when Mike Tyson bit a slice out of Evander Holyfield’s ear; when no ersatz drama, smoke, mirrors, and noise followed a fighter’s entry into the ring; when the crowds knew that these men were not actors on a stage but rather giants in a ring with a single purpose—to fight other giants. By the ringside, acclaimed sportswriter Jerry Izenberg watched history as it was being made during those legendary days, witnessing fights like the Thrilla in Manila and the Rumble in the Jungle and preserving them in punchy yet tremendous prose. Delivering both his eyewitness accounts and revelatory back stories of this greatest era of heavyweight boxing, Izenberg invites readers to a place of recollection. Once There Were Giants is his memorial to this extraordinary time, the likes of which we shall never see again.
Are today's boxers better than their predecessors, or is modern boxing a shadow of its former self? Boxing historians discuss the socioeconomic and demographic changes that have affected the quality, prominence and popularity of the sport over the past century. Among the interviewees are world-renowned scholars, some of the sport's premier trainers, and former amateur and professional world champions. Chapters cover such topics as the ongoing deterioration of boxers' skills, their endurance, the decline in the number of fights and the psychological readiness of championship-caliber boxers. The strengths and weaknesses of today's superstars are analyzed and compared to those of such past greats as Joe Louis, Sugar Ray Robinson, Jack Dempsey and Jake LaMotta.