The Cruelest Sport - A Professional Boxing blog

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Vitali Klitschko successfully defended his McFit heavyweight championship of the world against limited but plucky Dereck Chisora with a unanimous 12-round decision at the Olympiahalle in Munich, Germany. Final scores were 118-110, 119-111, 118-110.

It was a relatively easy win for Klitschko despite what Twitter hounds all over the world feign in order, as always, to prove their sham omniscience. As far as heavyweight bouts go, however, this was a fairly entertaining scrap, although the outcome was never really in doubt. Continue reading this post »

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Tavoris Cloud defends his IBF light heavyweight title against Gabriel Campillo tonight at the American Bank Center in Corpus Christi, Texas. As par for the course for Cloud, it’s been a while.

Cloud, 23-0 with 19 KOs, is a fan-friendly puncher who has thus far had a career plagued by setbacks and stints of inactivity. He had two fights in 2008, one fight in 2009, another two in 2010, and again, only one bout last year. That doesn’t quite describe a bullet train towards big money bouts, but questionable decisions, promotional conflicts, plus bad luck, such as Zsolt Erdei pulling out of a December 31 bout due to a hand injury, has continued to hedge his momentum. Continue reading this post »

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Vitali Klitschko returns to the ring tomorrow night when he prepares to spank the latest l’enfant terrible—or is just “terrible” enough?—of British heavyweights, Dereck Chisora, over a scheduled 12 at the Olympiahalle in Munich, Germany.

There must be something in the water in the United Kingdom that makes fighters so obnoxious. Certainly Chisora, only 17 fights into his career, has given more than enough evidence of being the only passenger on his own personal Crazy Train. Over the last couple of years, he has bitten a fighter in the ring, kissed one at a weigh-in, and has been found guilty of assaulting his ex-girlfriend. It is hard to believe that someone as modest and amiable as Frank Bruno was once the biggest star in U.K. boxing. Today, instead of the stigma of “horizontal heavyweights,” Britain can boast of a new generation of vulgar non-sportsmen with little talent and lots of mouthiness to go along with all that nothing. Continue reading this post »

From the files of TCS

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“The rough, dirty, tough fighters, and the lying, cheating, monopoly hunting fight promoters, and fighter’s managers–they run and ruin everything. Mean! Why, those promoters give a baby boxer $30 to go four rounds and then take $10.50 away from them for their share. The managers have those fellows just where they want ‘em. I know their talk. I’ve heard it. ‘You let this fellow win tonight or you don’t fight here again.’ That’s the way they talk.”

image: chris farina/top rank

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Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. pounded out a unanimous decision over game but outgunned Marco Antonio Rubio at the Alamodome in San Antonio, Texas. Chavez Jr., now 45-0-1-1(31) has so obsessed fringe media members and their doppelgangers—forum beasts—that there is almost no point in bothering to read anything about him any longer.

Over the last few days, it has been insinuated that Chavez took PEDs or diuretics, that Rubio tanked it, that Chavez “ducked” a post-fight drug test, and that there is a vast conspiracy involving the WBC and the Texas athletic commission to make sure that Chavez got away with using banned substances. Anybody who knows anything about boxing knows that commissions are usually staffed by political hacks and that these commissions are object lessons in cronyism, dishonesty, conflict of interest, ineffectuality, and corruption. However, more than anything, these state agencies are often comprised of bumbling fools. Ditto sanctioning bodies, where deceitfulness is often merely idiocy dressed up in villainous sackcloth. Only in boxing can such limited imaginations make millions, and this is proven by the fact that sanctioning bodies are actually bankrolled by their victims. Even so, not everything in boxing is sub rosa or cloak and dagger. These people—commissions and sanctioning bodies—are, for the most part, nincompoops. Or is that something to be argued? Continue reading this post »

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Este sábado 4 de febrero, en el Alamodome de San Antonio, Texas, Julio César Chávez Jr. superó lo que muchos calificaron como su máxima prueba al derrotar a Marco Antonio Rubio vía decisión unánime.

Que Chávez Jr. se haya visto contra su “máxima prueba” quizá no sea culpa suya sino de las hipérboles que han marcado su carrera y cada uno de sus hitos. En su pelea anterior derrotó convincentemente a Peter Manfredo provocando que los comentaristas anunciaran la llegada de un nuevo Chávez Jr., un mutante que habría añadido a su boxeo más trucos y movimientos que 007. Continue reading this post »

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Julio Cesar Chavez, Jr., AKA “The Thing That Should Not Be,” returns to San Antonio tonight, perhaps in a stretch limo, to face veteran powerpuncher Marco Antonio Rubio in a scheduled 12 at the Alamodome for the UNICEF middleweight championship of the world.

Since his disastrous no-contest against Troy Rowland in 2009—as boring as an Andre Ward bout, perhaps—Chavez has delivered nothing but the goods in his last four starts, including shootouts against John Duddy and Sebastian Zbik. Despite his honest efforts in the ring, however, Chavez continues to suffer the barbs of fantasists all over the world who would rather see a P-4-P juggernaut trample 15-1 underdogs. Continue reading this post »

Tomorrow night at the Almamodome in San Antonio, Texas, Nonito Donaire, 27-1, dips his toe into the junior featherweight division when he faces Puerto Rican banger Wilfredo Vazquez. Jr. Donaire looks to bounce back from an uninspiring unanimous decision over Omar Andres Narvaez three and a half months ago, while Vazquez Jr., 27-1 with 18 KOs, hopes to come back from a knockout loss he suffered at the hands of Jorge Arce last May. Continue reading this post »