The book on Tiger Ted Lowry

Everybody knows that Rocky Marciano retired as heavyweight champion, undefeated at 49-0. He never lost. Unless you believe reports from a fight he had on October 10, 1949 against "Tiger" Ted Lowry. Marciano was 20-0 with 19 KOs when they met that night in Providence. Lowry, a former middleweight from New Haven, had a long record whose exact numbers are unclear. Boxrec.com says he was 59-48-9 when the two New England sons met as heavyweights. Lowry's own account, in his new book, God's in My Corner: A Portrait of an American Boxer, says he had 65 wins in 92 fights.

"In the fourth, Lowry had Marciano in such a bad way that it appeared it would be only a matter of time before he would complete the kill," according to Providence Journal boxing writer Michael J. Thomas, who was there. But in the second half of the 10-rounder Marciano came back and won a decision, 6-4, from all three judges. Lowry never outright says he dumped the fight intentionally -- he says he thinks he won. But he allows the introduction by Sharon Napolitano to cite speculation that Lowry was told he'd be guaranteed a second fight with rising contender Marciano if he didn't win the first time. "Lowry couldn't have won that fight, no matter what happened," one boxing official is quoted, anonymously, as saying. The boxers did fight and go the distance again, in 1950, and Lowry boasts of being the only man to go the distance twice with The Rock. The Marciano stuff is the best part of God's in My Corner. The book covers the rest of Lowry's career and life after boxing, including a stretch in the first all-black paratrooper division during World War II. It probably could have used a little tighter editing, but the memoir recaptures a time when boxing was a bigger deal, and it delivers backstage stories you've probably never heard before.

George Foreman just came out with his own book, God in My Corner. It's a good thing these two heavyweights never fought each other. I think there's a rule against working both corners.

In the news: Holyfield could get title shot, writes Keith Idec in the Herald News. In the Tallahassee Democrat, St. Clair Murraine uses the travails of two undefeated Tallahassee prospects, light heavyweight Tavoris Cloud and heavyweight Travis Walker, to examine the fickle and inexplicable ways that title bouts are made (or aren't).