Sometimes When We Touch

I'm just going to put a thought out there and let the chips fall where they may.

In those pre-fight "stare-down" photos that newspapers love to run, it often doesn't seem entirely clear whether the two guys are getting ready to fight each other -- or to kiss each other.

There, I've said it.

I know we're all supposed to get stoked up in the days of hype before a big fight, especially at the press conferences where the two guys come out and tell everyone how deeply they desire to kill each other and what a talentless punk the other guy is. After emptying out both barrels of trash-talk, they then are forced by promoters to move really close together and pose with their faces an inch or so apart. They have to snarl and look mad to let us know it will be an awesome promotion, er, fight.

The thing is, when we write advance newspaper stories about a forthcoming fight, photo editors almost always seem to choose shots from the staged stare-down rather than running action shots of the fighters, which actually depict the sport. I think I know why photo editors choose stare-down photos. They are from an event that happened yesterday, so they are "news," while a fight that happened months ago isn't.

Also, not all newspapers can freely tap into the AP or Corbis photo archive to get great action shots or portraits of boxers; they can get yesterday's posed stare-down pictures for free off the wire they subscribe to.

So we get two guys staring into each other's eyes.

Sometimes they have a hard time pulling off the hate. Anyone who's seen Joe Calzaghe and Mikkel Kessler knows they look like they belong in GQ magazine anyway, and they seem like they really are nice guys. Still, I just can't get over the shots from their stare-down.

"Their noses touched and they started laughing," says Ed Mulholland, the award-winning boxing photographer who took the shots of that stare-down shown here.

Up from a Long Count

Time to play catch-up and post a bunch of stories by BWAA members. Here we go:

St. Clair Murraine in the Tallahassee Democrat reports from Friday's controversial 15-second stoppage in the heavyweight fight between Travis Walker and T.J. Wilson. Michael Woods at thesweetscience.com says Joe Calzaghe's hands are 100 percent going into the title unification bout with Mikkel Kessler. Robert Morales in the L.A. Daily News has a talk with Calzaghe.

Much of the press on Calzaghe-Kessler is from Europe. It's rare these days when a U.S. newspaper does any kind of infographic for a boxing match, but here's an idea to pass along to editors and art directors. The graphic here (above right), which is on the website of English promoter Frank Warren, shows both fighters' complete pro records and how long every fight has lasted.

T.K. Stewart's awesome boxing blog has an item on the angling of promoters to set up a middleweight title fight between champion Kely Pavlik and the well-hyped, still-Irish John Duddy. George Willis at the New York Post catches up with Ohio hero Pavlik in the aftermath of his big win over Jermain Taylor. ESPN.com's package on Joe Frazier includes video plus stories about the old days by Ron Borges and Don Steinberg. Speaking of Philadelphia, Bernard Fernandez (Phila. Daily News) and Steinberg (Inquirer) give the details from the weekend's boxing card at the Spectrum. I wasn't thrilled with the headline the paper put on my story. I wrote that none of the fighters was exactly Joe Frazier; the hed called the whole card "less than smokin'." Which isn't the same thing. It was a fine card with exciting moments and boxers who worked hard. I should have made that clearer to the copy desk.

ESPN.com, meanwhile, has made a lot of moves lately in coverage, notably bringing in regular pieces by Tom Hauser. Dan Rafael's weekend notebook extends a hope that Calzaghe will stay off the list of recently injured boxers whose mishaps have forced big-fight postponements. Rafael also has the details on Floyd Mayweather's dismissal from Dancing with the Stars. As for another former contestant on that show, William Dettloff's Ring Update at thering-online.com defends Evander Holyfield's right to keep punching. It also adds bonus remarks such as: "This unfortunate news just in for the handlers of John Ruiz and Sergei Liakhovich, who spent the week arguing over who is afraid to fight whom: No one cares."

Manny Being Manny

Sorry -- this is just a novelty entry to buy time until I have a chance for a real update.