Trilogy of Terror

Ali-Frazier. Gatti-Ward. Bowe-Holyfield. Addams Family Reunion. Poison Ivy: The New Seduction.

There are classic trilogies, and there are not so classic ones. All signs point to Israel Vazquez - Rafael Marquez 3, this Saturday night in Los Angeles (and on Showtime), being a worthy threepeat. Their first two fights were mind-numbingly action packed. The ferocity of the last match-up didn't have an easy to follow movie plotline of a Pavlik-Taylor I (a man is decked, then returns for vengeance!). Until Vazquez finally prevailed, it was a back-and-forth war all night -- with Showtime's Steve Albert screaming each Mexican's name altertatively, like Faye Dunaway in the L.A. classic Chinatown: slap! "Vazquez!" slap! "Marquez!" slap! "Vazquez!" slap! "Marquez!"

ESPN.com has it covered from multiple angles. Graham Houston ranks the all-time great fight trilogies. William Dettloff complements that with a look at the top Mexican boxing rivalries. Dan Rafael leads off his weekend notebook with a preview of the fight.

In print, Keith Idec in the Herald News (check out the new web site!) proposes Vazquez-Marquez 3 as a palate cleanser for fans, after the sour tasting Klitschko-Ibragimov fight last weekend. David Avila in the Press Entrerprise sees the bout as continuing in the fine tradition of great Mexican boxing in Los Angeles.

Also on Showtime: Jason Litzau challenges for Robert Guerrero's IBF featherweight title tonight on SHO. The San Jose Mercury News reminds us: "Gilroy boxer Robert Guerrero inspired by wife's bout with cancer." The Montreal Gazette says don't forget that Lucian Bute is fighting this weekend , too, defening his super-middleweight title against William Joppy at the Bell Centre. Meanwhile, Rick Reeno at Boxingscene.com reports that Allan Green may have puleld out of his scheduled bout tonight on ESPN2.

John Duddy update: Maybe his last name is accurate after all.

What a Fool Believes

Ok.
Seconds out.
Segundos fuera.
Man your battlestations.

After a too-long hiatus, it's time once again to bite on the mouthpiece, get up off the stool, and start blogging about boxing in the media. At least for three more minutes.

Sometimes I think that boxing -- to people outside of our boxing bubble -- is getting to be one of those things that's more popular as a metaphor for something else than as what it really is. (You know, like Rodney Dangerfield for anything that lacks respect, or the dodo bird for anything becoming obsolete, or a brick shithouse). So former Doobie Brother Michael McDonald has this new song "Love T.K.O." It's about about how love has beaten him down. "I tried to take control of love / Love took control of me." That kind of thing. I wish Jay Nady would just stop the song. Too much abuse. Check it out on MM's official MySpace page.

And, it's old news now, but Hillary Clinton pandered to a crowd in Youngstown by holding up a pair of boxing gloves and tried to steal some of the crowd's support for Kelly Pavlik, saying she had a tough fight ahead of her. I can't locate a photo, but here is a dumb page of fake pictures of politicians in boxing scenes.

Back in the real boxing world, Bernard Fernandez takes a long look at the fate of PAL boxing gyms this week in the Philadelphia Daily News. It's a nice complement to a piece Tim Smith has at ESPN.com about amateur boxing in New York. The esteemed Furman Bisher in the Atlanta Journal Constitution writes a eulogy for boxing writer W.C. Heinz, who died Wednesday at age 93. Heinz won the A.J. Liebling Award in 1995, covered boxing for years, and wrote the novel The Professional, among other things. "There wasn’t a subject he couldn’t move into with grace," Bisher writes.

I got a kick (as I usually do) out of an entry at the fine boxing-heavy blog "No Mas." Its post-mortem on Klitschko-Ibragimov is worth a read. That heavyweight unification fight got nasty reviews all over the planet. A columnist in the weekly Moscow News writes the fight "kinda sucked." Score one for glasnost!

Lamar Clark has put his glossy boxing magazine Round1 online, with lots of cool art images and regular blog entries. Definitely worth bookmarking for repeat visits. The mini-documentary video about Peter "Kid Chocolate" Quillin is chocolatey good.