Writer Roundup: Pros and Their Prose on a Packed Fight Weekend

Photo credit: Tom Casino/Showtime

This was not necessarily the weekend to be a brawler. Michael Katsidis served himself up on a proverbial platter to master technician Juan Manuel Marquez. Sakio Bika found himself out-dirtied against Andre Ward. And, on a more positive note for one brawler, Carl Froch put aside the bruiser and became a boxer for a night, taking an easy decision over Arthur Abraham.

Those were but three of the five fights on HBO and Showtime on a big fight weekend. And as always, BWAA members were on press rows or in front of their screens to capture the action.

The most noteworthy fight on paper turned out to be the most noteworthy fight in the ring. Among the many capturing Marquez-Katsidis on deadline were Lance Pugmire of the Los Angeles Times, Jake Donovan of BoxingScene.com and Gabriel Montoya of MaxBoxing.com.

"Katsidis was well on the verge of falling into a deep hole before scoring with a monster left hook to floor Marquez and leave him buzzed even upon beating the count," Donovan wrote of the dramatic third round. "Ever the warrior, Marquez not only avoided disaster and survived the storm, but punched himself right back into the fight by rounds end."

Inevitably, talk post-Marquez-Katsidis turned to whether a third bout between Marquez and Manny Pacquiao will ever happen. The actual question, of course, is not who will be next for Marquez, but who will be next for Pacquiao.

85th BWAA Dinner Photos

photos by Ray Bailey

Manny Pacquiao with his Fighter of the Decade award

Pacquiao with Bob Arum, BWAA President Jack Hirsch and Freddie Roach

Tomasz Adamek with Ed Keenan and crew

Erin Boyd accepts the A.J. Liebling Award for her father F.X. Toole from Bernard Fernandez.

Photo award winners Chris Farina and Will Hart with Barney winner Tom Hauser

HBO's Max Kellerman with Terrance and Tommy Lane, sons of Mills Lane.

Wallace Matthews with Manny Pacquiao and Joe Frazier

Jack Hirsch and Bernard Fernandez with a special award for events coordinator Gina Andriolo

Photo award winner Rafael Soto with Sean Sullivan

Bill Gallo, Harold Lederman, Don Steinberg

George Chuvalo with his award for courage.

Punching Stamps

So Vitali and Wladimir Klitschko, as of today, are together on an official Ukrainian postage stamp. Finally, someone will be able to lick them (ugh, sorry). The stamps are for 1.5 Ukraine Hryvnia -- about 19 cents according to this conversion site.

Sending mail inside paper envelopes is a dying art in the age of Twitter, but in Europe, at least, boxing isn't. Over there they put current boxing heroes on stamps. In the Philippines too: in 2008 they came out with a Manny Pacquiao postage series, honoring several of his hairstyles.

In the USA, snail mail and boxing both have that strong aroma of nostalgia, so we choose to put old-school champs on our official postage. There have been four pro boxing champs on U.S. postage stamps, starting with Joe Louis in 1993, then Rocky Marciano and Jack Dempsey in 1999 and Sugar Ray Robinson in 2006. Palau, Micronesia and other countries (not all of them exotic locales for the Survivor series) have placed Muhammad Ali on postage. So far no James Toney, though. And Floyd Mayweather Jr. is probably holding out for getting his face on money. Also, there are websites now where you are allowed to put your own image of almost anything on a legal U.S. postage stamp.

Boxing in the Comics

You gotta love how much comic books use boxing.  These dudes have superpowers and every futuristic gadget at their disposal, but they keep coming back to the primitive match-up: two guys (or mutated beasts) with gloves, going mana-a-mano in  the ring.  The Thing is a very good American heavyweight, but could he beat Arreola?   This site rounds up some great comic-book boxing covers.

Calzaghe Has Epic (Final?) Career Win at The Garden

After all the hype, the fight went as the betting lines expected. Joe Calzaghe dominated, embarrassed, bloodied and outclassed an aging Roy Jones Jr. in New York's Madison Square Garden.

Fight Recaps

MaxBoxing.com
BoxingScene.com
NY Post
Yahoo Sports
Sporting Life

Povetkin Injured, Bute-Andrade Causes a Stir

A few notes and links from the weekend. Alexander Povetkin injured himself during a run and withdrew from the Dec. 13 date with WBO/IBF heavyweight champ Wladimir Klitschko.

Some Links of Note with Information

Setanta Sports
BoxingScene.com
ESPN

The ending to Lucian Bute's recent defense of the IBF super middleweight title has caused quite a stir among the boxing fans, and media.

Some Links of Note with Information

ESPN
MaxBoxing.com

Pour Some Sugar on Me

Sugar Ray Leonard launched his first official web site today at http://www.sugarrayleonard.net/. You might say: what's the rush? Well, he wanted to get online before Thomas Hearns.

The site is finely constructed, with things that move and make noise. There's a bio of Leonard and plenty of promotion for "The Contender" and something called POWER. The video section, with highlights from Sugar Ray's top amateur and pro fights, is worth checking out (with Howard Cosell yelling "the Cuban is hurt!"). So far, I can't find anyplace where the site lists Leonard's career fighting record. And, as is the case on many boxers sites, the merchandise area is "coming soon." We want to see a blog.

Hit Parade of Yesteryear

I just figured out how to hook up my stereo and turntable to my computer and make MP3s out of my vintage 45s, LPs and 8-track tapes. I thought I'd take the opportunity to present two vinyl classics inspired by boxers, Joe Louis and Rocky Marciano. Click on the records to play the music:

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.

Three Morons Interview Wladimir Klitschko

He's trying to explain his charity effort but the three Fox News cretins won't let him. Video here:


http://video.aol.com/video-detail/heavyweight-magic/2557958271

Top 10 "Boxing in the Media" Events of 2007

Man, it was a slugfest of a year for boxing media in 2007. The sport's top magazine got a new owner. The sweet science had a gigantic year on pay-per-view TV -- despite the threat from Mixed Martial Arts -- and even the mainstream press paid attention to boxing's biggest event. Still, newspapers continued to shed boxing beat writers, and the Internet picked up some of the slack. Here are my top ten boxing media events of 2007:

1. De La Hoya Buys The Ring
After more than a year of back-office talks, De La Hoya pulled the trigger on a Rupert Murdoch-like takeover. He set up subsidiary Sports Entertainment Publications to buy The Ring and a few other fight books from Kappa Publishing, whose real forte was word-search puzzle magazines. The influx of money and boxing appreciation from the new bosses could be very good for the magazine. Oscar pledged to improve the mag's production quality, timeliness and Web presence and keep his promotional company's hands off the editorial and the rankings. But some observers (especially rival promoters) still fret about how Oscar's control will influence the Bible of Boxing. As long as ODLH doesn't pull an Oprah - renaming the mag O and putting himself on the cover every week - that'll be a good start.

2. The Vanishing Newspaper Boxing Beat Writer
Ron Borges left the Boston Globe to do TV and other projects. Michael Hirsley retired from the Chicago Tribune after winning two first-place Barney awards (but continues to freelance). Kevin Iole left the Las Vegas Review-Journal for Yahoo. Tim Graham left the Buffalo News to cover an NFL team that allegedly plays in Miami. The Philadelphia Inquirer's staff purge snared fledgling boxing writer Don Steinberg (uh, that's me, and it still hurts, but I continue to freelance for them).

3. Boxing in Non-Boxing Places
Mostly they played up it as "the fight to save boxing." But, still, it was encouraging to see boxing making the covers of top sports magazines and receiving legitimate coverage elsewhere. Sports Illustrated gave a cover to the Mayweather-De La Hoya fight. So did ESPN The Magazine -- its first boxing cover ever. ESPN "Sports Guy" Bill Simmons, who had called the sport dying, actually attended a fight (Mayweather-Hatton) and decided boxing is really exciting. Even Time gave Oscar-versus-Floyd a little quality time. HBO, meanwhile, launched its 24/7 series, a well-produced infomercial that, airing many nights after The Sopranos or Entourage, brought boxing added mainstream attention.

4. Merchant-izing
HBO seemed ready to say goodbye to Larry Merchant in the Spring, then it came to its senses and took him back, at least part-time. Boxing and its fans are better off for as long as Larry stays behind that red-ball microphone. Merchant, now 76, isn't just an announcer. He's a journalist, bringing decades of experience to ringside, willing to question every fight and fighter that deserves to be questioned. Here's a great story on the machinations at HBO.

5. Pay Per View Seems to Be Catching On
The good news is that HBO had its best year ever for pay-per-view boxing. The bad news is that HBO had its best year ever for pay-per-view boxing. HBO said it got 4.8 million buys and $255 million in PPV revenue from its eight events in in 2007. That's great for the future of big-money mega-fights. It's not so great for fans or the future of big fights on regular premium cable, basic cable, or free network TV. A football fan can buy a package to watch every NFL game for $250. By my calculation, it was $400 just for HBO's eight pay-per-views in 2007: Barrera-Marquez ($45), De La Hoya-Mayweather ($55), Cotto-Judah ($50), Hopkins-Wright ($50), Morales-Diaz ($45), Pacquiao-Barrera II ($50), Cotto-Mosley ($50) and Mayweather-Hatton ($55). I'm not even counting Showtime PPVs. Throw in monthly fees for regular HBO and Showtime, plus the occasional off-the-grid Evander Holyfield PPV, and it starts adding up like real money.

By the way, do you know that an anagram for Bernard Hopkins is "HBO Inks Pardner"?

6. The Rise of ESPN.com
Call ‘em the worldwide leader, the four-letter word, whatever you'd like. It's nice to see ESPN.com giving boxing and boxing writers a growing venue. The site this year hired a boxing editor, Darius Ortiz, who has supplemented torch-bearer columnist Dan Rafael with veteran contributors like Tom Hauser and Bert Sugar, making ESPN.com's boxing page a daily read and one of the top boxing sites on the Web. (Disclosure: I'm a contributor too, so maybe I'm biased.)

7. Online Video Proliferates
Yes, Viacom (Showtime) and Time Warner (HBO) took action to get illicit videos of their their boxing matches removed from YouTube. But anyone who knows how to operate Google knows that there's more boxing video online than ever, and it's a great research tool. Even HBO's are fights still online for free (in better quality than YouTube) -- at the officially sanctioned AOL Video.

8. Passing the Mic
Beyond the Merchant saga, the TV networks shuffled blow-by-blow talent, and it all seemed to work out nicely. The veteran Bob Papa moved to HBO Boxing After Dark to replace Fran Charles. Nick Charles has been stellar on Versus with Wally Matthews. Max Kellerman stepped up to play wing on HBO's scoring line, and even Lennox Lewis is getting the hang of things behind the green-ball microphone. And is that Vinny Paz providing his unique analysis on tape-delayed Comcast boxing-casts?

9. A Movie About Writing About Boxing
Resurrecting the Champ came and went quickly to mixed reviews, but how often do you get to see a newsroom movie and a boxing movie in the same movie? Okay, the press does seem to have a role in most boxing movies (The Harder They Fall, The Great White Hope, and The Great White Hype come to mind). But usually it's a grotesque, one-dimensional caricature. The press in this one is much more realistically grotesque. Resurrecting will be an April DVD. Scheduled to hit theaters in 2008 are a boxing comedy (The Hammer starring Adam Carolla) and a documentary (Diego Luna's Chavez).

10. The Contender Hangs in There
Alfonso Gomez's win over Arturo Gatti gave The Contender new legitimacy - wow, somebody from a TV reality show beat someone in real life! It was like Kelly Clarkson winning a Grammy. The latest season, numero three, focused more on boxing than on goofball contests and family melodrama, and it delivered some real-deal fighters, plus a bang-up, live finale between Sakio Bika and Jaidon Codrington. Most important, it kept boxing in weeknight prime-time, on basic cable.

FightJudge.com Looks for a Bigger Score

I always thought that if you had a great idea, brought personal passion to developing it, and executed it flawlessly, all the rewards of success would follow.

Build it and they they will come. The world will beat a path to your door. Blah blah blah.

About a year ago, Corey Shelton, an amateur boxing judge in Atlanta and former IBM computer guy, worked with two partners to launch FightJudge.com. It's a free web site that allows everyone who is watching a boxing match to score the rounds and text-chat live with one another other as the punches fly. I've covered and been involved with online ventures for about as long as online ventures have existed (since the 1980s), and apart from Amazon.com and Google, I have rarely seen a site that did what it set out to do so well.

The site's design is elegant and enticing. The interactive scoring system is fast and works without a glitch. A few seconds after a round ends, you get a pull-down menu that lets you assign a score for the round to each boxer. Then it automatically tabulates your running overall score for the fight and ultimately determines a consensus score for all the fan-judges. Official judging should be done this way. And FightJudge keeps adding features that make it more functional and easier to use. One can imagine Jim Lampley, after complaining about a questionable decision, emphasizing his point by saying, “And here's what the fans watching the fight on HBO thought...” (FightJudge users gave Jose Santa Cruz a 118-109 victory over Joel Casamayor last month, while official judges awarded Casamayor a controversial split decision.)

“That's really our ultimate goal, to align ourselves with a network,” says Shelton. “From from a technology and accuracy standpoint, we could do it. From a sheer volume standpoint, no. I would love to go out and say 'FightJudge scored De La Hoya-Mayweather a draw.' Because we did. But the reality is that it was less than 20 people [on FightJudge] who scored that fight.”

Twenty people, out of more than two million pay per view buys for that fight. It makes no sense! (Of course, if the announcers were to mention the service on the air, it would get a lot more than 20 people.) Why aren't more people as fascinated by FightJudge as I am?

Yeah, you need to be in front of your computer to score a fight while you're watching it on TV. It's a bit of a hassle, though a wireless laptop can work just fine when you're sitting on the couch. Boxing writers could easily fire up the site from ringside (a new feature creates a custom graphic of a user's score -- see above -- that a writer can keep and publish). There's even a stripped-down version of the site for use on mobile phones. Shelton dreams of crowds at big fights scoringkeeping en masse between rounds.


I was stuck at home for the Miguel Cotto-Shane Mosley bout. I went online to score the fight and landed in the FightJudge chat room, where about 20 guys were firing off wisecracks about the action. It was almost like having friends at home to watch with.

But the site, which launched at the start of 2007, hasn't been able to get much traction.

"I don't know how to interpret the reaction by boxing fans," he says. "If you look at boxing on the web, it's pretty pervasive. There is a fan base online."

The Versus network has its own live fan scorecard online that the TV commentators on its Fight Night telecasts refer to. It averages the fan scores and shows results with decimal points -- someone might win a round 9.7 to 9.2. It looks like the scores a girl named Shannon would get in gymnastics. Still, it's a step forward as an interactive, sorta Web 2.0 tool for of boxing. HBO has tried interactive scoring at least once: in 2000 it offered fan scoring of the Bernard Hopkins-Antwun Echols fight through the slow AOLTV and WebTV services, which were used about as much as Ricardo Mayorga's defense. The experiment has not been repeated.

Shelton -- who at IBM led development of sports sites like Wimbledon.org and Masters.org and now works at a healthcare company -- has campaigned to enlist boxing web sites as parners. Secondsout.com recently came on and offers a customized version of the FightJudge scorecard on its site. Still, the big break hasn't come yet.

“It's been disappointing, but not to the point where it's discouraging us from continuing," Shelton says. "We know we have a good product. Some folks say we are way ahead of our time. I don't think it's true. We're right on time. It's just a matter of adoption."

Norman Mailer: 1923-2007

Some words from around the world about Norman Mailer, boxing writer and novelist, who died Saturday at age 84:

An appreciation, by Alan Taylor, Sunday Herald (Scotland) http://www.sundayherald.com/news/heraldnews/display.var.1824217.0.norman_mailer_1923_2007.php

Original book review: The Fight (1975), by Norman Mailer, in the New York Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/10/25/specials/ali-mailer.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

"American literary giant," by Philip Marchand, Toronto Star http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/article/275456

"Writer Who Never Put Down His Fists," by Julia Keller, Chicago Tribune

http://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/chi-mailer_kellernov11,1,2721898.column

Norman Mailer: "The Writer as Writer," by Hillel Italie, Associated Press

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gCaNMJjmpdFjE3n9__UcnEc8padQD8SRELDO0

Obituary, BBC News

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/231694.stm

In case you missed it: The World has a New Cruiserweight Champ (Briefly)

While everyone was thinking about the big welterweight fight in New York -- in Paris, Englishman David Haye knocked out Frenchman Jean-Marc Mormeck to become global cruiserweight champ. Then he said he'll move up to heavyweight.

Only in America!

What's Not to Like About Cotto vs. Mosley?

Some clips by BWAA members about the Miguel Cotto - Shane Mosley fight and its undercard, coming Saturday night at Madison Square Garden:

Tim Smith, New York Daily News: "Antonio Margarito Wants Another Title Shot" http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/more_sports/2007/11/09/2007-11-09_antonio_margarito_wants_another_title_sh.html

Bill Gallo, New York Daily News: "Boxing Showing Signs of Life"

http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/more_sports/2007/11/09/2007-11-09_boxing_shows_some_signs_of_life-2.html

Dan Rafael, ESPN.com
Video Breakdown
http://sports.espn.go.com/broadband/video/videopage?videoId=3100144&categoryId=2491554
Cotto still trying to shake comparisons to Trinidad
http://sports.espn.go.com/sports/boxing/notebook?page=notebook/boxingnov9

George Willis, New York Post: "Margarito's Focused"

http://www.nypost.com/seven/11092007/sports/margaritos_focused_798650.htm

Bernard Fernandez, Philadelphia Daily News, "Fighting Words Pack a Punch"
http://www.philly.com/dailynews/sports/columnists/20071106_Bernard_Fernandez___Fightin_words_pack_a_punch.html

Wally Matthews, Newsday: "Mosley: I Will Win Dramatically"

http://www.newsday.com/sports/columnists/ny-spwally095453026nov09,0,3426466.column

Keith Idec, Herald News: "Mosley Knows Low Blows May Be Coming"

http://northjersey.com/page.php?qstr=eXJpcnk3ZjczN2Y3dnFlZUVFeXk1OTYmZmdiZWw3Zjd2cWVlRUV5eTcyMTkzNTkmeXJpcnk3ZjcxN2Y3dnFlZUVFeXk2

Robert Morales, San Gabriel Valley Tribune: "Mosley Prepares for Clean Fight"

http://www.sgvtribune.com/sports/ci_7411373

Kieran Mulvaney, ESPN.com: "Small Town Kid Hoping for Big Things to Come"

http://sports.espn.go.com/sports/boxing/news/story?id=3093534

Patrick Kehoe, BoxingScene.com: "Is The Sugar Still Sweet For Shane Mosley"

http://www.boxingscene.com/?m=show&id=11117

Keith Idec, Herald News: "Cheaper Cotto-Mosley Tickets Available"

http://northjersey.com/page.php?qstr=eXJpcnk3ZjczN2Y3dnFlZUVFeXk1OTYmZmdiZWw3Zjd2cWVlRUV5eTcyMTkwMDEmeXJpcnk3ZjcxN2Y3dnFlZUVFeXk2

Don Steinberg, ESPN.com, "Cotto-Mosley: Haven't We Seen This Before?"
http://proxy.espn.go.com/sports/boxing/news/story?id=3094554

George Kimball, Boxingtalk.com: "Cotto-Mosley: Who is Fast and Who is Furious?"

http://boxingtalk.com/pag/article14045.html

The Two Jack Mosleys

Don't know about you, but for me it's hard to hear anything about Shane Mosley's dad, Jack Mosley, without hearing in my head the name spoken in Mos Def's awesome voice, in the movie 16 Blocks, in which Bruce Willis plays a cop named Jack Mosley.

Boxing Gloves as a Political Prop, # 82

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."