Manny Pacquiao Training

Ricky Hatton Calls It Quits

If this is true, and he sticks to it, I will be very happy. Ricky has had a good career; he has made a lot of money; all he can do now is get hurt. He peaked with his wins over Kostya Tszyu and Jose Luis Castillo. His fights against Mayweather and Pacquiao show that he was a good boxer but never can or will be a No. 1 fighter. He has had his memorable fights; time to hang up the gloves. Enjoy your health Ricky; enjoy your life.

Muhammad Ali by Thomas Hauser

A fantastic book full of lengthy quotes from people who knew Muhammad Ali. Even if you don't care about boxing, if you like biographies, you'll like this book.

Drunken Monkey Kung-Fu meets Boxing

I love Emmanuel Augustus' drunken monkey style. I'm sure he lost a lot of fights simply because the judges detested his style and couldn't give him the close rounds. If he more juice in his punch he "coulda been a contenda."


Augustus' BOXING RECORD 38-31

Below is Jackie Chan doing Drunken Monkey Style

James Toney is going into MMA

Wow. A world class boxer, albet long past his prime and not in shape, is going into MMA. If he does even moderately well it will rock the MMA world.

Toney has to respect his opponent, get in shape and learn how to avoid a take down and guard against a sweep. If not he would be world of hurt. And we, the fans, would know nothing more than we do today about how a boxer would do against MMA.

Below is the Kimbo v Mercer fight. The Toney fight could go the same way.

From the Shoulder

My daughter has heard me say "from the shoulder," "from the shoulder" a 1000 times, and she's only 5. Well, when she gets a little bit older I'll show her this video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YisGE4HiwMQ

The Medical Aspect of Boxing

There's a good article in the NYTs on concussions. It's primarily about trying to get the College Football and the NFL to accept new standards. In 1928 Dr. Harrison Martland wrote an article on concussions in boxing. Here's a quote from the NYT's article:

The paper is also a terrific reminder of early 20th-century medicine’s down-to-earth approach to research. Martland, the chief medical examiner in Essex County, N.J., began his research by hanging out at boxing matches. He titled the paper “Punch Drunk,” drawing on boxing cant. As he pointed out, boxing fans didn’t hesitate to malign injured boxers, derisively shouting “cuckoo” when obviously brain-damaged fighters shambled into a ring, and referring to those with dementia problems as “slug nutty.”

Martland did autopsies on more than 300 people who had died of head injuries, looking for patterns of brain damage. For his study of boxers, he talked a fight promoter into giving him a list of 23 former fighters he thought could be labeled as definitely punch drunk. Martland was able to track down only 10 of the former athletes, but in those cases, he found the promoter’s diagnosis was on target. Four were in asylums, suffering from dementia. Two had difficulty forming sentences or responding to questions. One was almost blind, two had trouble walking and one had developed symptoms similar to those of Parkinson’s disease.

His colleagues had also begun to realize that a concussive blow to the head could result in injuries that were remarkably slow to heal. An earlier study of repeated concussive blows in more than 100 people warned of possible mental degeneration: “It is no longer possible to say that concussion is essentially a transient state which does not comprise any evidence of structural cerebral injury.”

Martland argued that blows to the head — and the inevitable shaking of the brain that resulted — caused small but cumulative hemorrhages that could lead to scarring called gliosis. Such fibrous scarring is now known to be associated with dementias like Alzheimer’s and diseases like Parkinson’s that affect motor control.