Boxing
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Let the Loss Become Fuel August 04, 2025
My first ever fight was a tournament in Atlanta and at the informational meeting for the fighters a coach told us that, in amateur boxing, you either win some or you learn some. The idea being that our losses are sometimes the best teachers: they sho...
Brian Eno Wants to Know If You’re Listening August 01, 2025
Oh, no. I have lost Brian Eno.Not literally, at least. He is sitting so close that my elbow occasionally grazes his yellow corduroy sleeve, our twin rolling chairs sidled alongside a pair of broad computer screens and between two bulky brown speakers...
Brawl for All June 13, 2025
Sham prizefighting goes by many names these days—crossover boxing, celebrity boxing, influencer boxing—but it’s been around a long time. In the 1940s, a retired Jack Dempsey, folk hero of the Roaring Twenties, struck a path on the comeback trail by t...
Dark Horses June 09, 2025
People think of drug testing as the omniscient, infallible arbiter of guilt and innocence in competitive sports. When I set out to write a book about doping in the monied, occasionally aristocratic sport of Thoroughbred horse racing, I thought the ch...
The Misplaced Quest for Community June 06, 2025
Paul Rudd’s latest comedy Friendship has been a box office hit. While senses of humor differ among people as much as taste in food, the audience in the fairly packed theater where I saw it laughed together throughout, which was refreshing. ...
Is This “Othello” Too Shakespearean? June 04, 2025
Shakespeare’s Othello has been making a splash on Broadway this season. Playing at the Ethel Barrymore Theater from March 23 to June 8, Othello shows features of the greatest actors alive today in one of the best dramas ever written. With Denzel Wash...
Donald Trump, Mike Tyson, and the Fight That Defined an Era June 03, 2025
There may have been, in the long and sordid history of boxing, a more perfidious lead‑up to a big fight. But never before—or since, for that matter—had the treacheries been so blatant, been made so public, and been so deeply rooted in the personal li...
The Spectacle of a Boxing Match in Times Square May 08, 2025
On Friday evening, I was texting with a friend when I happened to mention where I was: sitting in the middle of Times Square, watching a boxing match. He wrote back immediately: “What is the boxing match about? Like what is its significance?” This wa...
Appetite Studies: Self-Devourer May 05, 2025
On transatlantic flights, it's often my luck to be sat adjacent or behind families with infants and toddlers. Tantrums, staring contests, ripping out my headphones, all normal and acceptable. In an effort to soothe myself, I’ll take the seat of my ow...
Rang Tang Ding Dong Rankie Sankie April 07, 2025
Over the years, I’ve talked to a lot of people who got hit by Bert Cooper. Inventive standards had to be devised to measure what had happened to them, because being hit by Bert Cooper didn’t hurt any more than being hit head-on by a runaway bus. Are ...
On ‘Severance’ Season Two April 07, 2025
Can human beings ever truly empathize with one another? Or even with ourselves?This is the critical question running throughout Severance, the blockbuster Apple TV+ puzzle-box show that recently wrapped its second season....
The “Snow White” Controversy April 03, 2025
Why has Disney’s new live-action remake of “Snow White” flopped at the box office? Is it because the dull trailer looked A.I.-generated, or because the film’s stars, Rachel Zegler and Gal Gadot, appear to have sourced their costumes and makeup from P...
The Legend of Mitch "Blood" Green by Charles Farrell March 31, 2025
Mitch ‘Blood’ Green had more things going for him to make big money in boxing than nearly any fighter in history. A six-foot-six, 225-pound heavyweight with a chiseled physique and a traffic-stopping look, Green had street credibility for days—he was...
Inside Didion and Dunne’s Private Archive March 27, 2025
I like to think about a book as an iceberg,” Julie Golia was saying. “The published thing is just that little tip that sticks out.” This was on a Zoom call early in March to discuss the Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne Archive at the New York Publi...
The Time George Foreman Sang Me Bob Dylan March 25, 2025
Back when I was a young reporter, I needed to interview former heavyweight champion, boxing legend, and grill impresario George Foreman. It would have been the third sports interview of my life. The first was with 1968 Mexico City Olympic medalist an...
Don’t Blame Smartphones for Everything March 12, 2025
The theory that smartphone use is making people more alienated and uncultured seems so obviously true that it is hard to believe that anybody can deny it. We have little boxes filled with half the people in the world and most of the pop culture that ...
Brutalist America March 11, 2025
After World War II, the Franco-Swiss architect who went by the name of Le Corbusier erected brazenly expressionistic buildings, including an 18-floor Marseilles housing project and a hilltop pilgrimage chapel outside the little French town of Roncham...
I Coulda Been A Contender... March 05, 2025
Nothing soothes a broken heart like watching two men beat the hell out of each other. It may not cure it, but the tender mercies can be assuaged watching sweat and blood pounded off a man’s body with the physicality of venom and singular, rabid deter...
The Blind Spot: On Rita Bullwinkel’s 'Headshot' February 10, 2025
Boxing is the most honest of sports. The boxer, unlike the normal person, steps into the ring and willingly accepts that he’ll be punched in the face. Anyone can throw a punch at a heavy bag, but you’re not a boxer until you’ve eaten some punches and...
Who Asked for a Goonies Reboot? February 05, 2025
The beloved film The Goonies, which first came out in 1985, will reportedly have a sequel in 2026-27.I confess that my initial reaction to this as to the recent spate of rehashes, remakes, and unnecessary sequels (looking at you, Joker: Folie à Deux)...
Kid Dynamite’s Last Ride December 06, 2024
Last month, I briefly tuned in to see Jake Paul and Mike Tyson dance in the ring for a boxing match that was really just an example of televised elder abuse. Paul is a 27-year-old YouTube star and novice pro boxer, and Tyson is a 58-year-old former h...
Katie Taylor vs. Amanda Serrano December 05, 2024
I knew the Amanda Serrano vs. Katie Taylor fight had broken through when people who do not normally follow boxing were asking what I thought of the fight. At the Miami Book Fair, I had way more conversations about boxing than I normally do at a liter...
We're Drowning in Gift Guides December 04, 2024
On the r/deadmalls Reddit page, photos of linoleum-tiled halls and emptied ornamental fountains proliferate. Some of the malls aren’t totally abandoned, still boasting the husks of universally familiar storefronts — Auntie Anne’s, Kay Jewelers, JCPen...
The Joker Redemption: A Critical Reappraisal December 02, 2024
“Literature that indulges the tastes of the reader is a degraded literature. My goal is to disappoint the usual expectations and inspire new ones.” -Elena Ferrante “You can do anything you want. You’re Joker.” -Lee Quinzel The swift judgment leveled ...
Mike Tyson Takes One Last Swing at Immortality July 17, 2024
Mike Tyson steps through the black ropes and lies down on his back in the middle of the boxing ring. He looks up at the ceiling of the warehouse in the Las Vegas suburbs and closes his eyes. The makeshift gym is so silent and sterile that all you can...
