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By Thomas Hauser: Manny Pacquiao is going to Showtime. On January 20th, Top Rank (Pacquiao’s promoter), Showtime, and CBS put the finishing touches on a three-way contract that calls for the May 7th fight between boxing’s reigning pound-for-pound king and Shane Mosley to be televised on Showtime Pay-Per-View. 
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By Thomas Hauser: Boxing is a hunger sport. All fighters start at the bottom. A rare few make it to the top. Sergio Martinez was born into poverty. Sports were his way out of the Argentinean ghetto. He was a talented soccer player and cyclist (his first two chosen sports). But his skills in those disciplines were short of world-class.
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By Thomas Hauser: Outside the ring, fully clothed, Manny Pacquiao looks almost delicate and vulnerable. The first reaction that many people have on meeting him is surprise that he’s so small. His voice is soft. There’s a gentle quality about him.
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By Thomas Hauser: “One of the things I hear all the time now,” says Ross Greenburg, “is that everyone’s problems seem to be HBO’s fault. That’s getting tiring for us. Most of what happens in boxing is beyond our control.” One of boxing’s problems in 2010 is that the top promoters are fighting each other more often than the top fighters are fighting each other. The issues that HBO faces today are playing out against an increasingly ugly war between Golden Boy and Top Rank.
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By Thomas Hauser: Despite its difficulties, HBO remains the dominant force in boxing today because of the size of its checkbook. But no financial transaction takes place in a vacuum. For every pile of money somewhere, there’s a larger pile somewhere else. When two financial powers interact and one helps the other, it can skew the balance of power in an industry. Nothing that HBO has done over the past few years has shaped boxing as much as its strategic alliance with Golden Boy Promotions.
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By Thomas Hauser: There was a time when the sweet science was governed by the axiom, “As the heavyweight division goes, so goes boxing.” Now, in the United States, the rule of thumb is, “As HBO goes, so goes boxing.”
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By Thomas Hauser: Manny Pacquiao isn’t given to trash-talking. He rarely says a bad word about anyone and is particularly careful when talking about other boxers. Thus, it was significant when Pacquiao said recently, “[Floyd] Mayweather thinks he’s better than anybody else. In the ring, it’s good for a fighter to think that way, to have confidence. But Mayweather thinks that way about other people outside of boxing. I don’t like that.”
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By Thomas Hauser: History’s most celebrated heavyweight champions reflected the eras in which they reigned. Jack Dempsey personified the Roaring ’20s. Joe Louis was perfectly juxtaposed with the trials of The Great Depression and World War II. Muhammad Ali was inextricably intertwined with the turmoil of the 1960s.
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By Thomas Hauser: Six decades ago, Rocky Marciano was on the verge of a celebrated reign at a time when the heavyweight championship of the world was the most exalted title in sports.
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By Thomas Hauser: Oscar De La Hoya is planning to fight again. After a period of reflection following his 2008 knockout loss at the hands of Manny Pacquiao, boxing’s Golden Boy will enter the ring on November 20th, one week after the proposed bout between Pacquiao and Antonio Margarito.
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By Thomas Hauser: A fighter’s fists are his weapons. Tampering with a fighter’s gloved fists is one of the worst offenses imaginable in boxing. It subverts the notion of a fair fight and puts the opposing fighter at exponentially greater risk of serious injury or death.
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By Thomas Hauser: Three years ago, I brought my mother to a press conference at Madison Square Garden to meet Don King. Then I posted an article on SecondsOut entitled (appropriately enough) “My 81-Year-Old Mother Meets Don King.”
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By Thomas Hauser: The World Boxing Council announced this week that it is withdrawing recognition of 160-pound champion Sergio Martinez and 147-pound champion Andre Berto because of the conduct of their promoter, Lou DiBella.
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By Thomas Hauser: John Duddy sat in the “green room” at The Alamodome in San Antonio on the evening of June 26th. Before the night was done, eight thousand fans would watch him do battle. Hundreds of thousands more would see him on television. Few people have an audience of that magnitude at any time in their life.
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By Thomas Hauser: There were whispers when Todd DuBoef started work at Top Rank in 1993. “Todd is a spoiled rich kid . . . Todd is Bob Arum’s valet . . . The only reason Todd has a job at Top Rank is that Arum married Todd’s mother.” That was then.
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By Thomas Hauser: QUESTION FOR BOXING REFEREES: A fighter collapses when his knee gives way during the seventh round of a twelve-round fight. When he rises to his feet, he’s in obvious pain and can’t move properly or put weight on the leg. The fighter collapses several more times. His chief second advises the referee that he wants the fight to be stopped. The fighter wants to continue. The referee should?
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HBO paid a US$750,000 license fee for Victor Ortiz vs. Nate Campbell. We already know, “Who, what, how, when, and where?” Thomas Hauser asks “Why?”
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By Thomas Hauser: Paulie Malignaggi sat on a folding chair in his dressing room one floor above The Theater at Madison Square Garden. He’d just been stopped in the eleventh round of his bid to wrest the WBA 140-pound title from Amir Khan. There had been no knockdowns. Paulie was on his feet when referee Steve Smoger intervened to save him from further punishment.
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By Thomas Hauser: In today’s society, Patrick Kehoe observes, “hyperbole tends to replicate itself as an electronic echo, transmitting the desired information as truth logged into infinite memory. Just keep talking, and something aggrandizing will affix to the culture at large.” One might cite Floyd Mayweather Jr in support of that theory.
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By Thomas Hauser: Most professional fighters have struggled with demons. That’s one of the things that impelled them to become fighters. They’re faced with the constant reality of being punched by men trained in the art of hurting. And if a fighter becomes The Man, it seems as though everyone wants a piece of him.
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By Thomas Hauser: When a fighter is in the ring, he hits and gets hit. But when a fighter and writer interact, almost always, the fighter is on the receiving end of the questions. What would it be like if the tables were turned? In search of an answer, I asked seven fighters what questions they’d like to put to the men and women who write about them.
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Once again, this time in Dallas, Thomas Hauser was in Manny Pacquaio’s dressing room as boxing’s pound-for-champion prepared for battle. Click on Pacquaio’s photo or the headline above for Hauser’s exclusive report on the world’s most exciting fighter.
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By Thomas Hauser: This is a column I’d rather not write. But I chronicle the contemporary boxing scene, and I’d be less than honest if I didn’t write it.
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By Thomas Hauser: Don Elbaum telephoned last week to spread a message: Boxing fans should no longer be depressed about the demise of Pacquiao-Mayweather. A new mega-fight is on the horizon.
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By Thomas Hauser: Two days before Manny Pacquiao fought Miguel Cotto, I talked with Alex Ariza, who has been Pacquiao’s strength and conditioning coach since early 2008. When I asked what it was like to work with an athlete of Manny’s caliber, Ariza shook his head in wonder.
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!["Did Barbra Streisand Whup Sonny Liston?"](http://d2fmj9q21jcbgm.cloudfront.net/AcuCustom/Sitename/DAM/493/AliMuhammadHauserClintonTo_lxth.jpg ""Did Barbra Streisand Whup Sonny Liston?"")
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By Thomas Hauser: Late last year, the Secret Service was embarrassed by the revelation that an uninvited couple had worked their way past security checkpoints and been photographed with Barack Obama at a White House state dinner honoring the Prime Minister of India. Been there, done that. Sort of.
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By Thomas Hauser: A tip of the hat to two men who deserve it. Whenever there’s a big fight at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nathan Lee and La Mont Starks can be found sitting at a desk outside the media center.
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By Thomas Hauser: Each year during the holiday season, I publish a “top forty” list of what I consider to be the best books on boxing. That list, updated to accommodate recently published titles, follows. Some of these books are now out of print. But with the proliferation of online services like Abebooks.com and Amazon.com, all of them can be found.
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By Thomas Hauser: Thanksgiving and Christmas came early for boxing this year. The November 14th mega-match between Manny Pacquiao and Miguel Cotto was the biggest and most important fight of 2009. Think of it as a holiday festival with Pacquiao in the role of Santa Claus. Or maybe Manny is better characterized as a non-stop Energizer Easter Bunny, whose fists exploded like Fourth of July fireworks and turned Cotto’s face into a gruesome Halloween mask.
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By Thomas Hauser: Another big fight week is here. All eyes are about to focus on Manny Pacquiao and Miguel Cotto. Through it all, a soft-spoken man with a round face and neatly-groomed walrus mustache will be in the background, quietly doing his job.
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By Thomas Hauser: Mike Tyson has always been a compelling presence. Many observers of the boxing scene think that, early in his career, he was a great fighter. Others (such as Dave Anderson, who called Tyson “a thug who got lucky”) take a contrary view. What’s beyond debate is that Tyson, like Muhammad Ali and Joe Louis before him, entered the national psyche. Everyone knew who he was and everyone had an opinion about him.
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By Thomas Hauser: There was a time when big fights were chronicled in the New York Times with banner headlines in large type that stretched across the front page. Those days are long gone. Newspapers across the country are abandoning the sweet science. Like the sport itself, writing about boxing is fading from view. But the Times is America’s newspaper of record. Being slighted by the fabled “gray lady of journalism” cuts particularly deep.
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By Thomas Hauser: HBO and boxing are at a crossroads. The first draft of the network’s overall budget for 2010 was presented in July. It called for a US$15,000,000 reduction for HBO Sports; a cut in excess of twenty percent. Then, during the first week of September, Michael Lombardo (president of HBO’s programming group and West Coast operations) further signaled senior management’s displeasure with the status quo.
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By Thomas Hauser: When the bell rings, Manny Pacquiao’s eyes turn to burning coals. His ring skills have made him what Steve Kim calls “the Filipino version of Michael Jordan, Babe Ruth, and the Beatles.” Pacquiao carried the Filipino flag at the opening ceremony for the 2008 Beijing Olympics. He’s the only Filipino boxer to appear on a postage stamp. Earlier this year, Time Magazine listed him among its “100 most influential people” in the world.
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By Thomas Hauser: On November 14th, on the pay-per-view undercard of the mega-fight between Manny Pacquiao and Miguel Cotto, 29-year-old Yuri Foreman will challenge Daniel Santos for the World Boxing Association 154-pound crown.
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By Thomas Hauser: In August 2007, Paulie Malignaggi traveled to Las Vegas as a representative of Everlast at the “Magic” fashion show. Moments after his return flight to New York landed, he was taking his carry-on bag from the overhead luggage bin when another passenger recognized him. “Hey, Paulie,” the man said. “I love you. You’re a great fighter. Don’t worry; Someday, you’ll win a title.”
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By Thomas Hauser: Sugar Ray Robinson’s knockout victory over Jake LaMotta captured the imagination of America. Baseball and boxing were the country’s two national sports. Robinson had now entered the ring for 124 fights, losing once. This was his fifth victory over the man who’d defeated him. And thanks to television, thirty million people had witnessed him in his prime. He was handsome, telegenic, and lethal.
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By Thomas Hauser: Sugar Ray Robinson is the gold standard against which all fighters are judged. “He had everything,” legendary trainer Eddie Futch said after Robinson died. “Boxing skills, punching power, a great chin, mental strength. There was nothing he couldn’t do. He knew almost everything there was to know about how to box. When Ray was in his prime, he owned the ring like no fighter before or since.”
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By Thomas Hauser: Jessica won my heart completely, totally, and without reservation when she was three years old. I was forty-two at the time. My brother, Jim, had come east from Oregon, where he lived with his wife and daughters (Cathy and Jessica). They were visiting my parents, who lived in the suburbs of New York. Cathy was seven and too sophisticated for the game that Jessica and I were playing.
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By Thomas Hauser: Like most boxing writers, I receive an endless stream of press releases. Recently, one caught my eye. It was for a celebrity boxing event to be held in Pennsylvania on July 24th.
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By Thomas Hauser: On June 27th, HBO televised what was supposed to be Victor Ortiz’s coronation as the WBA “interim junior-welterweight champion of the world.” The 22-year-old Ortiz has been groomed for stardom and still might make it there someday. But at a point in his career when the competition should have been stepped up to harden him for a championship run, he was put in soft.
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By Thomas Hauser: Barney Frank has been in Congress since 1981 and is chairman of the House of Representatives Financial Services Committee. That makes him one of the most powerful people in government. His career is also notable because, in 1987, he was only the second member of Congress to openly acknowledge being gay. What does Barney Frank have to do with boxing?
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By Thomas Hauser: A lot of people liked Arthur Curry. Almost everyone else loved him. Artie’s mind was filled with wonderful thoughts and his feelings were founded on love. He was about giving. He enjoyed doing things for people and took care to never hurt anyone. He was a man of integrity who radiated truth. He spoke his mind and didn’t hide his feelings. “Being real,” he called it. But he was always kind.
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By Thomas Hauser: HBO is the dominant player in boxing today. It wasn’t always that way. In the mid-1980s, the broadcast television networks (ABC, CBS, and NBC) ruled the ring. The man most responsible for upending that hierarchy was Seth Abraham, the architect of HBO’s boxing program.
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By Thomas Hauser: On May 2nd, Manny Pacquiao and Ricky Hatton engaged in battle for the right to be called boxing’s “pound-for-pound” champion. Pacquiao and Hatton have aggressive relentless ring styles. They are two of the most exciting fighters in the world. Each man has stayed close to his roots, geographically and in terms of character. Both have special meaning to their constituents. No two fighters are more loved in their native lands.
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By Thomas Hauser:
This is the first in a series of articles that will appear over time.
Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier fought three fights that are the pyramids of boxing. Dave Wolf was in the Frazier camp for each of them.
Dave was a gifted writer who later gained recognition as the manager of Ray Mancini and Donny Lalonde. He died last December.
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By Thomas Hauser: Danny Jacobs is being groomed for stardom. Outside the ring, Jacobs is easy-going with a natural, almost disarming, quality about him. He likes to talk. “And I love to cook,” he offers. “Chicken, pasta, different sauces. Bread pudding is my favorite. I make it well.” He’s also a talented young fighter, who says without false modesty, “I’m capable of being the best in the world. I can make a big mark in this game.”
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By Thomas Hauser: There was a time when New York City was a breeding ground for elite fighters. Those days are long gone, but prospects still surface in the Big Apple. Will Rosinsky is one of them.
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By Thomas Hauser: In the past, I’ve recounted the memories of boxing notables who spoke fondly of their greatest moment in a sport other than boxing. Since then, I’ve received several emails asking what my own “moment in the sun” was. Here goes:
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By Thomas Hauser: In the past, I’ve recounted the memories of fighters who spoke fondly of their greatest moment in a sport other than boxing. The recollections of some notable non-combatants follow:
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