SPECIAL REPORT: Roy Jones Jr boycotted the media as he prepared for Tarver-Jones III. But in Jones's dressing room during the hours before the fight, Thomas Hauser had access to one of the most intriguing personalities and unique fighters to ever grace a boxing ring. Click here for Hauser's remarkable report on Roy Jones and Antonio Tarver. 
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By Thomas Hauser
Knockout power is an aphrodesiac in boxing.
Boxing is starving for a marketable heavyweight.
Because of those realities, a lot of dreams were riding on Samuel Peter's broad shoulders when he arrived at Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City last Saturday night.
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By Thomas Hauser: Secondsout is pleased to share the following excerpt from Thomas Hauser's new book with our readers. "The Lost Legacy of Muhammad Ali" has just been published in the United States by Sport Classic Books and in the United Kingdom by Robson Books.
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By Thomas Hauser: On June 25, 2005, Carlos Maussa knocked out Vivian Harris to earn the right to be called the WBA junior-welterweight champion. Note that I didn't say Maussa won the WBA title (although, like others in the industry, I frequently use that terminology). That's because the title stayed with Main Events.
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By Thomas Hauser:
One gauge of celebrity status is name recognition. Like Madonna Ciccone and Oprah Winfrey, Oscar De La Hoya is a first-name phenomenon.
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By Thomas Hauser
When boxing fans last saw The Contender, the TV reality show conjured up images of the Titanic after the iceberg. One week before its May 24th grand finale, NBC announced that it was canceling the series. Then, for good measure, the network put the Contender's championship fight between Sergio Mora and Peter Manfredo up against the finals of American Idol.
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By Thomas Hauser
Jimmy's Corner is a blue-collar bar on 44th Street between 6th and 7th Avenues in Manhattan. It's open seven days a week from an hour before noon until to 4:00 AM.
Every square foot is covered with photographs of fighters and posters heralding long-ago ring confrontations.
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By Thomas Hauser Sometimes the lives of boxing writers are as interesting as the lives of the people we write about.
Lem Satterfield was born in Washington DC on September 2, 1962.
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By Thomas Hauser
Most people have been on a baseball diamond and a basketball court. At least once in their life, they've walked across a football field. But relatively few people have ever set foot inside a boxing ring.
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By Thomas Hauser: On August 26, 2000, Jermain Taylor witnessed a professional boxing match in person for the first time. "I had just qualified for the 2000 Olympics," he recalls. "Some guy took the entire US Olympic boxing team to Las Vegas on his private jet to see Fernando Vargas fight Ross Thompson. Vargas knocked him out. Dominick Guinn was on the undercard and knocked his opponent out too. That was special to me because Dominick and I are both from Arkansas."
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By Thomas Hauser: One day in 1993, Mark Taffet found himself sitting on a train beside George Foreman. The occasion was a press tour to publicize Foreman's upcoming fight against Tommy Morrison.
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By Thomas Hauser: Lou DiBella was once one of the most powerful people in boxing. As the number-two man at HBO Sports, he had considerable input into how the network's substantial financial resources were spent. He was also the driving force behind HBO's Boxing After Dark and an integral member of the team that elevated World Championship Boxing to an industry-wide standard
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By Thomas Hauser: Cus D'Amato once said, "When two fighters meet in the ring, the fighter with the greater will prevails every time unless the other man's skills are so superior that his will is never tested."
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By Thomas Hauser: It's fight night at Madison Square Garden, the most famous arena in the world. From a regulatory point of view, things don't just come together by chance on occasions like this. Someone has to make them happen. It's like getting everything and everyone in order for a circus parade.
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By Thomas Hauser: Building a boxing superstar is a long arduous process with no easy road to success. Bill Cayton built fighters brilliantly from a manager's perch; most notably, Mike Tyson. Main Events shepherded Evander Holyfield's rise to glory. Lou DiBella is trying to do the same with Jermain Taylor. But nobody has built superstars from scratch more consistently than Bob Arum.
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By Thomas Hauser:
In the pre-dawn hours of October 30, 1974, Muhammad Ali solidified his place in boxing history by knocking out George Foreman in the eighth round of their heavyweight championship fight in Zaire. In his dressing room after the fight, the first person he hugged was Bobby Goodman.
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By Thomas Hauser: Sanitized vice is always on display in Las Vegas. The unsanitized kind takes place behind closed doors. The city works hard to create an environment in which each of its 37,000,000 annual visitors feels welcome.
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By Thomas Hauser: On March 29th, Don King appeared at the kick-off press conference for the April 30th WBA heavyweight title fight between John Ruiz and James Toney with Bello Nock at his side.
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Chief SecondOut columnist Thomas Hauser reveals more controversy surrounding 'The Contender' series on NBC.
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By Thomas Hauser: On March 13, 2004, Joe Mesi fought Vassiliy Jirov in Las Vegas. Mesi won, but was hit so hard and so often that his brain bled in three places.
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By Thomas Hauser:Ten months ago, I wrote an article about The Contender for this website. I recounted the plans of the show's producers and closed with the words, "At some point, The Contender will become more than a game, and reality in its truest sense will intervene."
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By Thomas Hauser: If a Hollywood studio needed a fighter to play the hero in an oldtime boxing movie, the search could begin and end with John Duddy.
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By Thomas Hauser:
Lennox Lewis is happy. There's a look of joy on his face. The former heavyweight champion is in a conference room at the Trump International Hotel in Manhattan, playing with his 9-month-old son, Landon.
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By Thomas Hauser
On October 20, 2004, ESPN and Main Events announced a ten-month partnership that calls for Main Events to promote seven regular Friday Night Fights telecasts, three fight cards on "special" dates, and two pay-per-view shows.
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By Thomas Hauser
These are heady times for Bernard Hopkins. Last September, he was paid $10,000,000 for knocking out Oscar De La Hoya. He's the undisputed middleweight champion of the world.
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By Thomas Hauser
Craig Hamilton is a Jesse Ventura look-alike. Strong, barrel-chested, fifty-three years old, with a clean-shaven head and deep booming voice.
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By Thomas Hauser: The horror of Sam Kellerman's murder is almost too great to grasp. We know these things happen, but not to us or to anyone in our family. Not if we live in a safe world and come from a comfortable upper-middle class home. But the reality of life is that no one is completely safe.
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By Thomas Hauser: Boxing is a mess. Imagine if every National Football League match-up and Major League Baseball game were contested under different rules with different officials and different governing standards depending on the state in which the game is played.
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By Thomas Hauser
The second inauguration of George W. Bush seems like a good time to remember Jack Newfield, who died of cancer last month.
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By Thomas Hauser
The press section at ringside these days bears little resemblance to the way it looked fifty years ago. The men no longer wear hats, suits, and ties. There are a significant number of women and a smaller contingent of newspaper writers. Computers have replaced typewriters.
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By Thomas Hauser
In the 1960s and '70s, Muhammad Ali's most important contribution was to force an understanding of the divisions between black and white in American society and, ultimately, to help bridge that gap.
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By Thomas Hauser
"I-i-i-t's Showtime!" So proclaims Jimmy Lennon just prior to the main event on each Showtime Championship Boxing telecast. Clearly, the fighters are the most important element in the equation. But no one should underestimate the value of the authoritative yet relaxed and pleasant voice heard on air as the ring action unfolds.
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By Thomas Hauser
Boxing is the most basic and most easily understood of all sports. Virtually any person who ever lived in any place at any time could watch a fight for the first time and understand what the combatants were trying to do to one another.
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By Thomas Hauser:
Like a traveling salesman displaying his wares, Don King returned to Madison Square Garden on November 13th.
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By Thomas Hauser:
It has often been said that boxing is show business with blood. Jay Larkin's career has had its share of both.
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By Thomas Hauser
The Nevada State Athletic Commission is at a crossroads.
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By Thomas Hauser
There was a time when Mike Tyson was known for his awesome ring talent. Now he's more like Michael Jackson. Jackson can still dance and sing a bit, but that's not why people turn on their television sets to watch him.
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By Thomas Hauser: Felix Trinidad is one of the few fighters in boxing today who inspires true passion among his followers. "Tito" is a hero in his homeland of Puerto Rico. When he fights in New York, it's like carnival time and the Puerto Rican Day Parade rolled into one.
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By Thomas Hauser: Boxing commentator Teddy Atlas once commented on Roy Jones's ring greatness with the observation, "For years, Roy Jones was Secretariat in the Belmont, winning by thirty lengths."
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by Thomas Hauser
"New York," Jerry Izenberg once wrote, "was the greatest fight town that ever was and ever will be."
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By Thomas Hauser
When Oscar De La Hoya versus Bernard Hopkins was announced earlier this year, there were a lot of naysayers who said the fight would never happen.
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