By Mike Sloan: Jim Lampley said it best after Floyd Mayweather knocked Victor Ortiz into orbit with a textbook left/right: “Floyd definitely will not make any new fans with this.” Lampley is right. The majority of boxing fans hated the guy before he climbed through the ropes to take on Ortiz and after he clobbered his foe with what many deem a dirty move, the number of Mayweather detractors grew tenfold.

By Mikko Salo: Watching Vitali Klitschko completely dismantle Tomasz Adamek in every phase of the noble art was another amazing display showcasing the greatness of The Undisputed Heavyweight Champion Brothers from Ukraine. The difference in size, power, skill and eventually even speed between The Ring Magazine #1 and #3 heavyweight contenders was staggering.

By Tom Gray: The definition of “Showdown” is an event, especially a confrontation, which forces an issue to a conclusion. The event, on September 16th 1981, was the undisputed welterweight championship of the world, the confrontation was between “Sugar” Ray Leonard and Thomas “Hitman” Hearns and the conclusion saw one man’s true greatness established - forever.

By Dave McKee: Mexican writer, Isaac Guerra, recently predicted the looming ouster of Jose Sulaiman from the Presidency of the WBC. Writing in the online Spanish language publication, La afión.com, Guerra stated that the ranks of the WBC have finally reached a critical mass of discontent with their longtime leader.

By Mikko Salo: On Saturday 10th September the brand new Stadion Miejski in Wroclaw, Poland will have a raucious capacity crowd of over 40 000 chanting the name of their hero, The Ring #3 heavyweight contender Tomasz ”Goral” Adamek when he steps into the ring to challenge WBC titlist Vitali Klitschko.

By Dave McKee: Saturday, June 7, 1997 the Convention Center in Ruidoso, New Mexico, was a day of particular significance for the sport of boxing. Jose Alfredo Flores beat Eric Holland in a 15 round split decision for the World Boxing Board middleweight title. Following the conclusion of 15 rounds,

By Andrew Wake: Boxers are well known for their bravery but few epitomise courageousness in the same manner as British amateur Jamie Wood.18-year-old Jamie was diagnosed with Ewing’s sarcoma, a rare form of bone cancer, last year but has continued to maintain his training regime despite having to undergo 16 bouts of debilitating chemotherapy.

By Mikko Salo: In July, Wladimir Klitschko took the WBA belt from David Haye and The Klitschko Brothers became Undisputed Heavyweight Champions of the World. We finally have clarity again in boxing`s premier division.

By Dave McKee: Paulie Ayala was a champion in the ring. He won titles and lost to only the very best the sport had to offer. Having decided to retire, Ayala has done what very few boxers are able to accomplish: stay retired. This is due to re-channeling his energies into other meaningful avenues. He operates a gym in his native Fort Worth.

By Matthew Hurley There is something so uniquely human when a boxer finds his courage, his sense of self-worth, called into question by people who have never truly experienced what it’s like to suffer the punishment of fists slamming into your body and head. In a young, up-and-coming fighter the reaction is often muted bewilderment.

By Dave McKee: Thomas Hearns is not remembered as a loser. He is remembered as a former protégé of the great Emanuel Steward and six-division world champion.

By Mikko Salo: The Klitschko Brothers are now The Undisputed Heavyweight Champions with Wladimir holding the Ring Magazine Championship and the IBF, WBA and WBO titles, while Vitali is the WBC titlist. Where does their accomplishment rank in the recent history of the heavyweight division?

By Mikko Salo: The Klitschko Brothers arrived at the professional boxing scene fittingly together, starting their professional careers in the same event in November 1996, Wladimir as a 20-year-old super heavyweight olympic champion, Vitali as a 25-year-old former world kickboxing champion and boxing world championship finalist.

By Mikko Salo: In the aftermath of the Wladimir Klitschko vs David Haye megafight, one important aspect of the outcome has been given a fairly small amount of attention. Finally, after several years of suffering through utter disorganization in the heavyweight division, we have Undisputed Heavyweight Champions, who hold The Ring Magazine Championship and all the alphabet titles at the same time: The Klitschko Brothers.

By Dave McKee: Cuba has banned professional boxing, and all professional sport, since 1962. The impact on Cuban boxers is profound. The ban helped create an environment that has produced many of the greatest amateur boxers in the history of the sport. Sadly, it has also placed significant pressure on those boxers who entertain dreams of world championships as professional fighters.

By Ron Valderrama: Gabriel Ruelas was born on July 23, 1970 in Jalisco (meaning "sandy plain") Mexico, which is bordered on the West by the Pacific Ocean. At age Seven he and his family emigrated to the US in search of a better life.

By Dave McKee: Fidel Castro banned professional sport in Cuba in 1962. This was in keeping with Soviet ideology, which rejected the capitalist implications of pro sports and sought to harness amateur sports for their jingoistic value as displays of national athletic prowess.

By Derek Bonnett: Professional prizefighters respond differently to winning a world championship. After all the elation and celebration has settled and the new champion begins to defend his title, that’s when boxing aficionados get to see what constructs the man’s constitution.

By Alec Kohut: As the news spread of Kelly Pavlik’s abrupt pullout from both Saturday’s “ShoBox” fight in Youngstown and the proposed November bout in Canada with Lucian Bute, the internet went abuzz with rumors of drinking, harsh criticism, and even one ridiculous claim that Pavlik’s action was “a cry for help.”

By Dave McKee : In 1968, at the age of sixteen, the son of a shoemaker stepped into a ring in his home town of Managua, Nicaragua. Alexis Arguello won that fight by first round knockout and set his sights on world domination.

By Steve Kim: While Antonio Tarver easily shrugged off Danny Green in Sydney, Australia back on July 20th at the Entertainment Centre in nine, mostly dominant rounds, he still hasn’t shaken off the effects of jet lag since returning to the States last week.

By Derek Bonnett: SecondsOut fans have taken a special interest in speaking out in defense of our "right to a fair title fight". Our voice may be small, but we are pure of heart and do not have to accept world class mockeries in place of world championship boxing.

By Tom Gray: Muhammad Ali awoke on July 26th 1971 with a different feeling in his stomach than what would normally be the case before fight night. The contest in question would be his thirty third in eleven years and would take place at the Houston Astrodome in Texas in front of a capacity crowd.

By Sean Wippert: It’s difficult for those who have watched Zab “Super” Judah over the years to look past the best and worst of his career. In many ways these extremes have been his calling card of sorts as he has either been the destroyer of worlds, or the wreckage in another fighters wake. No matter how you look at it, he is one of boxing’s most polarizing figures and has been one for sometime now.

By Sean Wippert: Step back in time for a moment if you will. The year is 1990. The entire world is still in a daze from “Iron” Mike’ Tyson’s titanic crash in Tokyo. The dry October air is thick with anticipation at the recently opened Mirage Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas. The ripped frame of the 1984 Olympic Bronze Medalist and then undefeated Evander “Real Deal” Holyfield dances impatiently in his corner.

By Matthew Hurley: When my obsession with the sport of boxing fully blossomed in the early 1980s, writer George Kimball was my go-to-guy. His columns in the Boston Herald, along with my monthly purchases of The Ring and KO Magazine, became as important to me as any school textbook.

By Jason Pribila At the final press conference for the July 1 Fight Night at the Sands Casino Resort in Bethlehem, USA, Hall of Fame Promoter, J. Russell Peltz called his fighter, welterweight Ronald Cruz, a “late bloomer.” Cruz did not take up boxing until 2007 but he quickly made up for lost time by fighting 28 times during a brief amateur career that spanned 13 months. Cruz hit the ground running as a professional and has been perfect in 12 fights, collecting nine knockouts along the way.

By Derek Bonnett: I guess I am just not speaking loud enough. This is my fourth criticism of the sanctioning bodies since February and boxing fans are still are not getting what they deserve from these organizations and their world champions. I am not asking for WBA, WBC, IBF, and WBO to have a mandatory challenger in every title fight. Half the time, the mandatory challengers aren’t even that good. However, boxing fans need to demand better quality fights.

By Matthew Hurley: The upcoming heavyweight title bout between Wladimir Klitschko and David Haye has achieved something unexpected – it has garnered significant interest in a match up between two big men. It’s been quite some time since anyone outside of the Klitschko family and European fanbase has gotten jazzed about a Dr. Steelhammer title defense. Blame that on an American bias,

By Clive Bernath:Middleweight boxing legend Marvelous Marvin Hagler was one of the reasons I fell in love with boxing. Of course there were other factors but the main one was his no nonsense style both inside and outside of the ring.

By Derek Bonnett in Canastota: Any boxing fan who has been considering making the trip up to Canastota, NY, USA needs to stop thinking. Thinking just gets in the way of doing and the second weekend of June 2012 is already approaching.

By Derek Bonnett: Kostya Tszyu reigned as junior welterweight champion for the better part of ten years. He captured his first world championship in his fourteenth bout. Tszyu reigned twice as the IBF champion and also held both the WBC and WBA belts. Between November 2001 and January 2003, he was the undisputed champion.

By Clive Bernath: For a man that had minimal amateur experience, lost his first professional fight and spent nearly five years in prison at age 17 Bernard Hopkins has done very well for himself-very well indeed.

By Jason Pribila: For the second straight year the first Saturday of May featured a contest between the best fighter in the world and my favorite fighter. And for the second straight year I had to turn off my cell phone, as it was flooded by “friends” who somehow found me responsible for the spike in their next cable bill.

By Matthew Hurley: So why should anyone who follows prize fighting believe for a second that Shane Mosley has any chance of pulling off the upset against Manny Pacquiao this Saturday night? Mosley contends it’s the very notion so many believe he will be clobbered into retirement by the Filipino icon that he will leave everyone eating crow. He knows upsets are always in the offing, and all it takes is one shot.

By Clive Bernath: ‘Nice guys always come second’ is a cliché that is used all too often on the sports fields and business boardrooms around the world. Much of the time that old saying rings firmly true but every now and again a very special human being slips through the net to prove us all wrong and manages to rise to the top of their field whilst at the same time is respected by one and all. I’m pleased to say that the greatest sport of all where it is paramount to be as focused and violently

By Clive Bernath: Naazim Richardson, the respected trainer of ‘Sugar’ Shane Mosley does not want to hear any excuses whatsoever when his fighter shocks the world and defeats Manny Pacquiao at the MGM Grand Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada on Saturday night.

By Matthew Hurley: I suppose I owe something of an apology to Erik Morales. After all, what I thought would be my last article about him, until his hall of fame induction, all but begged him to retire.

By Daley James Francis: Ten years ago this weekend (7th April), Sheffield’s Prince Naseem Hamed lost his unbeaten record and claim as the best pound for pound fighter in the world when outpointed over 12 rounds by Mexican legend Marco Antonio Barrera at the MGM Grand Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada, USA.

By Daley James Francis: Finally, David Haye and Wladimir Klitschko should be locking horns in the summer, after a merry-go-round where money, ego and TV have been cited as the reason that the fight has taken so long to be finalised.

By Jason Pribila: On Saturday Night at the MGM Grand at Foxwoods in Connecticut, USA, Sergio “Maravilla” Martinez defends his middleweight championship against Sergiy “Razor” Dzinziruk. The 2010 Fighter of the Year looks to continue his personal ascension up the “Pound for Pound” ranks while adding to the most impressive title reign since Bernard Hopkins lost his crown in 2005.

By Derek Bonnett: What did I tell you? Last month, when I grilled world champions Sammy Gutierrez, Jan Zaveck, Felix Sturm, and Gilberto Keb Baas, I was unhappy because honest boxing fans were being served up garbage non-title bouts under the facade of world championship match-ups.

By Daley James Francis : Sometimes a fighter comes along who captures the imagination of a city or region and reinvigorates interest in the sport of boxing in their area. In the nineties, ‘Prince’ Naseem Hamed created a surge of interest in his native Sheffield and more recently, Ricky Hatton revitalised Manchester’s fighting scene.

By Matthew Hurley: It was a left hand reminiscent of the one Manny Pacquiao launched that exploded on Ricky Hatton’s chin back in 2009. The comparison is appropriate because Nonito Donaire’s second round blowout of Fernando Montiel at the Mandalay Bay Resort & Casino thrilled and chilled a boxing public actively searching for new stars to brighten the pugilistic skyline.

By Jason Pribila: Hollywood’s biggest and brightest stars are again ready to walk the Red Carpet at the Academy Awards on Sunday February 27. Once again the sport of boxing was well represented when the nominees were announced. Christian Bale is the favorite to walk away with an Oscar for his brilliant performance playing Micky Ward’s brother/trainer Dicky Eklund in “The Fighter”.

By Derek Bonnett: Whatever happened to fighters earning their way to a title shot? Sure, some fighters get there quicker than others, but usually, once they do, they seem worthy of it. Examine the featherweight division for instance. Right now, top prospects Miguel Angel Garcia and Matt Remillard do not deserve world title shots based off their emerging resumes and lofty rankings. So what are they doing?

By Clive Bernath: Adam Booth, the manager/trainer of WBA champ David Haye has hit back at Wladimir Klitschko’s statement earlier today that he is ready to face him in a heavyweight unification match on July 2.

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.

By Derek Bonnett: I have heard grumblings, but no one has come right out and asked. What the hell is Andre Berto doing?