“In years past, Stevenson would have turned to matchmaking to mitigate that conspiratorial threat. Indeed, his nine-fight reign as WBC light-heavyweight champion is likely to be remembered for the safe run of derelict defenses that allowed him to line his pockets late into his thirties. It was a tactic that vilified Stevenson. Already loathed by many for again turning violence—the dominant and dominating characteristic of his treatment of women in the rough trade of his youth—into profit, and for doing so with a fighter’s conceit, Stevenson’s seeming aversion to danger only turned people against him harder. That he depicted himself almost as a man more sinned against than sinning when pressed about his past did nothing to repair his image. There was a sense that if he had paid a little more in the ring, where violent men sometimes meet violent ends and justice is strangely tethered to entertainment, Stevenson would not have been the persona non grata he was.”

Read Violent Men, Violent Ends: Adonis Stevenson Falls to Oleksandr Gvozdyk on Hannibal Boxing.

“And that is why Garcia, not Spence, is the story. Whether he is the best lightweight in the world is unclear, he has no claim to junior welterweight supremacy, yet he is facing one of the two best welterweights on the planet. Had he chosen Danny Garcia as an opponent, or Shawn Porter, or even Keith Thurman, the response to Garcia’s daring wouldn’t have been the same (because not one of them represents a seeming impossibility). That is how good Garcia is; that is how well he is esteemed. There is, then, a slight hedge in Garcia’s selecting Spence—because losing to the world’s most dangerous welterweight does less damage to his stature than it does his body.”

Read Deeds Matching Words: On Mikey Garcia-Errol Spence on Hannibal Boxing.

“Boxing isn’t professional wrestling, and what success the Charlos had achieved by the time they hammered out their signature victories was not the product of a gimmick designed to manipulate the reactions of an expertly diagnosed audience. The Charlos could fight. Moreover, they could at times—though too infrequently—do so with a prejudice befitting their profession. Williams and Lubin were not beaten; they were destroyed, humiliated, left silent thereby. However easy the mind moves toward questions of rank, the question the Charlos encouraged one to consider was not how good the brothers were so much as which matchups would best furnish that answer. Because were the Charlos to synergize their malice and talent as they did against Williams and Lubin, respectively, the outcomes of their fights would be a secondary concern. And in a fractious and fractured business isn’t the promise of a little well-spilled blood reason enough to get excited?”

Read The Waning: On Jermell and Jermall Charlo on Hannibal Boxing.