311 stories on BoxingScene are published under the Corey Erdman byline.
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By Corey Erdman - It’s early in the morning on fight day, a time when most people taking part in a fight that night might be enjoying some extra rest, but Christian Mbilli is already in the lobby of his hotel in the Gatineau, Quebec countryside, water bottle in hand, wearing an earnest smile of excitement. It’s unmistakable that Mbilli is an athlete when you see him in person—a
By Corey Erdman - When Christian M’Billi was a child, he dreamed of having a profession for which he could simply train all the time. For others, the rigors of exercise were a means to an end, a requisite for achieving one’s athletic or aesthetic goals. For Mbilli, the work itself was the joy. If you’re going to become a professional boxer, finding delight in the never-ending dogged labor is a useful trait to have. In other words, the man they call “Solide,” a reference to his chiseled build—was indeed built for this.
By Corey Erdman - As if the heavyweight division needed another strange controversy to create further debate about who is, or is deserving to be considered the division’s best, we were served one up this past weekend. Heading into Saturday’s bout against Oleksandr Usyk, Daniel Dubois entered as a gargantuan underdog, with many
By Corey Erdman - If you would have logged on to Twitter or your favorite boxing message board around November of 2020 and suggested that one day, Oleksandr Usyk and Daniel Dubois would fight one another for the unified heavyweight title, you probably would have been ratio’d.
By Corey Erdman - Moments after Robert Helenius was returned to consciousness under the care of the ringside medical team, the man who knocked him out, Anthony Joshua, was on the microphone thanking him for saving the show. It was the second time in three fights that Helenius had been knocked out cold by a top-flight heavyweight only for them to express gratitude and kindness towards him immediately afterwards. In October of 2022, Helenius was brutally
By Corey Erdman - Both Jake Paul and his brother Logan Paul had appearances on pay-per-view on Saturday night. As Jake was arriving at the American Airlines Center in Dallas, TX in an actual tank ahead of his boxing match against UFC legend Nate Diaz, Logan was wrestling in the opening match of WWE Summerslam in Detroit, MI against Ricochet.
By Corey Erdman - When boxing matches are referred to as “50/50 fights,” quite often it’s at the very least a slight exaggeration. The cruel reality of the sport of boxing is that most fights that take place are as far from a 50/50 proposition as will be allowed by a local commission. As for the ones we see on television, by and large the bout was made by a promoter who both
By Corey Erdman - A week out from his ninth professional fight, Keyshawn Davis finds himself in the middle, and at the forefront of a lot of different conversations. Training in Colorado Springs, his old Olympic stomping grounds, the silver medalist works alongside Terence Crawford, as Crawford prepares for his highly anticipated clash with Errol Spence Jr. The two share a trainer, Brian “BoMac”
By Corey Erdman - When Jaron Ennis was working his way up the boxing ladder, fighting in Philadelphia venues like the Pennsylvania Sheet Workers Union Hall and the 2300 Arena, the fights followed a familiar pattern, as they tend to when talented prospects are being developed. Ennis, and fighters of his level of talent and acclaim, can more or less do whatever they want
By Corey Erdman - Boxing has a handful of familiar career arcs, patterns that fighters’ careers tend to follow that can often reliably inform matchmaking. A common one is the former world champion fading, slowly working their way down the card from champion, to challenger trying to regain their title, to fringe contender hoping to score and upset and earn one more shot, to a trial run for prospects looking to score a victory over a recognizable name and earn experience on their route towards the top. That arc unfortunately descends even further than that, but at the time Charles Martin was inserted as an opponent for Jared Anderson on twelve days’ notice, it was safely assumed that he was firmly in the last of the aforementioned categories.