827 stories on BoxingScene are published under the Lyle Fitzsimmons byline.
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They were born 62 days apart in 1973. They debuted 16 days apart in 1992. And they won championships on the very same day – May 6 – in 2006. So it’s no surprise Jose Antonio Rivera feels a particular connection to Oscar De La Hoya. A connection so strong, in fact, that he’d still like to pick a fight with him.
By Lyle Fitzsimmons - A famous person unexpectedly dies. And the immediate inclination for the geniuses in my line of work is to assemble something that’s both worthy of an undisputed profundity championship, and gets posted 30 seconds before the guy’s at the wannabe website down the street. Sometimes they make for entertaining read...
By Lyle Fitzsimmons - Hard to believe it’s been a dozen years. And as I sit this morning watching the outer bands of a tropical storm test the flexibility of my backyard trees, I vividly recall stepping into a rental car in Philadelphia back then and thinking, “Damn, it’s cold.” But now I’m glad I went.
By Lyle Fitzsimmons - It’s election season. And after many years in which a few names clearly separated from the pack of “modern” fighters angling for International Boxing Hall of Fame induction, we’ve got ourselves a horse race. In fact, each of the first-time candidates on the ballot have cases to make it to the Class of 2021. Three of the fighters on the ballot will be...
By Lyle Fitzsimmons - Teofimo Lopez has officially reached the level Frank Sinatra used to sing about. In reverse. He’s made it anywhere. And now it he ought to get a shot to make it there. The chatty 23-year-old took his trash-talking act to the Las Vegas bubble last weekend and emerged as the sport’s newest superstar after outpointing triple-crown champion Vasily Lomach...
By Lyle Fitzsimmons - Sometimes you write a column and you just know it’s a good one. It’s a lot like when a basketball shot “feels good off the hands.” It was exactly that way for me last week. Upon polishing off 1,000 words on how Vasily Lomachenko would swat away Teofimo Lopez’s challenge like an upstart mosquito, I turned to my wife and kiddingly said “make room...
By Lyle Fitzsimmons - I’ve come to a decision. Or, to be more accurate, I’ve confirmed a decision I’d already considered. Vasyl Lomachenko is the best boxer in the world. Bar none. And to those contrarian masses on social media who’d suggest such a notion is either beholden to a promoter or network or simply not as enlightened as theirs, I have an equally simple res...
By Lyle Fitzsimmons - It’s eight weeks (or so) before a Deontay Wilder fight. But it doesn’t sound the same. By this point in the fight-selling process the “Bronze Bomber” has usually issued an inappropriately chilling threat, suggested rendering an opponent lifeless wouldn’t cause him to lose sleep, or at the very least proclaimed himself well on his way to undisputed heav...
By Lyle Fitzsimmons - It’s pretty amazing to think about. Seems as soon as one high-profile championship fight anniversary from the late 1970s or early 1980s passes, another one comes rolling through within a week or two. So when people refer to that stretch as one of boxing’s golden ages, it’s not exactly hyperbolic. Case in point, two weeks ago Wednesday was the...
People die. Sometimes they’re people in your family. Sometimes they’re people you know. And sometimes they’re people you’ve never met, but of whose work you’ve been made aware. The common denominator to all those deaths is that someone, somewhere is suffering. So I’ll concede that upon hearing reports of the death of Panama Lewis over the weekend, I felt a twinge of sympathy for anyone – family member, friend, colleague, etc. – who’s sad that he’s gone at age 74.