Gerrie Coetzee, a former heavyweight champion who fought many contenders and champions during the late 1970s and 1980s, died Thursday in his home country of South Africa.
It’s never a bad thing to have a few days in Las Vegas. To have those days with no work to do makes it even better, so when I received a call from Sue Fox in November of 2021 to let me know that I was being honored with a place in the International Women’s Boxing Hall of Fame’s Class of 2022, you didn’t have to tell me twice about making plans for a cross country trip to the “Fight Capital of the World.”
The Daily Bread Mailbag returns with Stephen "Breadman" Edward tackling topics such as unified light heavyweight champion Artur Beterbiev, Caleb Plant vs. David Benavidez, Jaron Ennis, the WBC's direction on transgender athletes, and more.
The World Boxing Council is once again at odds with amateur boxing sanctioning body IBA. The two organizations have verbally sparred several times in the past - with the tension increasing when the IBA (then the AIBA) declared their intention to stage boxing events with fully licensed professionals.
If you’ve gotten to this point and aren’t happy, that’s too bad. You should have seen it coming. In keeping with tradition in this Tuesday morning space, we greet the New Year with a preview of stories other boxing scribes will be reacting to about 12 months from now.
Around the holidays, boxing fans in the western world tend to zoom in on the Japanese boxing scene, with New Year’s events typically headlined by Kazuto Ioka and the big stars of the day headlining the calendar for a week or two. But as exciting as this time is for the Japanese boxing community, it’s also a time of mourning, as it also marks the anniversary of the final bout—and ultimately untimely passing—of one of its most beloved stars.
Last week, the World Boxing Council generated plenty of headlines when the organization's president, Mauricio Sulaiman, revealed that the WBC was planning to create a new category for transgender boxers.
Another season of boxing is done. December 31 saw a draw in the final big fight of the year but the twelve rounds along the way were an entertaining conclusion to the year. Kazuto Ioka and Joshua Franco didn’t result in some title unification at Jr. bantamweight, but they gave it a hell of a shot. It was a solid end to a year that should be appreciated for what it was.
Houston fans were treated to two scintillating fights in 2022 involving multiple world titles. As a result, never before has the runner-up position figured so prominently in the Houston Boxing Awards. Both fights were won conclusively and without controversy by the Houston-area fighters. One made history with the unification of all four major belts and crowning of an undisputed champion in the junior middleweight division. The other was equally exhilarating, and although a vacant junior welterweight belt was at stake, it was not quite as magnitudinal as the first. The aforementioned pair of fights dominated this year's awards in the categories of Fighter of the Year, Fight of the Year, Knockout of the Year and Round of the Year.
The Daily Bread Mailbag returns with Stephen "Breadman" Edwards tackling topics such as Jose Ramirez turning down a Regis Prograis shot, Terence Crawford vs. Errol Spence, weight issues in boxing, the career of Daniel Dubois, and more.