Curtis Cokes, who passed away on May 29 at the age of 82, was a beautiful stylist who perhaps never got the credit he deserved when an active boxer, even though he was undisputed world welterweight champion in the 1960s. He was deservedly i...

Former top heavyweight contender Kirk Johnson has paid an emotional tribute to Curtis Cokes, his former trainer and world welterweight champion who passed away last week aged 82… Truth be told, the greatness of former world welterweight c...

An education in the sport of boxing becomes extremely tough, very early. The young children spending hours staring at themselves in the mirror, perfecting their stance, or the older teenagers skipping rope until they’re all out of bounce,...

Upsets have happened all through ring history. Sometimes the favourites really shouldn’t have been favourites at all. Other times, the odds were ridiculously close. During the Coronavirus downtime, I’ve been looking at some of these fig...

Peering in at boxing’s heavyweight division from a safe (and social) distance, it appears that most of its significant fights have taken place via email, telephone call or discarded, disingenuous contract. Champions and recently defeated ...

For the last few months, Covid-19 has seemingly been at the forefront of every conversation. Be it the death toll, conspiracy theories, infringement on civil liberties, the leader of the free world suggesting a shot of Toilet Duck and inser...

One of the biggest boxing clichés is the ex-fighter who can’t let go of the game. They’ve still got it, they believe and have regrets that they want to correct. And, like many clichés, there’s plenty of truth in it. Every boxing wri...

SOMEONE showed me the clip of Mike Tyson looking fit and sharp on the pads. It warmed my heart to see him looking in shape and happy again after everything he has been through yet it is ludicrous that some sections of the internet started s...

On the other side of the world, a young man is waiting for a global pandemic to pass and a fresh day of destiny.  Apinun Khongsong, the IBF’s No.1 contender at 140lbs, was homing in on a mandatory engagement with unified champion Jos...

The news that featherweight titleholder Shakur Stevenson was lined up for a non-title fight with Rafael Rivera in June reminded me of a time when champions regularly appeared in non-title bouts. Back in the day, champions considered it impo...

“You are not telling me this fight is going ahead until I actually see Philip Bowes in the ring. I don’t care if you even see him at the venue or in the changing room or whatever. It’s not definitely on until he’s stood in the ring ...

The locker room is suffocated by the disappointment of an unexpected defeat. It’s not unexpected due to the calibre of opponent, as such, but because of the steely self-belief that has carried the fallen prospect this far and is crushed, ...

From the moment Kid Galahad watched ‘Prince’ Naseem Hamed halt Tom ‘Boom Boom’ Johnson, he was transfixed by boxing. Galahad would run into Hamed a few weeks later at the local mosque. Hamed told the starstruck, pre-teen wannabe tha...

Badly overweight and battling severe mental demons, any chances of a successful comeback looked remote for Tyson Fury a couple of years ago. Frank Warren took a punt, of course, and the former undisputed heavyweight champion launched a mira...

In this time of a worldwide boxing shutdown, thoughts tend to drift back to times past, fights seen, champions remembered. Lately I have found myself thinking of Carlos Monzon. It’s possible that Monzon was the greatest middleweight champ...

They say that in boxing closed mouths don’t get fed. Goading a desired opponent into a fight has long been a ploy adopted by those wishing to further their ambitions, and since the birth of social media such provocations have become secon...

“I respect the Coronavirus, but I’m not nervous,” says interim IBF featherweight champion Sarah Mahfoud. The 30-year-old female boxer and trainee nurse is talking about her laudable decision to enrol as part of the temporary healthcar...

It’s been over seven years since that long trip home from the Sandton Convention Centre, Johannesburg. The flight seemed to drag for Matthew Hatton (43-7-2, 17 KOs) and his team after suffering one, final defeat at the hand...

Rising prospect Caoimhin ‘Black Thunder’ Agyarko only has two words on his mind. It’s unrelenting, each question and probe inevitably returning to the same topic. World champion. “I want to be the first black Irish pers...

I can’t be mithered with arena shows. Post-lockdown I probably won’t attend any, either. It had reached the point where I thought to myself that if I wanted to sit in a row of self-obsessed egomaniacs I should probably just start going ...

As lockdown continues and the wait for significant live boxing rumbles on, Luke G. Williams picks out some of the best boxing-related viewing available on streaming providers… Mr Calzaghe (2015, currently available to Amazon Prime subscri...

Kerry Kayes is known as ‘The Guru’ in boxing circles. He is too modest to refer to himself using that term, but here, in his debut column for Boxing Social, the man who has worked tirelessly to help others gives his thoughts on all thin...

Johnathon Banks is one of the few fighters in recent years who has made a successful transition from world class boxer to world class trainer. The reason behind this natural progression may be down to his boxing foundations. ...

Dana White’s outfit has shown how combat sports can move forward in these troubling times, writes Graham Houston. I don’t follow MMA, but in the past week I took a look at the UFC’s first two shows in what is now the Covid-19 era. I n...