Bart Barry
The right way
Here’s what happened Saturday. An excellent junior welterweight prizefight scheduled for 10 rounds ended in the seventh. The busier and more effective...
Alvarado-Rios: Redeem yourselves, rid us of pestilence, make a masterpiece
DALLAS – Four miles north of this city’s Main Street District, on Southern Methodist University’s beautiful campus, stands Meadows Museum – a collection of...
Vincent Valdez, and boxing as metaphor
SAN ANTONIO – Five miles northwest of the Alamo stands a remarkable edifice and concept known colloquially as “The McNay,” Texas’ first museum of...
And still . . .
The best writing in Thomas Hauser’s new collection, “And the New . . .” (The University of Arkansas Press; $24.95), barely treats boxing at...
Momento de Maravilla
LAS VEGAS – Only prizefighting, among all sports, is able to induce a vicarious sensation so near to personal tragedy one’s mind, in a...
Martinez decisions Chavez widely after a pair of incredibly close minutes
LAS VEGAS – And in an instant, Martinez-Chavez went from Pacquiao-De La Hoya to Chavez-Taylor.
Not since Manny Pacquiao retired Oscar De La Hoya had...
Chavez upsets Martinez on the scale
LAS VEGAS – The weekend’s first upset happened Friday, and it wasn’t by way of a punch at Thomas & Mack Center. In...
Andre Ward’s hometown: Pleasant surprises and a mean streak
OAKLAND, Calif. – Last week’s fight headquarters were at Marriott City Center in the middle of this recovering town. Friday night Andre Ward...
Andre Ward fights for local fans, and to find more of...
OAKLAND, Calif. – Saturday Andre Ward made the most impressive showing of his career, stopping lineal light heavyweight world champion Chad Dawson in round...
Why I’ll be in Oakland this weekend
Saturday evening in Oakland, Calif.’s Oracle Arena super middleweight world champion Andre Ward will defend his title against light heavyweight world champion Chad Dawson....
Portrait of a barroom tough’s first visit to a boxing gym
Javier pulls open the matte-gray door and sees the fresh black and yellow paint and so much heat. The gym’s heat is palpable,...
Walking among masterpieces, thinking about failure
FORT WORTH, Texas – Our beloved sport continues its mid-year recess, a deserted time before the mania of September. There were no fights...
Observations about local fight promotion from behind black cocktail dresses
SAN ANTONIO – Saturday saw the return of national figures and national Spanish-language television, Telefutura this time, to the northernmost fraction of Alamodome, a...
Vera decisions Mora by questionably wide scores in South Texas
SAN ANTONIO – If you come to Texas and fight a Texan you have to beat that Texan down. Californian Sergio Mora returned...
A call for military intervention
For a brief time Friday, the hours between the elimination of Team USA’s last male boxer and his reinstatement on appeal, the 2012 Men’s...
Ghost story
Just south of Tucson in November 2007, Robert “The Ghost” Guerrero made the definitive statement of his prizefighting career. Defending an actual world...
Adults gone missing in Cincinnati
Cincinnati’s Adrien Broner (24-0) is not the next Floyd Mayweather. At best, he is New Mayweather, a product that compensates for recent layoffs...
Danny Garcia ruins the Khan game
Philadelphia junior welterweight Danny Garcia was gradually fading against Erik Morales in March. The old Mexican master was coming forward in Houston’s Reliant...
Reevaluating the Filipino Flash
In February local fans attended “Welcome to the Future” in San Antonio’s Alamodome to see how Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. would finally fare against...
The “K9” cure
Here’s one more reason to attend fights whenever possible rather than sit complacently on a couch feeling satisfied by a medium that tells you...
Machito time, European girls and blue-raspberry slurpees
SAN ANTONIO – Saturday, Hector “Machito” Camacho Jr., fighting for the first time in 16 months, dropped an overmatched opponent on the red canvas...
Camacho Jr. makes quick work of Charles in La Villita’s Maverick...
SAN ANTONIO – Hector “Machito” Camacho Jr.’s belly might not have been tight as an average prizefighter’s Saturday, but his belly was not the...
Machito time: Hector Camacho Jr. weighs-in
SAN ANTONIO – Boxing aficionados who have long suspected Hector Camacho Jr. was a better fit for a stripper’s pole than a prizefighting ring...
Chavez Jr. and El Paso: Correcting misapprehensions
EL PASO, Texas – Little more than a pitstop on I-10 or a piece of Fort Bliss infrastructure in the imagination of most Americans...
Chavez weighs less than Lee in West Texas
EL PASO, Texas – In what may well prove to be the weekend’s largest upset, Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. weighed a quarter pound less...
Bradley-Pacquiao: Allowing plenty of faults
LAS VEGAS – The Bellagio Gallery of Fine Arts, a short cab ride from the week’s poorly cooled and hastily erected media tent outside...
Timothy Bradley shocks the world
LAS VEGAS –Things did not go according to plan for Manny Pacquiao. He was more aggressive than he had been in years. ...
Pavlik and Lee get by at Hard Rock
LAS VEGAS – When Kelly Pavlik fought in March, his first time in a prizefighting ring in 23 months, the match was about seeing...
Pacquiao the convert, Bradley the shameless
Manny Pacquiao can be beaten, but this is not news because any man who ties gloves on his fists and makes combat with large...
Carl Froch: Against the hypothetical
“I’m very tough, you know,” Carl Froch said Saturday, after he ruined Lucian Bute. “I’m a bit of an animal.”
It was the sort...
Another night in the gym
Inside the double blue doors, old wood with matte aluminum handles, the heater is off because with all the bodies inside and the humidity...
How I overcame Low V
We must learn to see in boxing’s story the energy and cruelty our rapturous drive demands, like the drum and swish and smack and...
Above a Texas bullring, a reminder about Floyd Mayweather
SAN ANTONIO – Suspended above a bullring on a wire-mesh floor below a cinema-size screen, one story and 50 yards from where Cowboys Dancehall’s...
Najera and Hall entertain & Ellis and McCumby thrill on Cinco...
SAN ANTONIO – Seeing a neighbor don gloves and swap blows in a prizefighting ring is often thrilling enough for any fan to go...
“Will they forgive us for this?”
Somewhere in the 11th round of Saturday’s HBO main event one man’s lovely face expressed wholly what viewers wished to see. It was Oscar...
