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Boxer Johnny Tapia has reportedly died. Family members say Albuquerque police were summoned to Tapia's house at 7:45 PM Sunday by a family member who discovered the body. Cops say the death does not appear suspicious, but an official cause has not been determined.

The Grove shopping mall in Los Angeles has banned boxer Manny Pacquiao over comments he made about gay marriage, but the boxer said he was misquoted. "Based on news reports of statements made by Mr. Pacquiao, we have made it be known that he is not welcome at The Grove and will not be interviewed here now or in the future. The Grove is a gathering place for all Angelenos and not a place for intolerance," the Grove said in a statement. In an interview with National Conservative Examiner, Pacquiao addressed President Obama's recent endorsement of gay marriage. "God's words...

Update, 8:30 p.m.: Pacquiao is "not welcome at The Grove and will not be interviewed here now or in the future." Full statement at the bottom. ==================================== Update, 6:50 p.m.: "We're canceling the event," says Grove spokesman Bill Reich. "Manny Pacquiao is not coming to the Grove." And thus the backlash begins. ==================================== Professional boxer Manny Pacquiao and "Extra" host Mario Lopez were blowing up Twitter today about their 3/3:30 p.m. interview at the Grove on Wednesday. But mall executives tell LA Weekly that the event may be called off. Pacquiao told the National Conservative Examiner over the weekend that...

This brutal knockout blow turned a boxer's face to mush - making him look more like jelly than a prized jouster. Tony Pietrantonio came crashing to the canvas in the 31st second of the third round following the devastating right-hander from fellow U.S. light heavyweight Lavarn Harvell. Harvell, 23 - dubbed Baby Bowe because of his resemblance to former heavyweight champ Riddick Bowe - said: 'I felt that punch all the way up my shoulder and back, so I knew he wasn’t getting up.

Boxing suffered a great loss Sunday when the sport’s legendary journalist and historian Bert Sugar died at Northern Westchester Hospital in Mount Kisco of a heart attack following a lengthy battle with lung cancer. He was 74.

Will Pacquiao v. Mayweather ever happen? Who turns down a $50 million guarantee that could be turn out to be more than $100 million? Floyd Mayweather Jr., that's who. According to ESPN.com, Manny Pacquiao's camp approached Mayweather with their latest offer for the much anticipated fight between the world's two best boxers. Pacquiao's offer includes a split of the Pay-Per-View (PPV) revenue with the winner taking home 70%.  With the fight estimated to draw $150 million in PPV revenue, that would means more than $100 million to the winner and about $50 million for the loser. And that doesn't...

Dave Charnley, one of the best British boxers never to win a world title, passed away on Saturday morning after a short illness. He was 76. The 'Dartford Destroye'r is widely considered to have been robbed in his second challenge to world lightweight champion Joe 'Old Bones' Brown in London in 1961.

Angelo Dundee, the brilliant motivator who worked the corner for Muhammad Ali in his greatest fights and willed Sugar Ray Leonard to victory in his biggest bout, died Wednesday in Tampa, Fla. He was 90.

Utah's gentleman bruiser, Don Fullmer, 72, who fought some of the world's most famous boxers and came within a single fight of a world title himself, died peacefully Saturday morning surrounded by the prize he valued most — his family. Fullmer and his boxing brothers, Gene, the oldest and a world middle weight champion in 1957, and Jay, second oldest who left the sport with a 20-5-2 record after an eye injury, put Utah on the international boxing stage in the 1950s and '60s.

DENVER — Heavyweight contender Ron Lyle, who fought Muhammad Ali for the title in 1975 and later battled George Foreman, has died in Denver at age 70.

When boxing great Joe Frazier died last week, the media managed to say nice things about Smokin' Joe without ever detailing how they and their chosen one of the moment, Muhammad Ali, conspired to ruin Frazier's life. I got a sense of this in March 1971, when my friends from grad school and I drove from Purdue to watch a large screen presentation of the first Ali-Frazier fight. Given the imperatives of student poverty, we headed not south to Indianapolis, which was 40 miles closer, but north to Gary, which was five dollars cheaper. The moment we walked into the...

Manny Pacquiao escaped Saturday night with a win at the MGM Grand arena in a decision that left Juan Manuel Márquez fuming once again. The Filipino sensation, considered the world's best pound for pound fighter, was taken to the limit before winning a majority decision that infuriated Márquez and most of the sellout crowd. While close, the win helped Pacquiao continue a remarkable run that has made him the most exciting fighter in the sport. In a bruising battle against a counterpuncher who was both accurate and fast, Pacquiao needed the final round on two scorecards to pull out the...

It is appropriate to set aside this journal’s customary business now and then to pay tribute to class and loss away from baseball. If you think that boxing is a profession, if not necessarily a sport, to which class is an unwelcome intruder, you may not have known Joe Frazier, who died of liver cancer at 62 on Monday. Or, at least, you may not really think that class was beaten out of the profession once and for all by the third and last of his showdowns with Muhammad Ali. “I heard somethin’ once,” Ali told Sports Illustrated‘s Mark Kram,...

‘Don’t you know I’m God?” taunted Muhammad Ali, in the first of the epic trilogy of heavyweight prizefights with Joe Frazier that defined the early 1970s. Ali even took to accompanying each word — Don’t — you — know — I’m — God? — with a swing of his fists, unleashing another flurry of his lightning-fast punches. Frazier, undaunted, singularly unaffected by Ali’s sophomoric doggerel and sophisticated psy-ops, kept boring in on his opponent, a steady, bobbing, weaving machine, and spat back through his bloodied mouthpiece: “Well, God, you gonna get whupped tonight!” And very near the end of that...

(CNN) -- Joe Frazier, the hard-hitting boxing heavyweight who handed the legendary Muhammad Ali his first defeat, died Monday, shortly after being diagnosed with liver cancer, his family said in a statement. The former heavyweight champion, who was 67, became a legend in his own right and personified the gritty working-class style of his hard-knuckled hometown, Philadelphia -- a fitting setting for the "Rocky" film series, starring Sylvester Stallone as hardscrabble boxer Rocky Balboa. "You could hear him coming, snorting and grunting and puffing, like a steam engine climbing a steep grade," Bill Lyon wrote in a Philadelphia Inquirer column...

Joe Frazier needed the night of his career to knock down "The Greatest." Frazier knocked Muhammad Ali down in the 15th round and became the first man to beat him in the Fight of the Century at Madison Square Garden in March 1971, the first in a trilogy of bouts that have gone down as boxing's most fabled fights. "That was the greatest thing that ever happened in my life," Frazier said. It was his biggest night, one that would never come again. The relentless, undersized heavyweight ruled the division as champion, then spent a lifetime trying to fight his...

PHILADELPHIA - November 7, 2011 (WPVI) -- Former heavyweight champion Joe Frazier has lost his battle with liver cancer, his family tells Action News.

He beat Muhammad Ali in the Fight of the Century, battled him nearly to the death in the Thrilla in Manila. Then Joe Frazier spent the rest of his life trying to fight his way out of Ali's shadow. That was one fight Frazier never could win. He was once a heavyweight champion, and a great one at that. Ali would say as much after Frazier knocked him down in the 15th round en route to becoming the first man to beat Ali at Madison Square Garden in March 1971. But he bore the burden of being Ali's foil, and...

LAS VEGAS (AP) — In just one round, Floyd Mayweather Jr. got a head butt, a kiss and a hug from Victor Ortiz before responding with a contentious punch that knocked out his opponent and put the WBC's welterweight belt back around the American's waist. Mayweather remained unbeaten and did it in emphatic fashion Saturday, stopping Ortiz at 2:59 of the fourth round. Mayweather made a minimum of $25 million for his first fight in 16 months, a sum that will likely go up as the pay-per-view receipts are tallied. He could make even more against Manny Pacquiao next May...

Any fight fans out there?

Mayweather (42-0, 26 KOs) delivers another victory and wins the WBC title from Ortiz, but it may have been the most bizarre night of the great fighter's career. The end of the fight was pure insanity. The bout was heating up in the fourth when Ortiz landed some solid shots and drove Mayweather into ropes. The 24-year-old got too aggressive and leapt into the air headbutting Mayweather. Referee Joe Cortes wisely paused the fight. That's when Ortiz walked behind the ref's back to apologize and hug Mayweather. Cortes grabbed Ortiz and walked him back to center of the ring to...

Former world heavyweight boxing contender and Minnesota Duluth football lineman Scott LeDoux died this afternoon at his home in Coon Rapids, Minn., at age 62 after a long battle with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig’s disease.

Bernard Hopkins is one of boxing’s all-time greatest fighters (and perhaps the best middleweight in history). But he’s certainly not an effective ambassador for the sport. Which he proved yet again Tuesday when promoting his May 21 fight against Jean Pascal in which Hopkins will try to become the oldest-ever world champion in any weight class. For some reason, Hopkins had a hankering to talk about Redskins QB Donovan McNabb, and it wasn’t in very complimentary terms. In fact, this was more of a Rush Limbaugh-style rant. Hopkins basically said McNabb isn’t a black man in the same way Hopkins...

Lionel Rose, the first Australian Aborigine to win a world boxing title, has died. He was 62.

Sir Henry was known for his particularly effective left hook, 'Enry's Ammer', and for his knockdown of Cassius Clay, later known as Muhammad Ali, in 1963. Ali won the non-title bout at Wembley and triumphed when the pair met again three years later. But Sir Henry later became the British, Commonwealth and European heavyweight champion.

National City, Calif.—A San Diego-area boxing gym that serves at-risk kids is showing what it takes to fight for what is right and to win.  A trial is scheduled to begin on Monday, March 14, 2011, to decide whether National City, Calif., may declare nearly 700 properties—including the gym—“blighted,” thus freeing the city to bulldoze these properties and make way for luxury condos among other private developments.  The trial will be held before the Honorable Steven R. Denton, Superior Court of California, Hall of Justice, 330 W. Broadway in San Diego, Calif. The Community Youth Athletic Center (CYAC) has had...

I'm watching the undercard now -- Daniel Ponce de Leon (from Mexico) vs. Adrien Broner (from the U.S.). Broner was enthusiastically booed in the intro, presumably just for being American. The Mexi fighter was wildly cheered, of course. I've seen this sort of thing before at boxing matches in CA, TX, AZ, NM, FL, etc., and at a U.S. vs. Mexico soccer match at the L.A. Coliseum a few years back (where "urine bombs" were tossed at the U.S. national team, and our national anthem was booed), but it never ceases to tick me off. We have literally tens of...

Former world welterweight boxing champion and St. Louis native Virgil Akins died on Saturday in St. Louis. He was 82. Akins became the first homegrown St. Louisan to win a professional world championship on June 6, 1958 when he stopped Victor Martinez in the fourth round to win the undisputed welterweight title.

Boxing George - The father of our country hidden by a 'box' by the NAACP� (picture)

Manny Pacquiao staked his claim to be the best pound-for-pound boxer on the planet after his brutal demolition of Antonio Margarito in their WBC light-middleweight title bout in Dallas, Texas late Saturday. Nicknamed Pacman, Pacquiao -- the only boxer in history to have won a world title at seven different weight divisions -- claimed his eighth belt in a new class after a unanimous decision over Margarito. Pacquiao dominated from the outset, with his superior hand speed and power constantly troubling the Mexican fighter who had boasted a significant height and reach advantage. But the champion's ruthless barrage of punches...

Floyd Mayweather Jr., who has steadfastly refused to answer questions about the most recent round of failed negotiations for a fight with Manny Pacquiao, has unleashed a profanity-filled racist and homophobic Internet rant against the Filipino star. In an approximately 10-minute Ustream video, apparently made Thursday and also posted on YouTube, Mayweather repeated his assertion that Pacquiao uses performance-enhancing drugs, an accusation that resulted in a defamation lawsuit from Pacquiao earlier this year.

Anybody else watching the fight?

Big Mac "The Knife" Foster of Fresno, the son of Mississippi sharecroppers, rose to No. 1 heavyweight contender in 1970 when Americans still ruled boxing and Fresno was a hotbed for the sport. The 6-foot-2 Vietnam veteran with a devastating left hook at one point won 24 straight bouts by knockout and punched it out with Muhammad Ali for 15 rounds in a non-title setback in Tokyo in 1972. On Monday, Mr. Foster died from congestive heart failure. He was 68.

FORMER boxing champion Mike Tyson, who converted to Islam while in jail in the 1990s, is visiting the Muslim holy cities of Mecca and Medina on pilgrimage.Tyson, who was world heavyweight champion from 1986 to 1990, arrived on Friday in Medina with the Canadian Dawa Association for the umrah, or minor pilgrimage, the newspaper Okaz said. From Medina he will travel on to Mecca and plans to visit other Saudi cities, it reported. Tyson, 44, converted to Islam while serving a 10-year prison sentence, later commuted to three years, for raping a US beauty queen in 1991.

Please don't mind the Frankenstein singing (I'm sure Dolph himself doesn't care, just watch him deal with a truckload of ice at 1:40 of this clip).. Rather impressive for "an older guy". But, even though he can do things like this and all that, I'd guess he'd bow down to this boxer: (as far as I know, Ingemar "Ingo" Johansson was the last universially acknowledged white boxer to hold the title of world champion): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NsO66Oqm7pY Long live boxing!

Side-stepping jabs and ducking would-be knockout blows, Floyd Mayweather Jr. had the look of a boxer who couldn't be touched. Shane Mosley awoke the crowd--and Mayweather--with a second-round punch that caused Mayweather to grab hold of Mosley to keep from falling. But the self proclaimed "best boxer ever" recovered to box an otherwise flawless bout, not allowing Mosley to land any other significant blows and defeating him by unanimous decision in their much anticipated 12-round welterweight matchup on May 1 at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas. Mayweather was his usual impressive self, totaling scores of 119-109, 119-109 and 118-110...

Anybody else watching the fight?

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) -- Former boxing champion Edwin Valero, who gained fame for knocking out all his 27 opponents and having a tattoo of Hugo Chavez on his chest, was found dead in his jail cell Monday and police said he hanged himself after being arrested in his wife's murder. The former lightweight champion used his own clothes to hang himself from a bar in his cell early Monday, Venezuelan Federal Police Chief Wilmer Flores told reporters.

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — Police say ex-boxing champ Edwin Valero kills self in jail cell after arrest in wife's killing. bREAKING UPDATE

LAS VEGAS - Former heavyweight champion Evander Holyfield is using George Foreman’s comeback more than 15 years ago as inspiration. The 47-year-old Holyfield (43-10-2, 28 KOs) knocked out 41-year-old Frans Botha with 2:05 left in the eighth round to claim the WBF heavyweight championship on Saturday night. Holyfield (43-10-2) knocked the defending champion down 31 seconds earlier with a right to the chin. Botha (47-5-3) beat refree Russell Mora’s count, but Mora then stopped the fight with the South African backed into a corner.

Arthur Mercante, the third man in the ring for Sugar Ray Robinson, Muhammad Ali and a host of lesser-known fighters over a half-century career in boxing, has died.

Times boxing writer Lance Pugmire breaks down the WBO welterweight title fight.This wasn't the usual ring walk for Manny Pacquiao. With so much ground to cover inside this $1.2-billion, 100,000-person capacity palace known as Cowboys Stadium, Pacquiao came to Texas with a chance to take out his frustrations over the road not taken, the result of a bitter negotiation with fellow superstar Floyd Mayweather Jr. that squandered a $25-million guarantee. The target was Ghana's Joshua Clottey, a true welterweight with a chance to stun the boxing world. Clottey emerged from a locker room where African drums and instruments had been...

SARANGANI, PHILIPPINES(AP) —Manny Pacquiao says he is planning to file a defamation lawsuit against Floyd Mayweather Jr., the fighter’s father, and Golden Boy Promotions In a statement posted Friday on his Web site, Pacquiao claims that his character has been damaged and tarnished by accusations he says are untrue. “Enough is enough,” Pacquiao said in the statement. “These people, Mayweather Sr., Jr., and Golden Boy Promotions, think it is a joke and a right to accuse someone wrongly of using steroids or other performance-enhancing drugs. I have tried to just brush it off as a mere pre-fight ploy but I...

The camp of Floyd Mayweather Jr. is claiming Manny Pacquiao is declining Olympic-style drug testing for their tentatively scheduled March 13 megafight, with Mayweather representatives going as far to say that one of the richest bouts in boxing history is in "jeopardy" because of Pacquiao's stance. Pacquiao has communicated that he'd be willing to give a blood sample only at the kick-off news conference 60 days before the fight, and after the bout, Mayweather representatives claim. Mayweather's father, Floyd Sr., stated publicly earlier this year that he'd discourage his son from fighting Pacquiao because he suspects the Filipino superstar is...

FORWARD OPERATING BASE UBAYDI, Iraq, Dec. 8, 2009 – For the woman he loved, he became a paratrooper in the vaunted 82nd Airborne Division and eventually a U.S. citizen. With his enlistment nearly up, 6-foot, 5-inch, 230-pound Army Spc. Wenderson Jangada is ready to return to his home country of Brazil to reclaim the title of heavyweight boxing champion. Army Spc. Wenderson Jangada mans a machine gun in a guard tower at Forward Operating Base Ubaydi, Iraq, Dec. 5, 2009. A former Brazilian heavyweight champion boxer who became a U.S. citizen just prior to deploying with the 82nd Airborne Division,...

After a slow start, Pacquiao dominates to win his seventh title. Lightning kept striking in sharp, penetrating bursts Saturday night in the MGM Grand Garden Arena. Most of it was hitting Miguel Cotto's face. Finally, 55 seconds into the final round of the 12-round welterweight boxing match, referee Kenny Bayless stepped in and stopped the thunder and lightning and huge headaches being administered by the incredible fighting machine, Manny Pacquiao. Pacquiao had won with yet another epic performance. The pride of the Philippines has now become the pride of all boxing. The Puerto Rican Cotto, one tough customer, was reduced...

TMZ has learned Mike Tyson has been arrested at LAX airport for battery after a bloody confrontation with a paparazzo outside the United terminal. We're told Tyson punched the pap in the face and there is blood everywhere. We're told Tyson was at a ticket counter at the United Airlines terminal when the incident occurred. The photographer got punched in the face, hit the ground, got up and began walking, leaving a trail of blood. Someone at the scene tells TMZ ... the photographer got very close to Tyson before the boxer struck him. Our guy on the scene says...

The reminder that yet another anniversary is here had George Foreman thinking that maybe it's time to visit an old friend. They once had their differences, once came to blows. Time, though, is a great healer. "Maybe I should go and see him," Foreman said. "He's like a brother. We're that close." They weren't 35 years ago, on an early morning in Africa when all Foreman had in mind was dealing some serious hurt to Muhammad Ali. He had been in Zaire way too long as it was, and the big, brooding heavyweight champion was in no mood to take...

Jack Johnson remains unpardoned as the president is accused of cowardice on race and crime after shunning judicial powers ~snip~ Obama is now in his 10th month as president and has not granted a single clemency or commutation of sentence. “It is a sad and telling commentary on the emptiness of the rhetoric of hope and change [that] President Obama was not able to find even a single case in the massive federal criminal justice system meriting some kind of clemency relief during his first 100 days in office,” said Berman. “I’m very disappointed.” The omission may partly be due...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Sen. John McCain on Friday pressed President Barack Obama to give a posthumous pardon to Jack Johnson, the black heavyweight boxing champion who was imprisoned nearly a century ago because of his romantic ties with a white woman. McCain, R-Ariz., and Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., noted in a letter to Obama that both houses of Congress this summer passed their resolution urging a pardon. After the vote, the lawmakers wrote to Obama in August asking him to issue the pardon. "Regrettably, we have not received a response from you or any member of your administration," they wrote...