Boxing Books I've Recently Bought.

I can tell you about any of these books I have:

* Empire of Deceit by Dean Allison and Bruce Henderson (on the MAPS scandal)

* Larry Holmes: Against the Odds by Phil Berger (Larry Holmes biography)

* Off The Ropes: The Ron Lyle Story by Candace Toft (Ron Lyle biography)

* Sucker Punch by Jack Cashill (about Muhammad Ali and Malcom X's relationship)

* One Punch From the Promised Land by John Florio (biography of the Spinks brothers)

* Ali vs Inoki by Josh Gross (about the Ali-Inoki fight and its impact on the growth of MMA)

* Terrible Times by Tim Witherspoon and Ryan Danes (Witherspoon bio)

* Smokin' Joe by Phil Berger (Frazier bio)

* Floyd Patterson: The Fighting Life of Boxing's Invisible Champion by W.K. Stratton

* By George by Joel Engel (Foreman's bio)

* A Flame of Pure Fire: Jack Dempsey and the Roaring Twenties by Roger Kahn

* Fire & Fear: The Inside Story of Mike Tyson by Jose Torres

* Bad Intentions: The Mike Tyson Story by Peter Heller

* King of the World by David Remnick (Ali bio)

* Tunney by Jack Cavanaugh (Tunney bio)

* Boxing Babylon by Nigel Collins (selection of tragic boxing stories)

* Dark Trade: Lost in Boxing by Donald McRae

* Cosell by Cosell by Howard Cosell (about half of it is about boxing)

* Welcome to the Big Time by Mike Fitzgerald and Marshall Terrell (Earnie Shavers bio)

* Unforgiveable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson by Geoffrey C. Ward

* The Black Lights by Thomas Hauser

* The Life and Crimes of Don King by Jack Newfeld

* The Bite Fight by George Willis (the Tyson-Holyfield rematch)

* The Mammoth Book of Muhammad Ali by David West (selected Ali stories)

* The Hardest Game by Hugh McIlvanney (selected stories about boxing)

* Beyond Glory: Joe Louis vs Max Schmeling and a World on the Brink by David Margolick

* Ali by Johnathan Eig (Ken Burns is making a documentary for PBS about Ali and this book - like Unforgiveable Blackness - will be the companion piece to the doc.)

* Ghosts of Manila by Mark Kram (on the Ali-Frazier feud)

* Redemption Song by Mike Marquesee (about Ali and Malcolm X)

* Mike Tyson: Undisputed Truth by Larry Sloman

* The Devil and Sonny Liston by Nick Tosches

* Sugar Ray Leonard: The Big Fight by Michael Arkush (Leonard bio)

* Reading the Fights by Joyce Carol Oates and Daniel Halpern (selection of boxing stories)

 

(LOL) Not the one I have. The full title is called The Hardest Game: McIlvanney on Boxing by Hugh McIlvanney and it's a collection of his articles over the years.

 

Just finished The Big Fight by Sugar Ray Leonard. He is brutally honest about his addiction issues.

 

I added some more books to my collection:

I got these three at a used bookstore:

Greatest Boxing Stories Ever Told: Thirty-Six Incredible Tales From The Ring – Jeff Silver

My View from the Corner: A Life in Boxing – Angelo Dundee/Bert Sugar

Facing Mike Tyson – Ted Kluck (currently reading)

I got two others for Father's Day:

The Road to Nowhere: A Journey Through Boxing's Wastelands – Tris Dixon

Lanky Bob - The Life, Times and Contemporaries of Bob Fitzsimmons - K. R. Robinson

I'm always on the lookout for recommendations.

 

I have most of these but not the Witherspoon book. Any good???
Dark Trade I thought is very good. Under the radar.

 

The Witherspoon book is terrible. (No pun intended.) My oldest daughter bought it for me for Christmas one year and was kind of embarrassed for me when she opened it up and started to read parts of it.

Basically, someone with a tape recorder interviewed Tim Witherspoon, left out their questions, typed his comments and slapped a cover on it. Reading the book feels like you're sitting in a room with Witherspoon and he's talking about his career, but he's rambling all over the place.

He says some interesting things, but the person interviewing him didn't do any research and didn't seem to follow up on anything he said. Just re-keyed his comments. Didn't matter if timelines were all out of whack or if Tim is remembering something that happened at a different time but wedges it in the wrong place.

It's poorly written.

That said, I probably liked it better than the Joe Frazier book. It's supposed to be written in Joe Frazier's voice, but Phil Berger cleaned up "Joe's voice" so much it's kind of ridiculous.

There would be passages that sounded like Joe: "I hugged my momma." Or "Yes, ma'am, no arguing with that lady."

And the next page Joe supposedly said:"Ellis had come full circle. Where once he had been better known for being Ali's sparring partner than a legitimate contender, now he was a WBA Champion, victor of 12 straight bouts and part-time employer of Clay, who had gotten one hundred dollars a day to spar with Ellis earlier in that summer of 1969."

C'mon.

Pick a voice.

 

Dark Trade was very good.

 

Thanks for the heads up!! Was considering getting Spoons book.
Still reading Lankey Bob. It's just a tough read for me I guess that's why I kinda breezed through it the first time. It's like reading a damn text book for me. Just too much detail not regarding Fitzsimmons but I guess that's how he gives us the back story. Still like Prizefighter better.

 

I haven't heard of Lanky Bob. It's tough to write a boxing book. Some writers just want to push their own opinions. Others try to do blow-by-blow calls. Some people get mired in stats, but you don't want it to read like a textbook. People want an entertaining story.

 

Lanky Bob is one of the 4 Fitzsimmons books out there. I have 3 just not the last one by Pollock?

 

A couple I read lately were

D1ck Tiger: The life and times of a boxing immortal.

Hard Leather: A history of Cuban boxing

I enjoyed both. The Tiger one is very well researched and has a lot of interesting stuff on Nigeria and Tiger during the war. I wish the book was a little longer but I got a lot out of it. Perhaps more insight from Ron Lipton would have been great.

The Cuban one is good too. It’s a lot of small chapters but there’s a lot of good stuff in there and a ton of history covered.

I read a book on Wilfredo Gomez called a fire burns within which I don’t really recommend if you know Gomez as it will give you very little new and is repetitive.

 

By Pollack’s books on Fitz and Jeffries and you will be sorted for Fitz material!

 

I don’t like any of Giudice’s work