On the morning of 4 July 1910, thousands of boxing fans stormed a newly built stadium in Reno, Nevada, to witness an epic showdown. Jack Johnson, the world’s first Black heavyweight champion—and most infamous athlete in the world because of his race—was paired against Jim Jeffries, a former heavyweight champion then heralded as the “great white hope.” It was the height of the Jim Crow era, and spectators were eager for Jeffries to restore the racial hierarchy that Johnson had pummelled with his quick fists. Transporting readers directly into the ring, artist Youssef Daoudi and poet Adrian Matejka intersperse dramatic boxing action with vivid flashbacks to reveal how Johnson, the self-educated son of formerly enslaved parents, reached the pinnacle of sport—all while facing down a racist justice system. Through a combination of breathtaking illustrations and striking verse, Last on His Feet honours a contentious civil rights figure who has for more than a century been denied his proper due.

From his status as Heavyweight Champion of the World to his ongoing battle with Parkinson's disease, Muhammad Ali is a celebrated icon known the world over for his athletic championships and his civic and humanitarian enterprises. Ali has been both underdog and champion, villain and prince, playboy and staunch Muslim, exalted hero and reviled conscientious objector- the very spirit of the 20th Century, (Norman Mailer). Organized by decade and illustrated with sixteen pages of classic photos, "The Muhammad Ali Reader" tells Ali's story in more than thirty essays from a stellar array of authors, athletes, and social commentators, including A. J. Liebling, Tom Wolfe, George Plimpton, Norman Mailer, Pete Hamill, Gary Wills, Hunter Thompson, and Joyce Carol Oates. Floyd Patterson defends Ali's right to criticize the Vietnam War; Malcolm X explains how Ali went from entertainer to threat with his declaration as a man of race; Ali shares some intimate and definitive thoughts in a Playboy magazine interview; and Gay Talese gives us a front seat on a 1996 ride to Cuba where Ali meets up with Fidel Castro. Fascinating and diverse, this collective portrait reveals the many facets of the awe-inspiring, controversial, and beloved man and legend known to all as The Greatest: the one and only Muhammad Ali.

SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2015 WILLIAM HILL SPORTS BOOK OF THE YEAR PRIZE. 'I kill a man and most people forgive me. However, I love a man and many say this makes me an evil person.' On 24 March 1962, when Emile Griffith stepped into the ring in Madison Square Garden to defend his world title against Benny Paret, he was filled with rage. During their weigh-in, the Cuban challenger had denounced Griffith as a 'faggot' and minced towards him. In the macho world of boxing, where fighters know they are engaged in the hurt game, there could be no greater insult. At that time, it was illegal for people of the same gender to have sex, or even for a bar to knowingly serve a drink to a gay person. It was an insinuation that could have had dangerous consequences for Griffith - especially as it was true. In the fight that followed, Griffith pounded Paret into unconsciousness, and the Cuban would die soon after, leaving Griffith haunted by what he had done. Despite this, he went on to fight more world championship rounds than any other fighter in history in a career that lasted for almost 20 years. In Donald McRae's first sports book in more than a decade, he weaves a compelling tale of triumph over prejudice - Griffith was black, so doubly damned by contemporary society, but refused to cower away as society wished. A Man's World is a classic piece of sports writing.

There has always been a great boxing tradition in Newport and the valleys of Monmouthshire, but recently the area has excelled itself. Over the last two decades, no fewer than four world champions have been groomed in local gyms. Robbie Regan, Gavin Rees, Nathan Cleverly and the incomparable Joe Calzaghe may be the stand-out achievers featured in this book, but they are far from the only stars remembered here. Johnny Basham and the `Maesglas Marciano', Dick Richardson, lead the way for the city on the Usk, while there are many others who have worn the Lonsdale Belt or claimed Commonwealth Games medals. And the changing face of boxing is epitomised by Ebbw Vale girl Ashley Brace, the first woman to top a professional bill in Wales - and the first to win an international title. Some 70 boxers are pictured and profiled. Any fight fan, whether a `Gwentie' or not, will enjoy this book.

Readers searching for an authentic American success story will appreciate this biography about Leo F. Houck, a premier middleweight boxer of the early 1900s, Penn State boxing coach, and devoted family from Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Leo F. Houck became a professional boxer during his adolescence at age fourteen while many of his contemporaries started their life-long employment in the mills, farms, and factories of Lancaster County. He gave the purses he earned to his widowed mother in order to support his six siblings after his father Edward, passed away at age fifty. There was nothing overtly glamorous about Leo's boxing career until 1911, when he earned the largest payday of his career with a twenty round victory over Harry Lewis in Paris. Leo reached the pinnacle of his career in 1913, when he was poised to capture the middleweight championship title. His two hundred fights are all described in this biography making it uniquely different from most boxing biographies, which typically focus on a finite number of key fights during a boxers' career. Leo coached boxing at Penn State after his retirement from prize fighting. Over the next twenty-seven years, Leo transformed Penn State into an intercollegiate boxing powerhouse and clearly established himself as Penn State's first legendary coach.

This is a revealing look at the history of race relations in the United States during the first half of the twentieth century portrayed through the lives and times of the first two African-American heavyweight boxing champions, Jack Johnson and Joe Louis. Incorporating extensive research into the black press of the time, the author explores how the public careers and private lives of these two sports figures both define and explain vital national issues from the early 1900s to the late 1940s.

The sport of boxing is dying in a last explosion of dollars. Its beleaguered performers are reaching up for a last payday with bravery, one-liners and self-delusion. Fittingly it is in boxing's capital, in a faded downtown Vegas casino with a hooker for company, that the author, a boxing writer and sometime boxer's agent, reflects on his own exit from the scene. As the boxing world starts to recede, the characters he has lived with, and for, rear sharply into focus one last time: the astonishing Jack Kid Berg, and Kid Chocolate the Havana Dandy, and 'Sweet C' McMillan. This Bloody Mary is the journey of an obsession. It started innocently enough. But as it proceeds, the arc lights begin to shift, until even the shadows in the minds of those who inhabit and surround the ring seem caught in their glare.

Many books have discussed boxing in the ancient world, but this is the first to describe how boxing was reborn in the modern world. Modern boxing began in the Middle Ages in England as a criminal activity. It then became a sport supported by the kings and aristocracy. Later it was again outlawed and only in the 20th century has it become a sport popular around the world. This book describes how modern boxing began in England as an outgrowth of the native English sense of fair play. It demonstrates that boxing was the common man's alternative to the sword duel of honour, and argues that boxing and fair play helped Englishmen avoid the revolutions common to France, Italy and Germany during the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries. English enthusiasm for boxing largely drove out the pistol and sword duels from English society. And although boxing remains a brutal sport, it has made England one of the safest countries in the world. It also examines how the rituals of boxing developed: the meaning of the parade to the ring; the meaning of the ring itself; why only two men fight at one time; why the fighters shake hands before each fight; why a boxing match is called a prizefight; and why a knock-down does not end the bout. Its sources include material from medieval manuscripts, and its notes and bibliography are extensive.

For six decades the World Colored Heavyweight Championship was a useful tool of racial oppression--the existence of the title far more important to the white public than its succession of champions. It took some extraordinary individuals, most notably Jack Johnson, to challenge "the color line" in the ring, although the title and the black fighters who contended for it continued until the reign of Joe Louis a generation later. This history traces the advent and demise of the Championship, the stories of the 28 professional athletes who won it, and the demarcation of the color line both in and out of the ring.

THE INSTANT SUNDAY TIMES TOP TEN BESTSELLER 'Tony is a champion who knows the hardest battle is always with yourself. Everyone who reads this book will find a change to make in their own life ' ANT MIDDLETON **THE PULL-NO-PUNCHES GUIDE TO LIFE** "When your job is to stand in front of a very big man who wants to knock you unconscious, you learn what's important in life. In the ring there's nowhere to hide. I was never the biggest or the strongest but I made the most of what I had - I had heart and I had grit and I always put time into the mental game. Now I want to take readers into the ring and help them understand that even though it's an extreme environment and somewhere they're unlikely to ever be, there's plenty they can learn there" Over 12 rounds (chapters), former world champion boxer Tony Bellew will take the reader inside the world of elite boxing to reveal what we can all learn about performance. From what the boxing gym can teach us all about being honest about our strengths and weaknesses to how to hit the canvas and get back up again, this is the closest thing to having a world champion boxer in your corner.

Benny Leonard was arguably the greatest lightweight champion of all time. With superb boxing skills and potent punching power, he fought over 200 times and suffered just five defeats. He spent his boyhood in a crime-ridden ghetto in Manhattan's Lower East Side, and was the greatest of a long line of Jewish boxers to emerge from the slums. Leonard was still only 19 when he knocked out Freddie Welsh to become world lightweight king in 1917. He defended the title eight times and retired as undefeated champion in 1925, to please the only woman he loved, his mother. But the 1929 Wall Street Crash wiped out his fortune and he was forced to make a comeback at 35. Leonard fought the best of his era: Johnny Dundee, Johnny Kilbane, Rocky Kansas, Jack Britton, Ted Kid Lewis and Lew Tendler among them. Apart from being a sublime boxer, Benny was a first-class showman who helped to put boxing on a higher plane. He died as he lived - in the ring - while refereeing a fight at age 51. This is the definitive account of his remarkable life and career.

Journeymen tells a story that is often purposely ignored - that of the modern-day boxers who lose for a living. Far from huge purses and pay-per-view hype, the book lays bare the reality of the boxing business and the way it works in small-hall venues countrywide. October 2013 saw the 100th and final fight in the career of East London's Johnny Greaves, remarkable in that he won only four contests. He took fights at short notice, facing young prospects with the implicit understanding that he was not there to win. Journeymen features in-depth interviews with Greaves and other men who have similarly served the fight game, including Kristian Laight (180 defeats), Jason Nesbitt (178) and Daniel Thorpe (113). Though sometimes dark, their tales reveal humour, wisdom and sporting pride: the journeymen eschew glamour, make the best of what they have and face the world with a smile and a wink.

Boxing is a traditional sport in many ways, characterized by continuities in the form of practices and regulations and heavy with legends and heroes reflecting its traditional/historical values. Associations with class, hegemonic masculinity and racialized inclusions/exclusions, however, sit alongside developments such as women's boxing and involvement in Mixed Martial Arts. This book will be the first to use boxing as a vehicle for exploring social, cultural and political change in a global context. It will consider to what degree and in what ways boxing reflects social transformations, and whether and how it contributes to those transformations. In exploring the relationship it will provide new ways of thinking critically about the everyday.

The story of the relationship between the most devastating heavyweight boxer in history and the mentor who made him. When legendary boxing trainer Cus D'Amato saw thirteen-year-old Mike Tyson spar in the ring, he proclaimed 'That's the heavyweight champion of the world'. D'Amato played a huge role in Tyson's formative years, legally adopting him at age sixteen, and shaping him both physically and mentally after years of living in poverty. He would train the young boxer for several years, dying just months before Tyson became the youngest heavyweight champion in history. In Iron Ambition, Tyson shares the life lessons that D'Amato passed down to him and reflects on how the trainer's words of wisdom continue to resonate with him outside the ring. The book also chronicles Cus's courageous fight against the mobsters who controlled boxing, revealing more than we've ever know about this singular cultural figure.

The survivor of a difficult childhood and youth, Rubin Carter rose to become a top contender for the middleweight boxing crown. But his career crashed to a halt on May 26, 1967, when he and another man were found guilty of the murder of three white people in a New Jersey bar. While in prison, Carter chronicled the events that led him from the ring to three consecutive life sentences and 10 years in solitary confinement. His story was a cry for help to the public, an attempt to set the record straight and force a new trial. Bob Dylan wrote a classic anthem for Carter's struggle; and Joan Baez, Muhammad Ali, Roberta Flack, and thousands more took up the cause as well. Originally published in 1974, this account is an eye-opening examination of growing up black in America, problems in the United States prison system, and Carter's own battles.

"The Duke is a harrowing tragedy of Shakespearean proportions, and a gripping read. Don't miss it."-T. J. English, New York Times bestselling author Havana Nocturne An American Gothic... In the early 1990s, Tommy Morrison, a young roughneck from Jay, Oklahoma, burst onto the boxing scene to become one of the most controversial fighters of his era. Handsome, eloquent, and dynamic, Morrison parlayed destructive knockout power and a homespun personality into celebrity status throughout middle America, where boxing rarely prospered. But it was his starring role in Rocky V alongside Sylvester Stallone that propelled him to stardom-and ultimately led to his tragic downfall. His brush with Hollywood fame triggered a limitless appetite for parties, liquor, and sex. When Morrison was shockingly diagnosed with HIV in 1996, his life imploded, and his subsequent descent into drugs, prison, bigamy, and conspiracy theories made Morrison notorious long after his glory days had ended. In The Duke, Carlos Acevedo chronicles Morrison's tumultuous life from his days as a teenaged Toughman contestant, to his victory over George Foreman, to his struggles with HIV and depression, to his death at forty-four, when his delusions finally overtook him. Morrison himself was a divisive figure but critics and readers are unanimous about Acevedo's The Duke. "This is a big American saga writ large, just the sort of tortured tale Carlos Acevedo tells so well."-Don Stradley, author of The War: Hagler-Hearns and Three Rounds for the Ages "I love how Carlos Acevedo writes. He's detached and immersive, observant and detailed, unsparing and fair. He brings to life what I love-and what I don't love-about boxing. That's clear in The Duke, which examines not just Tommy Morrison, but Morrison's place in boxing, celebrity culture, and the greater sports consciousness. It's the perfect marriage of writer and subject, written sharply, broadly and expertly-and hard to put down."-Greg Bishop senior writer, Sports Illustrated

On 24 November 2012, four-time World Champion boxer Ricky Hatton dropped to his knees, felled by a sickening punch to the body in his first comeback fight in almost three years. Gasping for breath, down and out, it was then that something extraordinary happened: 20,000 fans began to sing his name. Ricky Hatton: War and Peace is the story of one of British boxing's true icons. From a Manchester council estate to the bright lights of Las Vegas, Ricky Hatton experienced incredible highs in his career, including one of the greatest ever wins by a British boxer, over the IBF Light Welterweight champion Kostya Tszyu. But heavy defeats to two legends of the ring, Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao, brought him quickly down to earth to face a new set of battles against depression, drink and drugs. Written with his trademark honesty and wit, this is the inspiring story of a charismatic, funny, straight-talking fighter who boxing fans have always taken to their hearts; a man who has survived a lifetime of wars both in and out of the ring, and who only now is finding something close to peace.

While humans have used their hands to engage in combat since the dawn of man, boxing originated in Ancient Greece as an Olympic event. It is one of the most popular, controversial and misunderstood sports in the world. For its advocates, it is a heroic expression of unfettered individualism. For its critics, it is a depraved and ruthless physical and commercial exploitation of mostly poor young men. This Companion offers engaging and informative essays about the social impact and historical importance of the sport of boxing. It includes a comprehensive chronology of the sport, listing all the important events and personalities. Essays examine topics such as women in boxing, boxing and the rise of television, boxing in Africa, boxing and literature, and boxing and Hollywood films. A unique book for scholars and fans alike, this Companion explores the sport from its inception in Ancient Greece to the death of its most celebrated figure, Muhammad Ali.

The Joshua Files traces the story of Britain's latest heavyweight hero from the building site to the top of the boxing world and beyond. Anthony Joshua's fight with Wladimir Klitschko, in front of 90,000 fans at Wembley Stadium, transformed the fighter not only into a national hero but also a global star. Having worked as a boxing journalist for almost 30 years for Boxing News, Boxing Monthly and Sky Sports, Matt Bozeat was perfectly placed to follow Joshua from a ringside seat from the very start of his professional career. Joshua turned pro soon after winning gold at the London Olympics in 2012, and has since surpassed all expectations, going on to dominate the division with a 100 per cent KO record. The Joshua Files tells exactly how he fought his way to the top, through revealing and insightful interviews with the fighter himself, as well as with the boxing experts, trainers, sparring partners and opponents who have the closest insider knowledge of Anthony's incredible rise.

Toft adeptly shows this to be the legacy Ron Lyle left behind, one that stands shoulder-to-shoulder with a boxing legacy that is nothing short of remarkable.--Rafael Garcia, The Fight City [Ron Lyle's] life was a remarkable one and the story of it worth re-telling, which makes the book's new edition thoroughly welcome. Off The Ropes is absolutely recommended reading.--Gary Lucken, Boxing Monthly Nobody ever hit me that hard. No question. I'll remember that punch on my deathbed. A great puncher, a great guy.--Earnie Shavers In a life as tough as his battles in the ring, Ron Lyle had already served hard time for second-degree murder before he started his amateur boxing career at the age of twenty-nine. After he turned pro, fans knew him as the man who had Muhammad Ali beat on the scorecards for ten rounds in a fight for the heavyweight title; as the man who fought George Foreman in a legendary brawl with four knockdowns that nearly saw Foreman knocked cold; and as the man who was arrested for murder a second time. Off the Ropes: The Ron Lyle Story is not your typical boxing biography, exploring not only the greatest era of heavyweights in boxing history, but also telling an equally compelling personal tale. Ron Lyle grew up in the Denver projects, one of nineteen children in a tight-knit, religious family. At twenty, he was convicted for a disputed gang killing and served seven and a half years at the Colorado State Penitentiary at Cañon City, where at one point he was nearly shanked to death, and where he learned to box before he was paroled in 1969. After a meteoric amateur career, he turned pro in 1971, and over the next six years established an outstanding professional record, which, in addition to the near misses against Ali and Foreman, included a brutal knockout win over one of the era's most feared fighters, big-punching Earnie Shavers. Then, in 1978, Lyle was indicted for murder a second time and, even though he was acquitted, his career was effectively over. The years that followed were filled with struggle, a captivating love story, and eventual redemption. Today, a youth center in Denver that he ran still bears his name. Off the Ropes: The Ron Lyle Story is the poignant, uplifting biography of a singular man.

Inside Madison Square Garden, the City Ring was the altar of pugilism from 1925 until 2007. Hosting countless championship fights, historic main events and memorable undercards, it was center stage of boxing history. The ring now rests at the International Boxing Hall of Fame in Canastota, New York-its 132 assembled pieces memorializing a key facet of 20th century American life. While many books have been written about great fistic contests that took place at Madison Square Garden, this is the first to focus on its Holy Grail.