Don Colgan

13 Through 15: A Look at The Championship Rounds

For generations, boxing has had to defend itself, often against shallow, emotionally charged assaults based on a foundation of factual inaccuracy and rage. The argument has been maintained that boxing is brutal and inherently violent with a history s...

Remembering The Legend Himself, Ingemar Johansson

By Don Colgan - I was at my kitchen table listening to some sports radio on Saturday morning when I heard the news that Ingemar Johansson had died. I wasn’t entirely surprised. Ingemar has been afflicted with Alzheimer’s disease for nearly a decade,...

Bouts That Never Were: Duran vs. Ayala, Jr

By Don Colgan - There were some boxing matches we would have loved to have seen happen, but, for various reasons, over the course of history, they never came to pass. In the first of a series of such mythical matches, we will examine what certainly...

“White Boy” a Throwback to Holmes-Cooney

By Don Colgan - 26-years have passed, yet it really seems like yesterday. The Larry Holmes-Gerry Cooney WBC Heavyweight Championship Bout in June, 1982, was a collision between the dominant Holmes at the peak of his skills and Gentleman Gerry, a dev...

Wladimir Klitschko Plans To Make a Statement

By Don Colgan - If everything goes as expected, Wladimir Klitschko will knock out Sultan Ibragimov on February 23rd at Madison Square Garden. He should halt the Russian in eight-rounds or less and achieve a dominant, convincing and utterly one-sided...

Heavyweight Unification: Boxing's Cornerstone

By Don Colgan - By any measure, the succession of high profile championship bouts over the past nine months, beginning with Mayweather-De La Hoya through Mayweather’s overpowering 10th round stoppage of Ricky Hatton last December, there is no questio...

Miguel Cotto - Mayweather’s “Manos De Piedra?”

By Don Colgan - Recently I viewed an ESPN boxing special on Burt Randolph Sugar’s selections for the top ten Heavyweight Champions of all time. The panel chosen to discuss the selections was composed of Sugar, Teddy Atlas, Larry Holmes and ESPN host...

The Six Greatest Punches In Ring History

By Don Colgan - There have been many lengthy debates in this country about what constitutes the greatest thrill producer in all of sports. Many say the game tying or winning home run, “Going Yard”, triggers the greatest surge in adrenalin. The desp...

Still Great Hopkins Could Derail Joe Calzaghe

He is a greater fighter at age 42, than the immortal Sugar Ray Robinson or the ancient ‘Old Mongoose, Archie Moore, when they reached their early forties in their respective eras. Having been defeated a mere four times in 18 years, with a superlativ...

Sugar Shane Worthy of His Great Moniker

By Don Colgan - The “Sugar Ray” moniker is very sacrilegious in boxing. Once, in a welterweight non-title tiff in the late 1940’s, Sugar Ray Robinson’s opponent had the audacity to call himself Sugar and was introduced accordingly. After the introd...

Mayweather-Hatton Tops Stellar Boxing Year

By Don Colgan - The tiring and unsubstantiated argument that boxing is on it’s deathbed, or has expired for that matter, is being conclusively laid to rest by the explosion of high profile bouts on the current docket for the remainder of 2007 and ear...

Johnson vs. Langford: The Bout That Never Was

By Don Colgan - This journey to a boxing epic features Jack Johnson defending his Heavyweight Championship against an old adversary during the era, Sam Langford. The rematch was rumored, discussed and even agreed to over a drink at a bar between John...

The 1960’s: 5 Classics in a Decade of Excellence

By Don Colgan - When the salad days of boxing are discussed, whether is be on a radio talk show or over a beer at the corner bar, the decade of the 1960’s is quickly raised in conversation. The meteoric rise of Muhammad Ali, the Patterson-Johansson t...

Championship Rounds Were Key For Oscar

By Don Colgan - History is whispering to us once again. The parallels are being drawn, not uncommon in the wake of a great championship bout. De La Hoya –Mayweather was not to be confused with Zale-Graziano or Hagler-Hearns. Yet the electricity tha...

Tarver's 04 KO of Jones Hinted Greatness

by Don Colgan - When Sugar Ray Robinson won the 1940 Golden Gloves Lightweight Championship, Bill Gallo, legendary cartoonist for the New York Daily News, who watched and followed Robinson since his Simon pure days, observed “I knew I was watching gr...