That's Good Writing

I like boxing. It just seems a bit more sophisticated (as sophisticated as two guys punching each other in the face can be) than the meathead MMA culture. Icing on the cake is coverage of boxing by guys that really understand boxing and can tell the good from the bad. Like this fight card recap by Hamilton Nolan titled The Pleasures of Watching Large Men Punch Each Other Very Hard. Some choice excerpts...

By the third round Byfield was trying to disappear behind his own left shoulder. It didn't work. Concepcion just stood in front of him, with his guard high, waited for him to stop throwing his flashy, useless jabs, and then hit him in the head with the left, or the right, whichever he chose in the moment. Boxing isn't tricky unless you make it tricky.

Or this...

Medina did not lack skill or aggression or guts or the perfect flattened boxer's nose, but he tended to reach back to throw his punches, like you would in a bar fight, whereas Rosado fired his right hand off his shoulder, in a direct line, which always reaches its target a little quicker than a punch with a whistling curve will. The advantage started out as just a millisecond and grew larger as the fighters tired and the arc on Medina's punches grew wider, and in the third a straight right from Rosado hit Medina while he was punching and knocked him down onto one knee, proving the point. If anyone ever tells you that you can't learn geometry from boxing, punch them right in the face.

Or this...

Boxing is not a free arena in which tough guys pound the rest of us into the ground. Boxing is a tool for the rest of us to learn how to knock the tough guys out.

That second quote with the line about geometry is classic stuff. I wish more sportswriters were as informed and knowledgeable about their subject matter as Nolan.