
one of Marciano’s assaults on Moore
as described by Liebling. I’m almost as stunned by all the spectators (the amount of glasses in the crowd, the rapt attention of all the faces, the one woman half turning away as if to say something to her companion) as I am with the moment captured within the ropes. (via TIME-LIFE)

Mikihito Yamagami after winning the 2008 Shooto Rookie Tournament at 115lb. Yamagami won an award for Fighting Spirit.
If you ever wanted to know what Victory looks like…
yeah. so. that’s miguel torres and robert drysdale. in my gym last tuesday. obviously i did not work out anywhere near them. but still. they were in my gym last tuesday. there are no words.
Yo Shannon, Why on Earth didn’t you work out with them?
Also, you should enable messaging so that I’m not all up in everyone’s grill when I want to bust your balls for NOT WORKING OUT WITH MIGUEL TORRES!
(via Miguel Torres’ Twitter)
That is some SKULL showing.
“Torres had what looked like an axe-wound on his forehead” —Leland Roling
He told me that he was going to have to face his mortality twice in life: when he’s dying, and when he’s told he’s too old to ever do it again as an athlete. It struck me because while some athletes have that level of self-awareness during a time of sadness, change and in some cases desperation, few have the level of honesty needed to acknowledge that in one way, he is dying right before our eyes.
— Mike Chiappetta, Saying Goodbye and Thank You to One of MMA’s Early Kings, Jens Pulver — MMA Fighting
“This is how I’ll remember Jens Pulver — as a champion.” —Kid Nate
Jon Bones Jones: The Second Coming of Jesus Christ. HA!
— Brandon Vera (I am really, really looking forward to this fight!)
Why this extra violence in such a violent time? Is it choreographed like a bullfight; is it like a fine tragedy which one goes to although one’s own life is tangled enough? Of course it isn’t these things at all … Ten years ago, when we did not live alongside such an ocean of violence, some of us went to the fights perhaps as one keeps an aquarium. We realized most of the world was under water, but we were high and dry with Eisenhower, and knowing that life is salt and life is action, life is tears and life is water, we kept a fish tank to represent the four fifths of the world that breathed with gills.
But nowadays we’re flooded and swimming for dear life, no matter where we happen to live. That we nevertheless prefer our sports violent - the irreducible conciseness of boxing - is evidence of a relation to violence, a need and a curiosity, so basic that it cannot be sated. Though we do tire of the delirium in the streets, we are only tiring of the disorder. Make it concise, put ropes or white lines around it, and we will go, we will go , just as people on vacation go down to the roaring sea.
1) There are a lot of reasons that explain boxing’s popularity in the 1970s, but this is a particularly well written one.
2) This idea also hints toward why Rocky was such a great movie for its time and also why its violent climax may have been slightly more apt than Taxi Driver’s for 1976. (and a reason, I think, it deserved to beat Taxi Driver for Best Picture*… and yes, this is probably the only Oscars related comment I’ll make all week)
*If you’re one of those ridiculous people so pretentious that you fail at even being pretentious and don’t think Rocky was a great film, you need to go back and watch it again… and if you still think it’s not good then you need to not know me
(via fighting)
By Daniel Herbertson
I like the veins near her left wrist. And of course, the full mount is such a spectacularly dominant position.