Fighting techniques and strategies from World Champion and Hall of Fame Boxer, Jack Dempsey.Jack Dempsey, one of the greatest and most popular boxers of all time, reveals the techniques behind his unparalleled success in the ring. Straightforward and with detailed illustrations, Championship Fighting instructs the reader in the theory, training, and application of powerful punching, aggressive defense, proper stance, feinting, and footwork. The boxing methods Dempsey reveals will prove useful to both amateurs and professionals or anyone interested in teaching themselves how to box or practice martial arts.“I was confident that I could take the rawest beginner, or even an experienced fighter, and teach him exactly what self-defense was all about.” —Jack Dempsey

Former World Heavyweight champion Smokin' Joe Frazier and William Dettloff, senior writer for The Ring magazine, present a complete guide to the fight game – from the history of the sport to how to throw a crushing uppercut and take a punch without flinching.Drawing from the experiences of one of the masters of the sport, Box Like the Pros is a must–have for anyone pursuing boxing as a hobby or who is interested in training to become a professional boxer. Frazier, with longtime boxing writer William Dettloff, presents a complete introduction to the sport, including the game's history, rules of the ring, how fights are scored, how to spar, the basics of defence and offence, the fighter's workout, a directory of boxing gyms, and much more. Box Like the Pros is an instruction manual, a historical reference tool and an insider's guide to the world's most controversial sport.

Former boxing legend Muhammad Ali, one of the best-known and best-loved celebrities and an international goodwill ambassador, offers inspiration and hope as he describes the spiritual philosophy that sustains him.“During my boxing career, you did not see the real Muhammad Ali. You just saw a little boxing. You saw only a part of me. After I retired from boxing my true work began. I have embarked on a journey of love.”So Muhammad Ali begins this spiritual memoir, his description of the values that have shaped and sustained him and that continue to guide his life. In The Soul of a Butterfly the great champion takes readers on a spiritual journey through the seasons of life, from childhood to the present, and shares the beliefs that have served him well.Ali reflects on his faith in God and the strength it gave him during his greatest challenges. He describes how his study of true Islam has helped him accept the changes in his life and has brought him to a greater awareness of life’s true purpose. As a United Nations Messenger of Peace, he has traveled widely, and he describes his 2002 mission to Afghanistan to heighten public awareness of that country’s desperate situation, as well as his more recent meeting with the Dalai Lama.Ali’s reflections on topics ranging from moral courage to belief in God to respect for those who differ from us will inspire and enlighten all who read them. Written with the assistance of his daughter Hana, The Soul of a Butterfly is a compassionate and heartfelt book that will provide comfort for our troubled times.

"McRae brings to the highly charged, obsessive world of professional boxing a novelist's eye and ear for revealing detail and convincingly recalled dialogue. This is an impassioned book."—Joyce Carol Oates, Los Angeles TimesDark Trade: Lost in Boxing, by Donald McRae, award-winning author of twelve non-fiction books and staff writer for The Guardian, is widely considered of one of the best boxing books all time.This is a new edition, released in the United States for the first time, that includes a new chapter by the author, plus a stunning cover that features a painting of boxer James Toney by noted boxing artist Amanda Kelley.There is no other sport like boxing. Over twenty years ago, Donald McRae set out across the United States and his adopted home, Britain, to find deeper meaning in the brutal trade that had transfixed him since he was a young man. The result is a stunning chronicle that captures not only McRae's compelling personal journey through the world of professional prizefighting, but also the stories of some of its biggest names in boxing—James Toney, Mike Tyson, Evander Holyfield, Oscar De La Hoya, Naseem Hamed, Roy Jones, Jr., and others.Singular in his ability to uncover the emotional forces that drive men to get into the ring, McRae brilliantly exposes the hopes and fears and obsessions of these legendary fighters, while revealing some of his own along the way. What he shares with them most, he comes to realize, is that he is hopelessly, and willingly, lost in boxing.Table of ContentsIntroduction1 The Baddest Man2 The Force3 This Is Boxing, Baby4 Oscar’s Night5 The King and the Prince6 Guns and Fathers7 Looking on Darkness8 Death and the Man9 The Cinderella Men10 The Soldier Boy11 Nothing Is Forever12 The Beacon13 The Bite14 Fading Away15 Still Lost in BoxingAcknowledgments

Their names are legendary: Sugar Ray Leonard, Marvelous Marvin Hagler, Thomas Hit Man Hearns, and Roberto Duran. They were exceptional boxers with unique combinations of power and speed. In another era, with few rivals of equal caliber, each might have held championship belts for years on end. But as it was, they matured together in the 1980s and fought each other as middleweights. With unforgettable courage and skill, they ruled the ring and ushered in the last Golden Age of boxing. George Kimball takes an authoritative look at the rivalries that fueled this great era in sports history. Veteran sports journalist Kimball reported on every one of the Four Kings' nine internecine fights. Here his eye-witness coverage is enhanced by recent interviews with each of the boxers and other seasoned analysts. The result is a fast-paced, blow-by-blow account of four extraordinary adversaries and a remarkable boxing epoch.

In this vivid biography Geoffrey C. Ward brings back to life the most celebrated — and the most reviled — African American of his age.Jack Johnson battled his way out of obscurity and poverty in the Jim Crow South to win the title of heavyweight champion of the world. At a time when whites ran everything in America, he took orders from no one and resolved to live as if color did not exist. While most blacks struggled simply to exist, he reveled in his riches and his fame, sleeping with whomever he pleased, to the consternation and anger of much of white America. Because he did so the federal government set out to destroy him, and he was forced to endure prison and seven years of exile. This definitive biography portrays Jack Johnson as he really was--a battler against the bigotry of his era and the embodiment of American individualism.

A riveting tale of perseverance in the face of hardship, Cinderella Man is the chronicle of the boxer James J. Braddock, whose exceptional story of achievement against all odds was the subject of a major motion picture. Braddock, dubbed the Cinderella Man, staged the greatest comeback in fighting history, rising in the span of twelve months from the relief rolls to a face-off against the heavyweight champion, Max Baer. Against the gritty backdrop of Depression-era New York, Schaap paints a vivid picture of the fight world in its golden age, evoking a time when boxing resonated with a country trying desperately to get back on its feet.