Opening Bell

To be sure, when it comes to the Squared Circle, the Sweet Science, the Noble Art, or whatever you wish to call it, I'm rather opinionated when it comes to the world of boxing. It is, in its basic form, the most pure of all sports. No, not when it comes to the promoters or the so-called sanctioning bodies but in terms of the competition itself. There are no teammates to blame, no finger pointing to be done that deflects responsibility and accountability onto someone else, or even equipment or instrument failure to blame. As a fighter, when you step into the ring it's all about you, and it's all on you. No other sport can make such a claim.

For me, anyone who knows me knows that my involvement with sports runs deep, as a participant, as a fan, as a journalist, and any number of other aptly named roles. I grew up as an Atlanta Braves fan, one of the few members on the bandwagon in the mid-to-late 1980s when everyone who actually went to a game had their own usher. These weren't division winning teams. These were teams of Dale Murphy, Bob Horner, and Ken Oberkfell. Bobby Cox? Hardly. Try Chuck Tanner and Russ Nixon. When the glory days came in 1991, I was right there enjoying it. I always watched the Lakers because of the connection with WVU by way of Jerry West. I grew up watching the Showtime Lakers of the 1980s, with Magic, Worthy, Kareem, Byron Scott and the whole crew. Now I barely watch the NBA, but when I do I watch the Lakers. There's college basketball when WVU plays, and for the entire tournament of course, and I've watched tennis since I was little as well. I fell in love with Wimbledon during every summer when school was out and I had my afternoons free to watch McEnroe, Connors, Lendl, Graf, Evert, and the rest, and that gave way to my favorite tournament, the U.S. Open. Beginning with UFC 6, a card with two of the fastest knockouts in the history of the sport (Don Frye vs. Hector Ramirez and Gary Goodridge vs. Paul Herrera), my interest in mixed martial arts started to grow, and continues to this day. Select MMA news and commentary will appear here from time to time.

The two sports that rank above all others are college football and boxing. My life as a West Virginia Mountaineer is one filled with joy and heartbreak, pain and pleasure, success and failure. The 2009 season will be my 22nd full season and 23rd season overall. I started in 1987. I was all of five years old. The stories I've accumulated and experiences I've had over the years are being documented in my short story collection entitled, "Life as a Diehard". I've missed five home games since I started going in October 1987. When West Virginia takes on Pitt on Black Friday, November 27, that will be college football game #159 for me. Being a Mountaineer isn't something I like, it's part of who I am.

The same can be said of boxing.

I can remember starting to get into boxing around the same time that I began going to Mountaineer football games. My dad watched boxing, had HBO, but was hardly a diehard fan. In fact, the Hagler-Leonard decision of 1987 really turned him against the sport for quite a while. But even during this time of displeasure, there were new sources of curiosity that kept him around. One was a short, powerful heavyweight force that was dominating the division with a fury that had not been seen since the reign of Joe Frazier. That force's name was Mike Tyson. In other news, I heard a story about a heavyweight that my father had watched more than a decade before. He told me that this man had stopped boxing and now he was trying to come back and fight again. It seemed like a joke. He was fat and bald. He was obviously overweight and smiled entirely too much for a fighter. He also possessed the blunt force power to knock his opponent's head off. That man's name was George Foreman. After watching Tyson and Foreman, I was hooked on boxing by the time I was 7 years old. I would watch every fight I could find on the airwaves. USA Tuesday Night Fights (or whichever night they were televising on that month), ESPN Top Rank Boxing, HBO World Championship Boxing, I watched it all. I was a sponge for it, just like football.

I remember watching Tyson destroy Spinks in 91 seconds. I remember watching the Ray Leonard-Thomas Hearns rematch in 1989 before I was scoring fights, and wondering why they said the fight was even when it was pretty obvious that Hearns had beaten Leonard. I didn't understand why such a decision was rendered. All these years later, I still don't. As my knowledge and understanding and interest grew, boxing became more and more important. In early 1990, I knew that two big fights were happening that could make the two fighters that brought me to the sport meet in the ring. In January, I watched Foreman hammer Gerry Cooney. But in February, I watched that dream fight fade away when a 42-1 underdog named Buster Douglas knocked out Mike Tyson and shocked the world. What drama.

The years have passed and boxing remains in its rightful place in my life. I write for FightHype, and will shamelessly link to them as much as possible. I wrote for the defunct Boxing.com when I was a teenager in the late 1990s, and I still have the jacket hanging in my closet. I'm working with an aspiring boxer. I do a little of everything. But above all, I watch (and score) every fight on every network. My DVD collection of boxing is getting ridiculous, spanning from the start of the 20th century to the latest broadcast from last weekend. There's just nothing else like it.

This will be a place full of opinion, news, commentary, shameless venting, historical analysis and perspective, and all points in between. I'm sure the guys from the FightHype community will stop by from time to time and any other fight fans who may stop in should seriously consider joining the community as well. It's... interesting. It may not be the biggest forum but it could very well be the most knowledgeable (with the exception of the Mayweather Fan Club that just seems to be completely out of touch with reality). Here's hoping it's a nice experience, and place for discussion, for every reader that visits.

The opening bell has rung.