Greatest Boxing Stories Ever Told: Thirty-Six Incredible Tales From The Ring, First Edition: Thirty-Six Incredible Tales From The Ring

by Jeff Silverman

A diverse collection, complete with all the drama and excitement of a championship bout.

Genres: Sports

368 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 2002

Reviews

[Domanic Deloya · Rating 4 out of 5]

The story’s that get told by Jeff Silverman is brought towards us by the unique way of adding other sources to the reader. He adds old journalism’s , excerpts and other works of storytelling to include as much details towards the audience. This way of the story telling makes the reader feel as if they were in the same time period learning as if it were to just happen. As a avid boxer and enthusiast of the sport it wad a nice touch to see other fighters that don’t get talked about like Jack Dempsey , Joe lewis and Tom Molineaux the fighters that get over shadowed by the big names having the recognition they deserve.

[Carlos Verde · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thoroughly enjoyed the latter half of the book. Reading about Floyd Patterson, the work of A.J. Liebling and some great fiction towards the end made the interminable slog of Ancient Greek and 19th-century work in the first half worth it.

Understand why that first half was there, but it was a grind of a book out of the gate.

Nonetheless, 5/5 author did what he set out to do and his 20th-century selections were superlative!

[Jordan Wiley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loved every story featured in this book. Every one was unique and I was able to take something from all stories. Excellent writing and learned so much from fighters I had never heard of!

[Matt · Rating 4 out of 5]

This collection has a ton of good material that will give you a sample of the various sources of high quality boxing writing available if you're interested. The time periods involved go all the way back to the early 1800s, not counting the surprisingly awesome passage by Homer from The Iliad. Probably the most heavily-featured period is from around the 1930s-1960s. Other than that Homer piece, I also especially enjoyed the passages by Daniel Mendoza, Heywood Broun, John Lardner, and W.C. Heinz. If you're looking to get into boxing writing, or if you're an MMA fan looking for something to read to make up for the relative lack of MMA writing, this is definitely a good place to start. You do have the inherent weakness of the anthology where you end up finding a few things you really like that are over before you know it, but with the internet you can take the names of the authors and easily gain access to more of the stuff you like best. If you want a sample of the type of quality piece contained in this collection, look up "Sport for Art's Sake" by Heywood Broun. You can find it on Google Books, it's my favorite passage from the entire package.

[Brett Ortler · Rating 3 out of 5]

A fairly misleading title, given that the book includes a number of short-stories about boxing, bits from a screenplay, and so on.

I was hoping for journalistic accounts of fights; while the book does contain several very good such accounts ("The Boxer and the Blonde" is a great piece; same for James Baldwin's), there are more out there that would have been interesting to include.

Still, not a bad round-up of boxing writers to explore.

[Thomas · Rating 5 out of 5]

An amazing collection of tales, would recommend to everybody, boxing & non-boxing fan alike, truly describes the hardships around such a tough sport