"This is powerful writing. Enjoy it."-Thomas Hauser, Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award nominee

"Carlos Acevedo is the most original, perceptive, and best new writer in boxing. Sporting Blood is a vivid and gripping collection."-Donald McRae, writer for The Guardian and author of Dark Trade: Lost in Boxing

"...this book may cement [Acevedo's] status as one of today's best boxing journalists."-Kirkus Reviews

Boxing's literary tradition is perhaps the richest in sports. From A. J. Liebling to Donald McRae, the sweet science has consistently inspired great sportswriting. The work of Carlos Acevedo stands firmly in that honored tradition.

The essays that make up Sporting Blood include Acevedo's moving meditation on Muhammad Ali; his penetrating look at Ali's fearsome rival, the enigmatic heavyweight Charles "Sonny" Liston; and his profile of Mike Tyson, which brilliantly conjures the Boy King's late 1980s reign of terror. Acevedo offers many other unforgettable tales from boxing's dark side, featuring Jack Johnson, Joe Frazier, Roberto Duran, Aaron Pryor, Johnny Tapia, Evander Holyfield, Jake LaMotta, and more.

Sporting Blood is ultimately a poetic throwback, an uncanny book that evokes journalism's golden age and places Acevedo not only among the best sportswriters of this generation, but of any other as well.


Contents

Foreword: Thomas Hauser

1: A Ghost Orbiting Forever: Muhammad Ali 1942-2016

2: Fugitive Days: Jack Johnson in Exile

3: The Last Goodbye: Remembering the Rivalry Between Roberto Duran and Esteban De Jesus

4: Right on for the Darkness: On Aaron Pryor 1955-2016

5: The Catastrophist: The Troubled World of Don Jordan

6: Dark Sun: Remembering Joe Frazier

7: Strange Days: The Johnny Saxton Story

8: The Hurting Kind: Wilfredo Gomez vs. Lupe Pintor

9: Yesterday Will Make You Cry: The Short, Tragic Career of Davey Moore

10: Under Saturn: Johnny Tapia 1967-2012

11: Total Everything Now: Mike Tyson, 1988

12: The Windfall Factor: The Night Bert Cooper Almost Beat Evander Holyfield for the Heavyweight Title

13: Red Arrow: The Mysterious Death of Sonny Liston

14: The Dark Corner: The Furious Life of Jake LaMotta

15: A Young Old Man: The Tragic Life of Ad Wolgast

16: The Lightning Within: Tony Ayala, Jr.

17: No Exit: Eddie Machen

18: One Long Season in Hell: On Michael Dokes

19: Lightning Express: The Quick Rise and Even Quicker Fall of Al Singer

20: Live Forward, Learned Backward: Mike Quarry and the "Quarry Curse"

21: Leftover Life to Kill

Foreword by: Thomas Hauser