Two Dice Boxing

Floyd Mayweather, Jr. proved why he is so special last Saturday, in sending Shane Mosley packing with a performance for the ages. Now, more than ever, it is time for he and Manny Pacquiao to fight. Please, don't make me beg.

Us boxing fans are pretty darn lucky nowadays. Old timers may shout about boxing not being the same, the politics getting in the way and fighters ducking each other more than they duck oncoming punches, but at this juncture in history we're also very fortunate. Two of the greatest fighters ever to lace them up. Fighting in the same era. At roughly the same age. Putting in serious work, at their absolute peak.

Almost overlooked by the boxing community at large, this Saturday's battle between WBC, WBO and Ring Magazine middleweight champion Kelly Pavlik and Sergio Martinez has my seal of approval as an absolute barnstormer...or your money back

After the annual cold winter drought, boxing is finally beginning to heat back up in the new year and this month of April is a busy one. With all the world championship fights taking place, one in particular jumps out at me when I look at the schedule, this Saturday's fight between Kelly Pavlik and Sergio Martinez for the lineal middleweight championship.

The bout contains an element of intrigue on the part of both men. Fighters almost always have something to prove for one reason or another, but that motivation certainly carries considerable weight in this instance.

Last weekend's meeting between the future Hall of Fame fighters, Roy Jones, Jr. and Bernard Hopkins, amounted to nothing more than a foul-filled scrap between two men with nothing to prove and, evidently, little left to offer the sport. Does the future hold anything for either man after such a farce, and do they deserve any more chances?

Has any fight card ever been as mistakenly billed as last week's 'The Event', the so-called showdown between Roy Jones, Jr. and Bernard Hopkins? Probably not. I like to think of most fighter's careers as allegories of their lives in the form of competing in the most difficult sporting vocation. Facing various ups and downs, personal discoveries, achieving goals when facing all kinds of opponents at different levels, a boxer's final few fights almost always become a sad footnote at the end of such an exacting personal journey.

“I've had three British fights of the year up till now; I'm always in good fights so if I've got more in the tank at middleweight it should make for an interesting next few years”

This week, I caught up with Manchester fighter and ex-European light middleweight champion Jamie Moore, who is looking to bounce back from a defeat last October and make a serious impact in doing so at middleweight for the first time. He gave me the lowdown on his current status, what he's looking to do next and some of his enduring memories from the fight game...