Henry Armstrong: Boxing's Super Champ is the story of arguably the most incredible fighter in the history of boxing - told by one of the few surviving writers to have been around during Armstrong's unique world championship reign. When Henry had his arm raised on 17 August 1938, after winning a blood-spattered 15-round decision over Lou Ambers, he became the first boxer to simultaneously hold world titles at three different weights - and somehow he managed the feat in an era of ju...

They still call it the most sensational fight ever for the world heavyweight championship, between champion Jack Dempsey and his hammer-fisted Argentine challenger, Luis Angel Firpo. Back in the Roaring Twenties, 85,000 packed into New York's Polo Grounds to see all three minutes 57 seconds of it. Nobody asked for their money back. In the first round Firpo was floored seven times, but got up to deck the champion, then knocked him clean into the press section. Pushed back into the ring as t...

Benny Leonard was arguably the greatest lightweight champion of all time. With superb boxing skills and potent punching power, he fought over 200 times and suffered just five defeats. He spent his boyhood in a crime-ridden ghetto in Manhattan's Lower East Side and was the greatest of a long line of Jewish boxers to emerge from the slums. Leonard was still only 19 when he knocked out Freddie Welsh to become world lightweight king in 1917. He defended the title eight times and retired as und...

Say hello to Rocky Marciano, the world's only undefeated heavyweight champion, a guy called Rocky Marciano. With just a 67-inch reach, two left feet and under six feet tall, Marciano blasted his way to 49 wins, 43 inside the distance. You could knock him down but you couldn't knock him out. Marciano KO'd Jersey Joe Walcott in a 1952 thriller to become world champion. Defending his title five times, he brought the million-dollar gate back to boxing in 1955 when he crushed Archie Moore in hi...

Over 25 years Sugar Ray Robinson ruled three divisions, from lightweight to middleweight. As a kid he had danced for pennies on the streets of Harlem, and he danced again in the ring from New York and Vegas to Paris and back again. After a brilliant amateur career he turned pro in 1940 and won his first 40 contests before Jake LaMotta snapped his streak of 123 fights. He was unbeaten over the next nine years and would beat LaMotta in five of their six fights, taking his middleweight title....

They called Max Baer the "Clown Prince of Boxing," but trainer Ray Arcel remembered a night in 1933 when he worked Baer's corner in what was probably Max's greatest triumph, the night he smashed Max Schmeling to defeat in 10 brutal rounds. That was no clown. A year later, Baer was heavyweight champion of the world. From a $4 a day foundry worker, Baer's rise was rapid. He bought so many suits he couldn't keep track of them; wore a new hat every week; bought a house like a hotel. Arcel crie...

This is a cradle-to-grave biography of Mickey Walker, former welterweight (1922-1926) and middleweight champion (1926-1931) of the world, one of the greatest fighters in ring history. He fought at a time when boxing was a major sport with only eight championships, and he held two of them over a nine-year period. He fought at a time when each weight division was jammed with good fighters, and he fought them all from welterweight up to heavyweight, frequently being outweighed 20 to 30 pounds...

This is the untold story of the secret scandal behind baseball's most legendary moment:The Shot Heard Round the World. A Washington Post Best Book of the Year.At 3:58 p.m. on October 3, 1951, Bobby Thomson hit a home run off Ralph Branca. The ball sailed over the left field wall and into history. The Giants won the pennant. That moment—the Shot Heard Round the World—reverberated from the West Wing of the White House to the Sing Sing death house to the Polo...

From the Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and author of The Prince of Providence, a revelatory biography of greatest heavyweight champion of all time.Named a Best Book of the Year by The Boston Globe and Library JournalA Wall Street Journal 2018 "Reader Favorite"The son of poor Italian immigrants, with short arms and stubby legs, Rocky Marciano accomplished a feat that eluded legend...

From its winners to its sinners, two bestselling sportswriters chronicle a dizzying trip through more than a century of baseball lore and legend.Some of the stories are celebrated—from Ruth's called shot to DiMaggio's streak to Mays's catch. Some of the men are titans of the game—Mantle, Williams, Koufax. But alongside those stories passed from generation to generation, Daniel Okrent and Steve Wulf have assembled tales both hard-to-believe and a pleasure to read. F...

Greatness is often overlooked in its own time. For Ezzard Charles--one of boxing's most skilled practitioners, with a record of 93-25-1 (52 KO)--recognition took decades. Named by The Ring magazine as the greatest light heavyweight of all time, Charles was frustrated in his attempts to get a shot at the 175-pound title, and as World Heavyweight Champion (1949-1951) struggled to win the respect of boxing fans captivated by Joe Louis' power and charisma. This first-ever biography of...

Don Cockell was ranked 5th in the world among heavyweight boxing contenders when he battled heavyweight champion Rocky Marciano for the title in May 1955. Cockell's record was an uneven one. There were some successes but there were also losses to middleweights, and 5 knockouts by merely average opponents. Even his native British press gave Cockell only a slim chance of putting up a worthy fight, much less winning. Marciano was a powerful opponent, who was undefeated since his boxing debut ...