Boxing Biographies

With the success of the critically acclaimed, Academy Award-winning film The Fighter, the world stood up and cheered for the inspiring true story of Micky Ward - a heart-and-soul warrior who overcame the odds to make history in the ring. But that was only part of the tale.… Now, in his own words, “Irish” Micky Ward tells his inspirational life story as only he can. From his first bout at the age of seven, Micky Ward was known first and foremost for giving as good as he got, and for leaving absolutely everything he had in the ring.

In this work of sporting and social history we have a biography of Canadian-born, Boston-raised boxer George Dixon (1870–1908), the first Black world champion of any sport and the first Black world boxing champion in any division. George Dixon: The Short Life of Boxing’s First Black World Champion, 1870–1908 chronicles the life of the most consequential Black athlete of the nineteenth century. Yet despite his triumphs, Dixon has been lost to history, overshadowed by Black athletes whose activism against white supremacy far exceeded his own.

The sequel to the Amazon best seller Unfinished Agony, this is the third and final audiobook on the wild man of Wakefield Paul Sykes.

A larger-than-life working-class hero, Romford born and bred—always ready with the perfect soundbite—Barry Hearn was famously described as 'roguish but never a rogue'. Hearn is credited with turning snooker into one of the biggest sports in Britain. He essentially turned a sport in which competitors wear bowties into a massive globally televised event. Away from the table, his promotions empire casts its net over a dozen sports—from professional boxing to darts, fishing to 10-pin bowling—and his career spans four decades.

Every day, we absorb body blows: some glancing, others that knock us to the mat. It doesn't matter how well-prepared or tough you think you are. Everyone, at some point, is hit with a haymaker from life. It's the cost of living. And just like in the ring, opting out of pain is not an option. In Hard Lessons From The Hurt Business, former heavyweight boxer Ed Latimore takes listeners on a journey from his hardscrabble childhood in Pittsburgh's public housing projects to his signing with Jay-Z's Roc Nation Sport.

Join Eddie 'The Beast' Hall for 10 rounds in this audio original as we follow his incredible journey from the world's strongest man to competing in 'The Heaviest Boxing Match in History' in Florida, September 2021. Featuring raw training diaries, 10 rounds of mental preparation, documentary clips and exclusive podcast style interviews with iconic friends on mental strength including Ross Edgley, James Haskell, Paddy McGuinness, his family and inner circle.

Muhammad Ali, in the late 1960s, was young, successful, brash, and hugely admired - but with some reservations. He was bombastic and cocky in a way that captured the imagination of America but also drew its detractors. He was a bold young African American in an era when few people were as outspoken. He renounced his name - Cassius Clay - as being his 'slave name' and joined the Nation of Islam, renaming himself Muhammad Ali. And finally, in 1966, after being drafted, he refused to join the military for religious and conscientious reasons.

Muhammed Ali and Howard Cosell, a legendary athlete and a television icon, were individually interesting, but together they were mesmerizing. They were profoundly different, young and old, black and white, a Muslim and a Jew, Ali barely literate, Cosell an editor of his university's law review. Yet they had in common forces that made them unforgettable: both were unprecedented performers who covered enormous insecurities by demanding, loudly and often, public acclaim.

World Champion boxer, national treasure, pantomime star, sidekick to Harry Carpenter, mental health campaigner. Frank Bruno is many different things to many different people. Now, in his own words, as he turns 60, Frank delivers the full, explosive story of his remarkable life so far. At times harrowing, at times hilarious, but always 100 percent honest, Frank Bruno: 60 Years a Fighter is the sporting memoir of the year which pulls no punches. In it, Frank opens up on his journey to becoming a World Champion and the fight which has come after retirement with mental ill health.

Lost in the annals of boxing is the sport's true Cinderella story. James J. Braddock, dubbed "Cinderella Man" by Damon Runyon, was a once promising light heavyweight for whom a string of losses in the ring and a broken right hand happened to coincide with the Great Crash of 1929.

Belfast's Carl ‘The Jackal' Frampton MBE is no ordinary boxer. One of only three fighters from the British Isles to be named the Ring magazine Fighter of the Year, he has headlined sellout world championship bouts on both sides of the Atlantic, winning multiple world titles in the process. His dedicated army of fans have traversed the globe to be ringside throughout it all. But Frampton's popularity far exceeds the traditional adulation for a sporting icon; he is regarded as a symbol of hope and unity by both sides of the sectarian divide in Northern Ireland.

The extraordinary memoir from baseball icon Jackie Robinson - originally published in 1948, just a year after he shattered baseball’s color barrier, and now released as an audiobook for the very first time. “I’m not concerned with your liking or disliking me...all I ask is that you respect me as a human being.” So says number 42, who comes alive to share his story, up to and through that historic first season, as told to famed sportswriter Wendell Smith, with a foreword by Brooklyn Dodgers General Manager Branch Rickey.

In Drama in the Bahamas, Dave Hannigan tells the occasionally poignant, often troubling, yet always entertaining story behind Ali's last bout. Through interviews with many of those involved, he discovers exactly how and why, a few weeks short of his 40th birthday, a seriously diminished Ali stepped through the ropes one more time to get beaten up by Trevor Berbick.

Raised in 1970s Spanish Harlem, Hector Camacho lived a life as fast as his fists flew in the ring. Handsome, flamboyant, and outspoken, Camacho electrified the boxing scene of the 1980s and, shouting his mantra "Macho Time!", beat some of the greatest fighters of his generation. His fast-lane life caught up with him eventually - and tragically - when he was shot dead outside a nightclub in Puerto Rico at the age of 50.

Paul Sykes, from Lupset, near Wakefield, died aged 60 in Pinderfields Hospital from pneumonia and cirrhosis of the liver. He was a man whose life might have been changed by success in the boxing ring, but despite contending for the British and Commonwealth Heavyweight Titles, he sank back into old habits. It heralded a return to the self-destructive course of his life. This audiobook is my journey to find out what happened to Paul Sykes between the years after his 1990 cult classic documentary and his eventual tragic demise in 2007.

In this groundbreaking new book, the author, a trans man, trains to fight in a charity match at Madison Square Garden while struggling to untangle the vexed relationship between masculinity and violence. Through his experience boxing - learning to get hit and to hit back; wrestling with the camaraderie of the gym; confronting the betrayals and strength of his own body - McBee examines the weight of male violence....

Guillermo Vicente Vidal's memoir chronicles his journey from Castro's Cuba to the United States - a tapestry of his coming of age, a broken family, and disorientation of political unrest. Vidal was barely 10 years old when he proudly shook the hand of Fidel Castro. Although Vidal's parents were once staunch supporters of La Revolucion, they soon found they could no longer keep their sons safe in the new face of Castro's reign, making the difficult decision to send Vidal and his brothers to the US via Operation Peter Pan in 1961.

Many regard Muhammad Ali simply as 'The Greatest' heavyweight of all time. Others admire his battles against racial injustice and religious intolerance. A few just call him 'Dad'. They are all here in this book - 50 men and women of note coming together to celebrate the man Sports Illustrated crowned 'Sportsman of the Century': Angelo Dundee, Ali's trainer; Billy Crystal, actor; Sir Henry Cooper, former British and European heavyweight champion; Bert Sugar, journalist and boxing historian; and more.

From weighing 28 stone and fighting a deep depression, to his amazing return to heavyweight champion of the world, Tyson opens up and share his inspiring advice and tips on diet, exercise regime and his incredible journey back to a healthier body and mind. Frank, accessible and inspiring, The Furious Method is a feel-good and motivating tonic, full of inspirational advice for listeners on how we can all improve our physical and mental health. And how we can all create a champion mind-set.

Beetle-browed, nearly bald, with a head that rode his collarbones like a bowling ball returning on rails, his waist size more than half his five-foot, eight-inch height, Two Ton Tony Galento resembled, according to Collier's magazine writer Jack Miley, ''a taxi driving away with its top down.'' By all measures he stood no chance when he stepped into the ring against the Brown Bomber, Joe Louis, the finest heavyweight of his generation.