9:46 PM ET Former two-division boxing champ Antonio Tarver will return to the ring to fight former UFC heavyweight champion Frank Mir on April 17, sources confirmed with ESPN on Thursday. Tarver, 52, will box Mir, 41, on the undercard of a pay-per-view event headlined by a boxing match between former MMA champion Ben Askren

Feb 26, 2021 On Saturday, Feb. 20, lightweight champion Teofimo Lopez went to Top Rank Promotions president Todd duBoef with a simple question: “Are we good?” It was an inquiry made during a difficult negotiation process surrounding Lopez’s mandatory IBF title defense against George Kambosos Jr. When Lopez asked the question, it appeared all parties

8:06 PM ET WBC flyweight world titleholder Julio Cesar Martinez has withdrawn from his fight against mandatory challenger McWilliams Arroyo because of a hand injury, Matchroom Boxing announced Thursday. The fight was scheduled to take place on Saturday’s Canelo Alvarez-Avni Yildirim card at Hard Rock Stadium in Miami. Martinez said in an Instagram post Thursday

1:18 PM ET Triller just threw its name into the ring to promote the next fight of one of boxing’s rising stars. The upstart tech company won the rights to promote Teofimo Lopez’s lightweight title defense against George Kambosos with a bid of more than $6 million, a source told ESPN, confirming multiple reports. Triller,

12:02 PM ET WBC heavyweight boxing champion Tyson Fury says he will absolutely fight twice in 2021, regardless of whether a megafight against Anthony Joshua comes together or not. Fury (30-0-1, 21 KOs) has not stepped into the ring for over a year now, as the one-year anniversary of his sensational knockout of Deontay Wilder

7:27 PM ET Jamel Herring’s constantly moving WBO junior lightweight title defense against Carl Frampton has a new date. The Herring-Frampton fight, which was supposed to happen Saturday in Great Britain, will now take place April 3 in Dubai, it was announced Wednesday. The fight was postponed last week because of a hand injury to

12:55 PM ET Three-division world titlist and current middleweight undisputed champion Claressa Shields has called for women’s world title bouts to be the same length as men’s fights, arguing that existing regulations strengthen the argument that women should be paid less. Women’s world title fights are conducted over 10 rounds of two minutes while men

11:28 AM ET The small, bold font at the bottom of a full-page spread in the Feb. 2 edition of Fanatik, a daily sports newspaper in Turkey, posed a simple question: “So who is Canelo Alvarez?” The query was accompanied by a short paragraph and an unremarkable, expressionless headshot of the Mexican fighter. It accurately

7:00 AM ET Eric WoodyardESPN FOR DAMIAN LILLARD, the game wasn’t over. Yes, the Portland Trail Blazers were trailing the Chicago Bulls by five points with 11.5 seconds left on Jan. 30, but he wasn’t about to give up. He made a 37-foot 3-pointer to cut the lead to two. After the ensuing inbounds pass,

12:04 AM ET LAS VEGAS — Many expected Saturday’s WBC junior lightweight title fight between Miguel Berchelt and Oscar Valdez to be a back-and-forth bout between two Mexican fighters. As it turned out, the violence was mostly one-way traffic. Valdez (29-0, 23 KOs), a former WBO featherweight titleholder and a two-time Olympian, scored a significant