Boxing Isn’t Only a Labor of Love—It’s Work

The Industry Will Require Collective Effort to Overcome the Challenges Champions Face in and out of the Ring

Boxing has big pictures (Raging Bull, Creed), big personalities (Muhammad Ali, the original G.O.A.T.), and big spectacles (pay-per-view fights adorned with flashing lights, raucous crowds, and stylized ring entrances). You might be forgiven for thinking that being a professional fighter translates into making big money.

But the challenges contemporary boxers face are not only physical and mental, but overwhelmingly financial. This begs the question: What does boxing owe its champions? This was the title of last night’s Zócalo program, presented in partnership with UCLA College, Division of Social Sciences and ASU …

by Talib Jabbar | May 24, 2023

What Women Athletes Won When Title IX Became Law

This Landmark Legislation Has Evened the Playing Field for 49 Years—In Fits and Starts

by Jackie Mansky | June 25, 2021

Title IX of the Education Amendments Act of 1972 decreed, “No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits …

The One-Size-Fits-All Sock That’s a Democratic Fashion Statement

Originally Marketed as Sportswear, the Tube Sock Became a Stylish Accessory Thanks to Farrah Fawcett and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

by Kimberly Chrisman-Campbell | August 16, 2018

If you’re an American down to your toes, those toes have probably been clad in tube socks at one time or another.

These once-ubiquitous, one-size-fits-all socks are a product of …

To Black Athletes, Donald Trump Is Playing the Dozens

This Time, the Age-Old Game of Exchanging Insults Will Have No Winner

By Kenneth L. Shropshire | October 3, 2017

President Donald Trump did not say, “Yo’ mama!” in front of a partisan Huntsville, Alabama audience. But he might as well have because that is what athletes heard directed at …

How Irish American Athletes Slugged Their Way to Respectability

Sportsmen with Roots in the Emerald Isle Reshaped the Image of the Shantytown Ruffian

By James Silas Rogers | May 19, 2017

In his 1888 book The Ethics of Boxing and Manly Sport, a high-minded treatise on the ennobling effect of sports, the journalist, poet, and Irish exile John Boyle O’Reilly …

Why India’s Women Olympians Remind Me of My Father

A Delhi School Principal Was Early to Champion Sports for Girls, a Commitment That's Still Bearing Fruit

By Moira Mayer Shourie | August 22, 2016

It’s been nearly 10 years since my father died, but watching Indian athletes at the Rio Olympics has brought his memory rushing back to me.

When I was a child, …

athletics