Lost in Boxing

*Dark Trade: Lost In Boxing*, by Donald McRae, award-winning author of eleven non-fiction books and staff writer for *The Guardian*, is widely considered one of the best boxing books all time. In this companion eBook, Carlos Acevedo, author of *Sporting Blood: Tales from the Dark Side of Boxing*; Jimmy Tobin, author of *Killed in Brazil?: The Mysterious Death of Arturo “Thunder” Gatti*; and Oliver Goldstein pay tribute to McRae and offer fresh snapshots of the fighters profiled in his masterpiece. The full list of essays in this collection are as follows: “Them Bones: The Night James Toney Won His First World Title” Carlos Acevedo “The Edge of Derision: On Prince Naseem Hamed” Oliver Goldstein “The Hotstepper: Oscar De La Hoya, Nearing Stardom” Carlos Acevedo “Idyllic Masquerading: The Night Chris Eubank Beat Michael Watson” Oliver Goldstein “The Savage Within: Mike Tyson on the Rise” Carlos Acevedo “Vendetta: Oscar De La Hoya and Fernando Vargas Settle Their Blood Feud” Carlos Acevedo “The Future Now: Roy Jones Breaks Through” Oliver Goldstein “Earn It: Evander Holyfield and Michael Dokes Go to War” Oliver Goldstein “Episodes in the American Berserk: Mike Tyson vs. Razor Ruddock I” Oliver Goldstein “This Is the Future: James Toney Batters Vassiliy Jirov for His Third World Title” Jimmy Tobin From the Introduction, by Carlos Acevedo: For the first half of the 1990s, Don McRae was virtually embedded in boxing, a subterranean pursuit rarely illuminated by even the dimmest of spotlights. McRae wrote personal and intimate portraits of some of the most significant—and complicated—fighters of the era. Among those McRae profiled were Mike Tyson, Frank Bruno, Chris Eubank, Oscar De La Hoya, James Toney, Roy Jones Jr., Evander Holyfield, Naseem Hamed, Michael Watson, and Nigel Benn. These dispatches formed the basis of Dark Trade, a revelatory work whose narrative focuses on the inner lives of athletes in a business underscored by danger and deceit.