Sunday, December 11, 2011

PERMISSION TO KILL TAKES ON THE CUTMAN!

PERMISSION TO KILL TAKES ON THE CUTMAN!

DAVID FOSTER GIVES THE LOWDOWN ON FIGHT CARD: THE CUTMAN OVER AT HIS PERMISSION TO KILL BLOG . . .

. . . In stories such as these, the starting points, and the end points are not really important. It is the journey along the way, and The Cutman is a great read, I could almost feel the oppressive Cuban heat, and smell the booze, sweat and smoke in the waterfront dives. And the story builds to a beautiful (and brutal) climax – the aforementioned fight between Flynn and Simbari, which has enough twists and turns in it, to keep most readers, if not on the edge of their seat, then at least on their toes, and dodging from side to side . . .

FOR THE FULL ARTICLE CLICK HERE

THE TWO-FISTED BLOGGER REVIEWS FELONY FISTS

THE TWO-FISTED BLOGGER REVIEWS FELONY FISTS!

THANKS TO HENRY BROWN, THE TWO-FISTED BLOGGER, FOR HIS INSIGHTFUL REVIEW OF FELONY FISTS . . .

So far as I know, it's been quite a while since fiction like this has been available, and I'm pretty stoked that it's making a comeback.

Felony Fists is an installment in the new pulp Fight Card series by "Jack Tunney." For you armchair fight historians out there, that nome de plume is exactly what you suspect it is--a fusion between Jack Dempsey and Gene Tunney, though the series takes place in the '50s, not the '20s.

Patrick "Felony" Flynn is an LA beat cop who is also possibly the world's most seasoned amateur middleweight. He's offered a spot on the detective squad if he'll help knock gangster Mickey Cohen out of boxing. That means he has to move up in weight to light-heavy, turn pro, and check Cohen's fighter Solomon King's ascent toward a title shot against Archie Moore (who really was light-heavyweight champ at that time, and quite an extraordinary man). A middleweight moving up to fight a badass light-heavyweight is a monumental chore all by itself, but in case the reader doesn't appreciate that, the pressure is heaped upon Felony Flynn increasingly right up until the last chapter.

FOR THE FULL REVIEW CLICK HERE

Friday, December 9, 2011

FIGHT FICTION: RINGSIDE JEZEBEL

FIGHT FICTION: RINGSIDE JEZEBEL

Terry was too much woman for too many men. First there was promoter Frank Chelsea. He could make or break a fighter with a single word – but he couldn't find the word to satisfy Terry.

Next came virile, handsome Jimmy Biddle. He was a small-time fighter headed for the top when he met her – and she betrayed him.

Last there was brilliant, sophisticated George Strand. He introduced her to the world of the intellect – and she outsmarted him.

Terry took what she wanted from each of them and gave her body in return. But there was one she couldn't forget.

RINGSIDE JEZEBEL

BRUTE MEN AND EAGER WOMEN

Women and sweat are the rewards of a fighter who makes the grade . . . sometimes his only rewards.

The sweat comes naturally. The women flock around the ringsides, the dressing-room doors, eager for the tough of a successful fighter's hard muscles and surging manhood . . . and the money he makes in an evening and spend the same night . . . The sweat does a man good.

The women are often his ruin, the most deadly pleasures, the most poisonous delights a man can get himself involved in . . . That's the kind of girl Terry was . . . a girl with the smell of battling men in her pretty nostrils, the taste of their kisses on her beautiful lips, the feel of their money in her dainty hands.

When Jimmy Biddle met Terry his career as a prizefighter reached its peak . . . and so did his life as a man . . . because nobody who met Terry was ever the same again.

FIGHT FICTION: THE BIG FIX

FIGHT FICTION: GO FOR THE BODY

FIGHT FICTION: WALK HARD - TALK LOUD

FIGHT FICTION: FIGHTING BLOOD

FIGHT FICTION/FILMS: THE LEATHER PUSHERS

FIGHT FICTION: THE BIG LURE

Wednesday, December 7, 2011

FIGHT FILMS: WARRIOR!

FIGHT FILMS: WARRIOR!

ONE OF MY FAVORITE MOVIES OF THE YEAR ... EXCELLENT ACTING (ESPECIALLY TOM HARDY) ... NICK NOLTE WILL BE OVERLOOKED FOR A BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR NOMINEE, BUT HE DESERVES ONE ... AVAILABLE ON DVD AND BLU-RAY DECEMBER 20TH. IT'S ON MY CHRISTMAS LIST ...

FIGHT FICTION: THE CRIMSOM RING

FIGHT FICTION: THE CRIMSOM RING

PAUL BARRA

Crimson Ring is the story of a club fighter, Seamus Muldoon, holder of the New York Boxing Association heavyweight belt, no less, who tries to piece together the reasoning behind the horrific murder of his girlfriend and her racehorse. The trail leads him to exciting adventures on the Brooklyn waterfront and in rural South Carolina, and back to the mean streets of Queens, New York, as he and his rumpled NYPD detective mentor uncover a devious plot of murder and greed. All this while he is preparing for the most important fight of his career.

FIGHT FICTION: THE CHIEF

FIGHT FICTION: THE CHIEF

ROBERT LIPSTYE

A fight for his people.

Sonny Bear, the Tomahawk Kid, has a championship left hook. But his boxing career's going nowhere, and he's ready to hang it up.

Then his manager, tough ex-cop Alfred Brooks, and his "writer," college boy Martin Malcolm Witherspoon, scheme Sonny into a glitzy Las Vegas match. Suddenly he's everybody's darling and headed for Hollywood stardom.

But fame isn't all it's cracked up to be, and Sonny needs to make the fight of his life to decide where he really belongs.

FIGHT FICTION: WARRIOR ANGEL

FIGHT FICTION: WARRIOR ANGEL

ROBERT LYPSTYE

Sonny Bear is a champion. . . but he needs the help of an angel.

Sonny Bear, the Tomahawk Kid, is on a fast downhill slide with the heavyweight championship at stake. He hardly knows who he is anymore, or why he should keep on fighting.

Then the first e-mail arrives.

“Do not lose heart. I come on a Mission from the Creator to save you.” –
Warrior Angel

The Warrior Angel might be just what Sonny Bear needs – but will Sonny be prepared to save him, too?

FIGHT FICTION: THE BRAVE

FIGHT FICTION: THE BRAVE

ROBERT LIPSTYE

Sonny's been an outsider all his life.

He has never fit into either world: the Moscondagas on the Reservation see him as white; whites see him as Indian. So far, Sonny's managed to harness his anger -- what he calls "the monster" – in the boxing ring. But Sonny wants out of the Res. He's headed for New York City, where nobody can tell him what to do.

Sonny doesn't count on stepping into the middle of a drug war when he gets there – or on tangling with a tough Harlem boxer-turned-cop named Alfred Brooks. Brooks seems to think that Sonny's got the talent to make it to the top – to be a contender. But first Sonny's got to learn to be smart, take control of his life, and beat the monster. Only it isn't as easy as it sounds...

FIGHT FICTION: THE CONTENDER

FIGHT FICTION: THE CONTENDER

ROBERT LIPSTYE

Before you can be a champion, you have to be a contender.

Alfred Brooks is scared. He's a highschool dropout and his grocery store job is leading nowhere. His best friend is sinking further and further into drug addiction. Some street kids are after him for something he didn't even do.

So, Alfred begins going to Donatelli's Gym, a boxing club in Harlem that has trained champions. There he learns it's the effort, not the win, that makes the man – that last desperate struggle to get back on your feet when you thought you were down for the count.

FIGHT FICTION: BLOOD GAME

Tuesday, December 6, 2011

STEVE MCQUEEN: 20 NEVER-SEEN PHOTOS!

STEVE MCQUEEN: 20 NEVER-SEEN PHOTOS!

THE ICONIC MCQUEEN – ALWAYS COOLER THAN COOL – IN SHOTS FROM LIFE MAGAZINE – LOOKING A LOT LIKE I IMAGINED FELONY FLYNN WOULD . . .

ABOVE: PARAMOUNT'S NEW HEAVYWEIGHT . . .

McQueen works out at the gym at Paramount Pictures, for whom he was making the movie Love With the Proper Stranger opposite Natalie Wood. Perhaps a signal of their confidence that he was the next big thing, Paramount's suits also gave McQueen a plum dressing room on the lot: one that belonged to Gary Cooper.

FOR THE COMPLETE SET CLICK HERE

FIGHT FICTION: THE LONGSHOT

FIGHT FICTION: THE LONGSHOT

KATIE KITAMURA

Cal and his trainer, Riley, are on their way to Mexico for a make-or-break rematch with legendary fighter Rivera. Four years ago, Cal became the only mixed martial arts fighter to take Rivera the distance -- but the fight nearly ended him. Only Riley, who has been at his side for the last ten years, knows how much that fight changed things for Cal. And only Riley really knows what's now at stake, for both of them.

Katie Kitamura's brilliant and stirring debut novel follows Cal and Riley through the three fraught days leading up to this momentous match, as each privately begins to doubt that Cal can win. As the tension builds toward the final electrifying scene, the looming fight becomes every challenge each of us has ever taken on, no matter how uncertain the outcome.

In hypnotic, pared-down prose, The Longshot offers a striking portrait of two men striving to stay true to themselves and each other in the only way they know how.

FIGHT FICTION: CHOKE

FIGHT FICTION: CHOKE

BRYAN MATHESON

“Yup, the guy’s a beast. But it’s alright. I haven’t been scared since Ricky broke my arm in sixth grade. Anything less than a broken arm is just hurt, and I’ve found out plenty of times that hurt goes away.”

Kicked off the wrestling team, his hopes for another State championship crushed, Ross LeClaire's anger reaches the boiling point. He needs to keep training, build up his skills, be ready for the beat-down his big brother Ricky's sure to have planned when he comes back home in a few months.

A new Mixed Martial Arts gym run by a quiet guy with an attitude just may be the answer. There are only three fighters training there, but every one of them can take Ross out with their eyes closed, and have no problem proving it. Can he handle the back-breaking workouts and bone-jarring training the guys at the gym throw at him?

Then there's Erin, the girl he's known since he was a kid, who just might be turning into something more. How will she react when she finds out he's spending the better part of every day learning how to beat guys up in a cage?

FIGHT FICTION: KID SCANLAN

FIGHT FICTION: KID SCANLAN

H. C. WITWER

Harry Charles Witwer (1890-1929), more commonly known as H. C. Witwer, was an American short story author. He worked in odd jobs-errand boy for a butcher, prize fighter manager, and a soda jerk on Broadway-for a time before starting to write for newspapers, counting the St. Cloud (Florida) Tribune and New York newspapers Brooklyn Eagle, the New York American, the New York Mail, and The Sun as employers.


In 1917-during World War I- he was sent to France by Collier''s magazine as a war correspondent. He also wrote for McClure''s in this time period. By the early 1920s, Witwer''s works were starting to be filmed, with nearly 30 film credits recorded by 1925. He is credited with producing ten shorts, but he was most active as a writer, receiving writing credits for 30 more short films, after 1925.


Most notable during his lifetime for his baseball and boxing stories, Witwer wrote around 400 stories and articles for magazines and 125 film treatments throughout his career. His works include: From Baseball to Boches (1918), Alex the Great (1919) and Kid Scanlan (1920).