This past weekend, we saw my boy YURIORKIS GAMBOA! throwing punches so quickly that when HBO replayed the featherweight's knockout flurry, HBO's Bob Papa remarked, "It's fast in slow motion."

Some fans love boxers above all who are heavy hitters. I can dig it; I like a spectacular knockout pretty well myself. But my preference is for speed. That's the stuff that makes me "ooooo" and "ahhhhh," that makes me almost giggle. And don't think speed and power aren't related; we all know the saying "Speed kills." When lightweight David Diaz said it wasn't Manny Pacquiao's power that troubled him but his quickness, he enunciated that most vividly: "I thought he had a knife. It was like he was hitting me with a blade."

With that, I submit the following no-frills list of the 10 fastest boxers today. I only picked among fighters in Ring magazine's divisional rankings, or fighters who I thought deserved to be among them. It's no-frills because there's not much more to say about these guys than that they're on my list. You know transcendent speed when you see it, and there are only so many adjectives for "fast" anyway. They're in pound-for-pound order by best overall fighter, because it's sometimes hard to estimate whether a junior bantamweight is quicker than a light heavyweight because he's smaller or because he's faster even if you take weight out of the equation.

Lou DiBella, who promotes Stevens, had promotional options on Dirrell in the event that he won. But DiBella was so disgusted by the way Dirrell fought, he doesn't plan to pick up the option and said he doesn't want to ever have Dirrell on one of his cards again. – Dan Rafael, June 19, 2007

The “fight” between Andre Dirrell and Curtis Stevens is infamous among fight fans the way that Manos: Hands of Fate and Uwe Boll flicks are among movie buffs, the way Starship albums and Kevin Federline’s Playing with Fire are among music lovers, the way Red Dog is among beer drinkers. It is the Castillo-Corrales I of terrible fights. Harold Lederman, as grizzled a ringside vet as we have, referred to it in the 10th round of the HBO broadcast as, “the worst fight I’ve ever seen.” Lou DiBella provided more evidence for being the most likeable promoter in boxing today in the Dan Rafael quote above. Christening a fight the “worst ever” is practically impossible, but Dirrell-Stevens doubtless makes the short list of every hardcore boxing fan who ever saw it. The only redeeming aspect of the fight is its infamy as an awful spectacle.

Crappy filmmaker extraordinaire Uwe Boll once challenged his critics to box him. Meta! (I swear, that’s the ONLY reason I included this picture…)

I got invited to do a "Syllabus" at Bookforum, the literary review magazine, so naturally I leaped at the opportunity. The idea was to do a list of essential boxing books. You can read it here (free registration required). In addition, there's a review at the site and in the print edition by Katherine Dunn of the new Sugar Ray Robinson biography, "Sweet Thunder: The Life And Times Of Sugar Ray Robinson," and I intend to check out that book soon.

Also, as the archives of this site were broken for almost all of 2009 when I was at MVN, and because they required some serious clean-up and organizing when I moved over to Bloguin, those haven't been working in full until the last week or so. If you hover over the word "Archives" in the menu bar, you'll see you can go all the way back to the earliest iterations of this blog in 2006. You also can search the entire archives for keywords in the "Search TQBR" function at the left, if you want to find out, say, which curse words I've used the most.

You'll find that if you go back more than a year, the text of most entries is all crammed together, and I apologize for that, but I don't have the time or willpower to go back and insert paragraph breaks. I wasn't at any iteration of it until late 2007, but I still was proud to discover the blog is coming up on post #1,000. It honestly doesn't feel like that anywhere near that many, even taking into account the contributions of others. You all have made it pretty fun and fresh.

Even though the boxing schedule for the week lost its marquee attraction, the canceled welterweight showdown between Shane Mosley and Andre Berto once booked for Saturday, the schedule is still jam-packed to the point of being a Heironymus Bosch painting -- on Friday in particular -- with nice little fights.

Consider:

• Jesse Brinkley-Curtis Stevens, Friday, ESPN2, Nevada. If there's a fight I'd pick to be the best brawl of the weekend, it's this fight between a pair of super middleweights on the cusp of making a splash in that deep division. Brinkley is a proven action fighter, and Stevens is too -- it wasn't him who stunk out the joint when he and Andre Dirrell fought in that historically bad bout on HBO a couple years ago, but Dirrell. It's a title eliminator for a shot at some alphabet belt or another, and it's a nice spotlight for two men who haven't had it in a while (Brinkley not since he was on "The Contender" and Stevens not since the aforementioned Dirrell bout). I might favor Stevens' skill level here, but they're fighting in Brinkley's home base of Reno and he's the more experienced boxer, so...
• Gabriel Campillo-Beibut Shumenov II/Erislandy Lara-Grady Brewer, Friday, Fox Sports Net, Nevada. Over in Las Vegas is the most meaningful of the weekend's fight cards. I'll get to the main event in a second, but I'm most interested in seeing how junior middleweight Lara fares in a dramatic leap up in competition. Lara's a wonderful-looking talent who's passed every test with ease, but Brewer's a more proven commodity, having won a season of "The Contender" and beaten the better opposition of the two. It may not be the most exciting fight of the weekend, but it's the one I'm looking forward to most. The main event is a rematch of what was said to be a close fight that most thought Campillo won to keep his light heavyweight alphabet title belt over the boldly matched young Shumenov. This fight, too, has some significance.
• Chris Avalos-Jose Nieves, Friday, Showtime, New Mexico. All right, so anytime Avalos is in the ring, it stands a chance of being the most brawl-y fight of the weekend, so don't be surprised if Avalos-Nieves trumps Brinkley-Stevens. It looks to me that the bantamweight prospect Avalos is taking another small step up in competition in Nieves, who has beaten dangerous journeyman Tomas Rojas and fought another prospect, Victor Fonseca, to a very close decision loss in his only career blemish. Also on the card will be junior lightweight Archie Ray Marquez, who's cracked most people's list of the most promising prospects in boxing these days. He'll be fighting Derrick Campos, who once gave Dmitriy Salita hell, which might not be saying much unless you consider that this is just Marquez' tenth fight. Lastly, Nick Charles makes his return to the Showtime broadcast team, his cancer 80 percent in remission.
• The Rest. Telemundo is going head-to-head-to-head-to-head with the packed Friday schedule, and there's not much to speak of on the card, other than maybe the return of Luis Melendez, the bantamweight against whom Z Gorres collapsed last year... More Friday, but untelevised: Peter Manfredo, Jr. fights middleweight trial horse Matt Vanda, and Darnell "Ding-A-Ling Man" Wilson reemerges at cruiserweight against "TBA," which, given his recent streak of losses, is about right... On Saturday on Fox Sports Net, worn-down Jorge Arce inexplicably gets yet another title shot at junior bantamweight against the likewise-undeserving Angky Angkota, on a card that also features featherweight prospect Miguel Angel "Mikey" Garcia... In Germany Saturday, Ring's #3 middleweight Sebastian Sylvester makes a defense of his alphabet belt against Billy Lyell, a late sub and about as good as his team could have done under the circumstances, while heavyweight prospect Robert Helenius takes on the faded Lamon Brewster.

Here we go with our first standings recap in the prediction game, which I figure we'll do every two fights. The two fights this time were, obviously, the featherweight bouts Juan Manuel Lopez vs. Steven Luevano and Yuriorkis Gamboa vs. Rogers Mtagwa on Jan. 23. (We need a good, catchy name for the game, by the way, if anyone has any nominations.)

Spidershark scored the maximum points allowable by accurately calling Lopez' 7th round knockout and being closest to Gamboa's 2nd round KO. Who is this Spidershark, hmmm? I found it highly suspicious that Gamboa said he wanted to take it to the 4th round in his post-fight interview, and that's the round Spidershark predicted for Gamboa's finish. Are these vague hints of impropriety in any way related to my bitterness at not being in first place? Probably.

BigMaxy also called both fights correctly and picked Lopez to win in the 7th, so we have a second place. There's a 22-way tie for third because that's how many people picked the right winners, and the 11 people bold enough to pick an upset are tied for fourth. Three of you fourthers doubted by boy YURIORKIS GAMBOA! Poor stickfigure doubted both men.

There were a few people who didn't exactly follow the rules (you know who you are, punks) and they got a grace period this time. Not next time! I also failed to specify what qualifies as too specific. For the purposes of this trial run, let's just say a knockout is a knockout -- technical, regular, RTD, whatever. Unless everyone hates that idea and revolts.

I doubt I'll do another prediction and prediction entry until Feb. 6, when lightweights Edwin Valero and Antonio DeMarco square off, although there's the off-chance I might do one of the upcoming weekend's fights or the Feb. 5 Glen Johnson-Yusaf Mack light heavyweight fight. What I'm saying is, stay sharp and be ready to play, playas.

Your standings below; if you see any tabulation errors, notify me and we can adjudicate:

As often as practically and financially possible, I will attend fights around my New Jersey base and write about them for you, Humble TQBR Reader, in the Jersey Fight Journal.

For the inaugural edition of the JFJ, I will hop on the train at the Morristown Train Station with my buddy Scott for the Top Rank featherweight doubleheader at the Theater at Madison Square Garden. Headlining the card is Juan Manuel Lopez, the anointed “next great Puerto Rican superstar,” against Steven Luevano and Cuban sensation Yuriorkis Gamboa against the man who nearly knocked out Lopez in a Fight of the Year candidate last year, Rogers Mtagwa. The following is an uncensored, unauthorized account of all the action from a very solid, often spectacular fight card.

Featherweights Yuriorkis Gamboa and Juan Manuel Lopez passed the hardest tests of their careers in style Saturday night on HBO, and in so doing poured a heap of gasoline then threw a match on the idea of these two explosive talents one day fighting one another. Tough journeyman Roger(s) Mtagwa never stood a chance against Gamboa's preposterous speed and power, going down in two rounds, while Steven Luevano's excellent technique couldn't match Lopez' combination punching.

Both bouts figured as potentially competitive ones, but the cream rose to the top. Mtagwa's power and chin could have been the foil for the explosive but shaky-jawed Gamboa, and Luevano's movement, size and experience could have been Lopez' undoing.

No. Not even close. These were the performances of boxing stars-in-the-making.

I'm not one of these anti-Texas people. I've been there once, driving from Indiana to California. I didn't enjoy the humid heat, but I found nothing to hate.

But Texas' boxing jurisdiction is loathsome. It is nauseating. It's sleazy, it's vile, it's vulgar. Horrible judging, horrible refereeing, nepotism and an utter disregard for the health of boxers are its hallmarks. Now, the Department of Licencing and Regulation is poised to allow Antonio Margarito to fight. Margarito, a fighter who last year tried to load his gloves with plaster before his welterweight bout against Shane Mosley and ended up suspended throughout the country.

Not Texas, though, not anymore. Margarito's promoter, Bob Arum, says the state has given him indicators Margarito will be relicensed there for the March 13 undercard of Manny Pacquiao-Joshua Clottey. Basically, whatever is too repugnant for everyone else is good enough for Texas. But as of now, it has the upper hand. The state should be getting punished and shunned for its bad behavior, but Jerry Jones has a giant stadium that Arum has a hard-on about and as long as Arum's interested in Texas, Texas will be doing good boxing business. So can Arum be convinced to do the right thing? Nah.

What can you do to a man who isn't motivated by making the most money? He would have made a fortune off Floyd Mayweather-Pacquiao, but will be taking less cash instead, so you can't hit him in his pocketbook by boycotting the fight. What can you do to a man who isn't motivated by love of the sport, or its fans? Arum said from the beginning of his career that he didn't care about boxing, and by walking away from Mayweather-Pacquiao, he showed he didn't care about its fans, either. What can you do to a man who is ruled by his emotions, rather than his intellect? Arum can harbor grudges that last decades, even if it's irrational. What can you do to a man who doesn't care how bad his reputation is? He knows he went from defending Margarito by calling the commissioners who suspended him racist, to talking up the illegitmacy of his win over Miguel Cotto, back to being on Margarito's side again -- and he knows how angry he made so many of us at him along the way.

We are helpless, as boxing fans, to do little more than scream and shout and hope someone like Arum listens, and that Texas' boxing scene suffers as a result. On that upbeat note, let's get to some Quick Jabs!

For one time only -- this Saturday's HBO's double-header, Juan Manuel Lopez-Steven Luevano/Yuriorkis Gamboa-Rogers Mtagwa -- make your official predictions for the prediction game here. For what to do next time... Here are the official rules for how to play the prediction game's six-fight trial run:

I first flirted years ago with the idea of a friendly competition whereby friends of the site and myself would see who could predict fights most accurately. (I almost suggested this would be a game of wits, but anyone who regularly predicts fight outcomes knows that the sport quite delightfully can make fools of us all with unexpected outcomes.)

Thanks in part to the prodding of friend of the site/contributor Scott Kraus, as well as the dawning of a new year, the time has come to test interest out there in just such a feature.

I have in mind a loose structure. In any prediction post I write, participants would submit their own predictions in the comments section – with a deadline of, perhaps, midnight the day of the fight. The prediction would name the fighter who would win, as well as the method of that victory, such as KO-4 or SD-12. Points would be awarded for picking the winner correctly (say, 5 points, because being correct matters most); a correct upset call (say, 1 point, because correct upset calls are neat); and the most accurate call of the how the winner won (say, 1 point -- so if you predict KO-4 and it goes down that way, you get an extra point… or if it’s KO-5 and KO-4 is the closest call, you get an extra point… or if it’s KO-3 and someone else had it KO-2, you each get an extra point). I'm flirting with making the whole thing more awesome by awarding points on a more absurd scale, like 500 points instead of 5.

I’m thinking we’ll do a trial period of, say, six predictions (like a six-round fight for a prospect, get it?), to see how it goes. Then, if that’s successful, i.e., we have strong participation and interest in continuing it, we’ll renew for another 12-prediction (like 12 rounds for a big fight, get it?) tournament, and if successful, another and another. That way, anyone who wants to get in but is concerned about starting too far down the standings can hop in for the next round. We’ll award small prizes -- likely, very small -- for each round except the initial trial run, then look at some year-end awards, too. To give you a sense of how much predictin’ might get done, I wrote prediction posts for 72 fights in 2009. Standings would be posted periodically.

Here’s what I need from you: a commitment to participate. I need 10 people to say they’re in, and we’ll go -- in fact, we'll start with a special prediction post kicking off the trial tournament for this weekend's HBO doubleheader and finalizing all rules (or if there aren't 10 people interested, I just won't bring it up again). And if you have feedback on the structure and rules, please offer them.