The Sweet Science Goes Sour: How Scandal Brought Boxing to Its Knees

In The Sweet Science Goes Sour, boxing writer Thomas Myler recounts some of the sport’s most controversial fixes, fakes, and frauds. Like a ringside seat at the sport’s greatest and most troubled bouts, the book brings to life boxing’s many outrageous characters. They include Primo Carnera, tragically manipulated and ultimately destroyed by mobsters; Sonny Liston, who lost to Muhammad Ali because of a suspicious phantom punch; and Roberto Duran’s, who was involved in a baffling surrender to Sugar Ray Leonard. Here too are notorious matchups like Riddick Bowe versus Andrew Golota, which ended in an unprecedented full-scale riot at Madison Square Garden. There’s also Mike Tyson’s infamous ear-munch on a shocked Evander Holyfield. Based on solid research and written in a dramatic, you-are-there style, this book pulls back the curtain on the squared circle to reveal the seamier side of the sweet science.