There were chartered flights in the air, heading for the United States, two days before the bout. British dignitaries and sportsmen -- among them the mayor of Turpin's home town -- were en route.

"Sweet Thunder" (Knopf, 464 pages, $27.95), by Wil Haygood: The boxer Sugar Ray Robinson was a man of glittering skill and deep complexity. So complex, in fact, that several writers — including ...

The item in Walter Winchell’s column one day last June sounded genuinely solicitous. “Sugar Ray Robinson and gambler-shylocks are at war,” it read. “Buddies rushed out of Harlem bars and saved him ...

In Valatie, where he lived for two decades, Joey Archer wasn’t recognized as the boxer who sent Sugar Ray Robinson into retirement or the man who fought twice for the world middleweight title at ...