I blog from Boston, where I am to attend the Ricky Hatton-Luis Collazo 147-pound fight at the new Boston Garden tonight. Despite being one of America's best sports towns, Boston hasn't hosted such a marquee fight since the days of Marvelous Marvin Hagler and the old Boston Garden. Perhaps this has a lot to do with boxing falling off the marquee in recent years. Multiple "champions" at each weight class, the alphabet soup of sanctioning organizations impeding titlist vs. titlist fights, a redirection of would-be American boxers into football, basketball, and other sports, the once-a-year fighter replacing the fighting champion, the emergence of mixed-martial arts, and elite fighters increasingly coming from abroad all combine to diminish the American public's interest in boxing. I'm still interested enough to fork over $115 to watch the fights live, though. Apparently, several thousand Englishmen are too. And since the invading horde is more soccer-hooligan Englishman than Prince-Charles Englishman, some of the best fights might neither be on the scheduled card, nor in the ring. Boxing's decline has come in spite of some great boxing in recent years: the Mickey Ward-Arturo Gatti trilogy and the Diego Corrales-Jose Luis Castillo fight-of-the-millenium prove that great fights, and not necessarily great fighters, put people in the seats. A great fighter, undefeated Ricky Hatton, motivated me to buy a ticket. Great fights will determine whether my money was well spent.

I'm heading to the fight tonight as well, Dan. Hopefully Hatton can beat Collazo, win another tuneup, and set the stage for a showdown with Floyd Mayweather, Jr. next year.

Get the hell out of this town you conservative pig