Found this little word search book at the local dollar store — in addition to great figures like Alex Haley and Ida B. Wells, it’s go pages on Joe Louis and Muhammad Ali. See below

ACAB all cops are afraid of bees

For the Boxing Tribune substack, I wrote about eight boxing articles from outside the sport’s echo chamber. By turns insightful, challenging, and exhilarating — take a look 🥊👇 boxingtribune.substack.com/p/eight-boxi...

Helluva first page! #HittingTheBooks

Made it to a bookstore this weekend and brought home these two fellas.

Change of plans: putting this off for a few days or a week.

So impressed with the fact that Guernica published two essays very recently that consider boxing within larger conversations. Both great work. This piece, “Ring” by Youssef Rakha and “Boxing: Against the Games We Are Given” by Alina Ştefănescu (which I’ll link below) www.guernicamag.com/ring/

DJ Alan Cumming, jai alai on Instagram, and a new coterie of oafs and cretins: read Issue Seventeen’s Mentions, by @emotrophywife.bsky.social, @cryinmeehan.bsky.social, @andrewrihn.bsky.social, @elvia-wilk.bsky.social, and more www.thedriftmag.com/mention/issu...

For The Drift magazine, I wrote a brief piece about the minor lunacy that was Jake Paul vs Anthony Joshua www.thedriftmag.com/mentions/

Happy Tax Day to all my last-minute filers! m.youtube.com/watch?v=f8YX...

Lizzy & David accomplished something special with The Spit Bucket. No exaggeration to say The Spit Bucket has been not only my favorite boxing project of late, but no other creative project has encouraged me to push my process and my work as productively.

When I imagined fighting the robots I didn’t imagine poems as part of that but that’s on me. www.euronews.com/next/2025/12...

"I’m more and more convinced the real fight is to live with the blows—the lies, the betrayals, the sorrow: all that can happen in the monstrous and unending ring of human relations—knowing that you will inevitably lose." -- Youssef Rakha www.guernicamag.com/ring/

Another bookshop, another couple titles for the ever-growing to-be-read pile.

Visited a bookstore in Kent and came home with these.

Watch 434 Avant-Garde and Surreal Short Films Online: Salvador Dalí, Marcel Duchamp, Luis Buñuel and Many More

Manuscript's at ~ word limit, still quite a bit left to work on though. Christ I'm tired. Seven weeks to go. I don't miss deadlines, so it's a hard n' firm 29 May submission. If you want/ed more A Thousand Blows, more Hezekiah Moscow, more Alec Munroe, more Sugar Goodson, I have a book for that 👊🏻👊🏾🥊🦁

Happy Easter to those who celebrate. Regardless, here’s a beautiful work by Michelangelo, the Rondanini Pieta, a sculpture of Mary holding the recently crucified Jesus. He worked on this specific version right up until the days before his own death, and it remains unfinished.

This is the schedule for #HittingTheBooks — an unofficial, online book club. It’s free. It’s literature. It’s boxing. It’s open to anyone and everyone. Repost, share, comment. Let’s do this!

Ding! Ding! Ding! Round Two of #HittingTheBooks has begun. Protect yourselves at all times and come out reading! For April, May, and June, we'll be reading W. C. Heinz's 1958 novel THE PROFESSIONAL. Post about it. Take pictures. Make videos. Comment, like, share. Open to anyone and everyone.

#HittingTheBooks Two wonderfully thoughtful end-of-book reflections on THE HARDER THEY FALL. Links are in the Google doc but I’ll also post them below.

That’s a wrap! After 3 months of reading, discussing, and posting about Budd Schulberg’s novel THE HARDER THEY FALL, the first installment of #HittingTheBooks comes to a close. Thanks to everyone who participated and followed along. Next up: W. C. Heinz’s THE PROFESSIONAL.

Got my Ali stamps in a frame and hung in the wall

Just a reminder #HittingTheBooks is wrapping up THE HARDER THEY FALL this week and moving on to THE PROFESSIONAL for the months of April, May, and June Read along, post your thoughts, and enjoy! #Boxing literature is for everyone!

Weird boxing history: I’ve been driving by this construction site in Canton run by the Ruhlin company. As a boxing nerd (ahem, I mean “historian”) I know that Gus Ruhlin, aka The Akron Giant, was born in Canton, OH. Could it just be a coincidence?

I spoke with Chris from Monster Complex about the overlap between boxing and monsters. Specifically, I talked about boxing literature to help locate pulp writer Robert E. Howard's (creator of Conan the Barbarian) place within that canvas canon. www.monstercomplex.com/blog/hold-th...

Part of the fun of reading THE HARDER THEY FALL is thinking up historical or contemporary parallels to the story. It’s tempting to focus on real-life versions of Toro, but what about Eddie, our compromised narrator shilling what he knows to a sub-par product. #HittingTheBooks

Revising a boxing essay today means revisiting a loose genealogy of ideas that I first encountered while doing academic work, and have deeply impacted all aspects of my life since. All the ideas relate to identity -- who we are, how we got here, and what we can become 1/6

"Just months before, I had said to a friend, ‘I think there is going to be an AI-psychosis-fuelled mass shooting soon.” That's what Karen Hao said when I asked her about the horrific school shooting at Tumble Ridge. One of the families is suing Open AI. Min 48 www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1B_...

Writing craft books at the library book sale today

I would like to personally award Afroman the Bluesky Medal of Valor for Exemplary Service in Bringing Back Shame

Soda bread with dark beer in place of soda water — solid choice!

For St Patrick's Day, some of my favorite rebel and rebel-adjacent Irish tunes youtu.be/hqwgH82XWK8?...

Shout out to @andrewrihn.bsky.social for inviting me to the Book Club Cookout... Morgan Campbell Hits The Books: The Harder They Fall bymorgancampbell.com/2026/03/16/m...

Here’s a great read from a #HittingTheBooks enthusiast! Wonderful insight into making connections between the kind of flim-flam PR in the book and the current onslaught of AI slop we are bombarded with. Was THE HARDER THEY FALL an expose on fake news?

#HittingTheBooks Budd Schulberg’s 1947 novel was adapted for the screen in 1956. He’d struck big in 1954 with ON THE WATERFRONT, and corruption in boxing was in the newspapers for real. The timing seemed perfect.

happy Saturday to one of the great covers of Gainsbourg’s original 🫶 youtu.be/03XVu2TiNyg?...

Today marks the 153rd birthday of hugely talented and criminally overlooked Barbados Joe Walcott. Born in British Guiana, he grew up in Barbados, spent much of his adult life in Boston, but is buried in the small town of Dalton, Ohio.

Working title: Boxing’s Brutal Appeal: Striking Images of Spectacle and Violence

I’m so glad you enjoyed it @garelitlover.bsky.social

We’re under a tornado watch until 5:00pm and I just signed a book contract. Nonfiction essays on boxing, violence, and art. Look for it in 2027.

CH 21 & 22 — the end of the book. CH 21, the big fight, a masochistic beat down on Toro delivered by the champ. CH 22, a fast-paced roundup of the aftermath. Toro’s hospitalized, money gone, his contract sold. Eddie realizes just how low he’s sunk - then end. #HittingTheBooks

Today’s the anniversary of Ali-Frazier; here’s my favorite bit of trivia about the fight

In honor of #NationalBookDay I have roped a stellar set of celebrities into 100% for real endorsing #HittingTheBooks the only unofficial online boxing book club you’ll ever need But wait there’s more ⬇️

I’ll be attending a local club show on Saturday. Excited to see the homegrown talent, including several from my own gym

For #HittingTheBooks readers — boxing all night on TCM!

CH 19 & 20 concern themselves with Toro’s big fight against Gus Lennert. I love that it opens with these newspaper columns, then pulls back and Eddie offers meta-commentary on how he’s the one who wrote them.

March has come in with more administration lyin’, which means all the more reason to share my 265th #ScholarSunday thread of public scholarly writing, podcasts, new & forthcoming books from the last week. Add more below, share as widely as you can, & solidarity, all! 🗃️ +

THE FIGHTER (1952) is based on Jack London's 1911 short story "The Mexican. It weaves together two of London's passions: boxing and revolution. The protagonist volunteers for the Revolution, then secretly goes out to prize-fight -- buying rifles with his winnings. A thread 🧵