Falling Hard

In Falling Hard: A Rookie's Year in Boxing, Chris Jones recounts his first year at ringside. He gets dressed down by Don King, gambles his way through Vegas, meets the troubled guy who found Evander Holyfield's ear, goes to Muhammad Ali's birthday party, and witnesses Prince Naseem Hamed explode while Mike Tyson implodes. Like the sport itself, Falling Hard is equal measures of victory and defeat — an intoxicating combination that leaves Jones down for the count more than once. Determined to stay objective, he instead becomes addicted to boxing's special brand of pain, and what begins as a simple curiosity soon escalates into an unhealthy obsession. Jones writes with the rhythm of the sport he covers: hard and fast, with the drama of fiction but the truth of journalism. Sometimes humorous, always suspenseful, Falling Hard is a travelogue for the fight game, boxing distilled to its essence by sportswriting's newest star.