A Fighting Life ─ My Seven Decades in Boxing

For more than seven decades, Lou Duva has been a mainstay in the boxing world. With his craggy face and the bulbous nose of a boxer with questionable defensive skills, Duva is one of the most enduring images of boxing, having climbed in and out of rings for championship fights on six different continents. In Lou Duva: A Fighting Life, you’ll hear firsthand the exhilarating story of how Duva balanced family life and his work with nineteen different world champions.

The son of Italian immigrants who landed at Ellis Island and lived in Manhattan before moving the family to Paterson, New Jersey, Duva had the odds stacked against him. Rather than settling, Duva was able to claw his way out of poverty to reach the pinnacle of the boxing business, where he laid the foundation of Main Events Promotionsone of the most powerful boxing promotions companies in the sport.

Lou Duva: A Fighting Life chronicles an amazing boxing career filled with ups and downs. From his training of champions including Evander Holyfield and Lennox Lewis to staging some of the biggest bouts in the history of boxing, including the classic match between Sugar Ray Leonard and Thomas Hearns, to the notorious Riot at the Garden,” Duva pulls no punches as he shares his Hall of Fame life for the first time.

Lou Duva has been a boxing trainer for over fifty years and involved in the sport for seven decades. He has trained nineteen world champions, promoted boxing events in over twenty countries, and is a member of the International Boxing Hall of Fame. He’s been involved with such champions as Evander Holyfield, Arturo Gatti, Hector Macho” Camacho, and Lennox Lewis. Duva lives in Little Falls, New Jersey.

Tim Smith is a former sportswriter for the New York Daily News and the New York Times. He has written about boxing, baseball, the NFL, and the NBA. He lives in Jackson, New Jersey.