"With his trademark insider acuity, unsentimental compassion, and faultless eye and ear, Charles Farrell gives us an indelible portrait of one of boxing's great characters and a definitive account of what happens when talent runs afoul of the way things work in the world."—Carlo Rotella, contributor to The New York Times Magazine and author of Cut Time: An Education at the Fights

Mitch "Blood" Green had more things going for him to make big money in boxing than nearly any fighter in history. A six-foot-six, 225-pound heavyweight with a chiseled physique and a traffic-stopping look, Green had ironclad street credibility—he was the gang leader of the Black Spades—and four New York Golden Gloves heavyweight titles.

But his penchant for mayhem, drugs, and chaos, while keeping him in the news, torpedoed his pro boxing career. He lost a high-profile decision to Mike Tyson at Madison Square Garden, got into a tabloid-grabbing late-night street fight with Tyson at an after-hours boutique in Harlem, and then disappeared.

Until Charles Farrell found him.

In The Legend of Mitch "Blood" Green and Other Boxing Essays, Farrell captures life in the boxing business from its deepest interior, and offers additional portraits of characters as wide-ranging as Donald Trump, Floyd Patterson, Bert Cooper, Charley Burley, Peter McNeeley, and Muhammad Ali. Trenchant, fearless, and often flat-out funny, there has never been a boxing book like this, and there will never be another.