No athlete envisions ending a career on a loss, but in the brutal sport of boxing it is sometimes the only way to convince the boxer that his or her time has arrived. Chris Byrd (40-5-1, 21 KOs), the 37-year-old Flint native who now lives in Las Vegas, may have gotten the call to hang up the gloves with his ninth-round TKO loss to Shaun George (17-2, 8 KOs) earlier this month before a national audience on ESPN2.

Clip Productions, Greg Ahrens Promotions and Heavy Hitter Promotions have been a good thing for Detroit boxing. The three have joined forces in the kitchen concocting a surefire recipe to sate the Detroit boxing fan’s appetite. Using local talent fresh from the amateur garden, they’ve been tossing them in a sauté pan with fine-seasoned veterans, then serving them up as an array of appetizers for a hungry crowd. Not the fast food genre either.

With John Duddy and Andy Lee, two of boxing’s youngest prospects in contention to challenge for Kelly Pavlik’s middleweight title now out of the picture – Duddy gave a poor performance and suffered an eye injury, and Lee lost – all eyes turned to Monroe’s Bronco McKart (51-9, 31 KO’s) and Houston’s Raul Marquez (41-3, 29 KO’s) collision last Saturday at the Soaring Eagle Casino & Resort in Mt. Pleasant. McKart, the former WBO Jr. middleweight champion (1996), and Marquez, the former IBF Jr. middleweight champion (1997), faced each other in a 10-round contest, hoping a win would propel them to the front of Pavlik’s dance list.

Clip Productions, along with Heavy Hitter Promotions, happy with the support of their December show in Dearborn, returned to the Ford Community and Performing Arts Center for a second round.

The recent fight card at The Palace of Auburn Hills was billed as “Fire & Ice,” and the marquee said it all. The first three bouts of the scheduled six were a little on the icy side and three bouts that followed set the ring on fire. The use of “Ice” in the billing was a little ironic as it proved to be the biggest knockout punch of the evening.

Heavy Hitter Promotions hosted its inaugural boxing event Dec. 13 at the Ford Community & Performing Arts Center in Dearborn. Despite having everything that could go wrong with a show happen, the event turned out to be a pleasant surprise, thanks in large part to the main event.

Detroit’s top boxer, Mary Jo Sanders (24-0) returned to the ring on Thursday, Nov. 29, ending an eight-month layoff, and mercilessly dispatched Cleveland’s Veronica Rucker – showing the packed house at Andiamo’s of Warren the possible reason why Laila Ali has been avoiding a confrontation with her.

The 2007 year is midway through Round 9 and most people have the Oscar De La Hoya-Floyd Mayweather Jr. bout as the year’s leading story. The pre-fight hype generated the biggest worldwide interest in sports history, making way for the largest pay-per-view buy and live gate revenue for a boxing event. The fight may have lacked the brutality and blood often associated with the sport, but it highlighted the artistry and science that has enabled boxing to endure centuries as the one true sport.