“Some people know the fight game, and some people know how to write. Charles Farrell is one of the only people in America who truly knows both. That’s why he’s my favorite boxing writer. Read this book and he’ll be yours, too.”—Hamilton Nolan, writer for The Guardian and author of The Hammer: Power, Inequality, and the Struggle for the Soul of Labor
BOSTON, MA—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.
MORE PRAISE FOR THE LEGEND OF MITCH “BLOOD” GREEN AND OTHER BOXING ESSAYS
“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
“On boxing, Charles Farrell is the best writer we have. I learned this many moons ago when I read my first Farrell piece and he has only gotten better. So what’s the secret sauce? Near as I can figure: (a) command of the subject, (b) lucid prose, (c) unique insights into an opaque and exploitive world, a world most fans never see. Also, he’s funny. Really funny. To label Farrell a ‘boxing writer,’ however, would be an injustice. He’s a writer, a remarkable one, and his sensibility is equally revelatory and readable about music, politics, and what A. J. Liebling lovingly dubbed ‘the low life.’ These essays all feature boxing but it would be a mistake to think that’s all they address. Rather, they are concerned with marginal people who live in extremity from choice and need, and suffer because of it. Farrell’s clear-eyed compassion for fighters might be the reason he didn’t get rich off boxing but it also is a big part of why his work will endure.”—Robert Anasi, author of The Gloves: A Boxing Chronicle
CHARLES FARRELL has spent his professional life moving between music and boxing, with occasional detours. He has managed five world champions, and has played and recorded with many of the musicians he most admires—Evan Parker and Ornette Coleman among them. His first book, (Low)life: A Memoir of Jazz, Fight-Fixing, and the Mob, was published by Hamilcar in 2021. Farrell lives outside of Boston.
HAMILCAR PUBLICATIONS is a Boston-based publisher focused on true crime, professional boxing, hip-hop, and more. Our books appeal to fans of these fascinating, often-intersecting worlds as well as to readers who are simply passionate about great nonfiction storytelling and beautiful book design.
The Legend of Mitch “Blood” Green and Other Boxing Essays
Charles Farrell
Hamilcar Publications
March 25, 2025, in the US | March 27 in the UK
$34.99/£26.99 Hardcover | 6×9 208 pp. | ISBN: 9781949590807
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