All pictures courtesy of Reuters

Former world heavyweight boxing champion Riddick Bowe’s Muay Thai debut ended in an agonising and embarrassing second round KO defeat.

Bowe, 45, was defeated on Friday by 30-year-old Russian Levgen Golovkin.

‘Big Daddy’ suffered a torrent of abuse to his shins as Golovkin hammered him with low kicks, causing the American to fall five times in the bout’s short duration.

The fifth and final fall caused his loss via technical knockout.

Bowe, who beat Evander Holyfield in 1992 to become the undisputed heavyweight champion of the world, ended his combat sports retirement because he was reportedly

There are a number of boxers who, despite the best efforts of their promoters and those who stand to make money off their success and popularity, fail to fulfil their lofty expectations.

They are, though, fun, entertaining and thoroughly enjoyable boxers to watch, even if they never reach the ascendant heights predicted for them.

Amir Khan, the British welterweight contender and 2004 Olympic silver medallist, is one such fighter. Eight years into his professional career, no sane person would rank Khan alongside the elite British fighters in history, but he remains a fun guy to watch and

Boxing is more than just a contest to find out who punches the hardest. Part of the magnificence of the sport is watching a fast, smart, technician discover a way to defuse the power of a knockout artist.

But 1,000 out of 1,000 fighters would accept if someone could promise them that, even for a night, they could have the kind of devastating punching power that Marcos Maidana possesses.

Maidana's blistering punching power brought one of the year's most entertaining slugfests to a way-too-soon conclusion, as he battered Josesito Lopez into submission at 1:18 of the sixth round in front of a

Adonis Stevenson, understandably, would prefer to keep his past buried, the skeletons locked securely in his closet.

He stands on the verge of a crowning achievement, of capturing the WBC light heavyweight title less than 10 years after he took up the sport.

Stevenson will face Chad Dawson on Saturday in the main event of an HBO-televised card from the Bell Centre in Montreal, with a chance to become a star in front of him.

He's one of the few one-punch knockout boxers in a sport that delights in knockouts, a guy whose aggressive, hard-hitting style could make him, at 35, an overnight

Afolabi takes the fight to Huck in their second bout last year (AFP)

Last week I wrote about the lack of profile for Britain’s super-bantamweight world titlist Jamie McDonnell. Come Sunday, it’s entirely possible that he will have a rival in the ‘invisible champion’ stakes in the shape of cruiserweight Ola Afolabi.

On Saturday night in Berlin, Londoner Afolabi will make his third attempt at wresting the WBO world strap from Serbian-born Marco Huck. The first two fights, also in Huck’s adopted homeland of Germany, ended in a decision for the champion in 2009, and a somewhat controversial draw last year after a memorable scrap in Erfurt.

It is perhaps

Lenroy Thompson had a problem. A major problem, really, one that might be impossible to solve.

It went beyond the fact that he'd lost his spot as the super heavyweight on the 2012 U.S. Olympic boxing team for failing to report his whereabouts to the United States Anti-Doping Agency three times in an 18-month span.

It went well beyond the fact that he'd lost his sponsors, his health care and, in many ways, his dignity.

With no other ideas about how to earn a living, he went to work in Kansas City's Ringside Gym and taught people how to box. As a personal trainer, though, he wasn't his best

Perception may be Andy Ruiz Jr.'s biggest foe.

The young, unbeaten heavyweight contender doesn't have a chiseled body. Despite dropping more than 50 pounds since his pro debut, he still looks pudgy and non-athletic.

Few would look at him and see a fast-handed, high-volume puncher.

But Ruiz is one of the game's rising heavyweight prospects because, despite appearances, he's got extraordinarily quick hands and he knows that throwing one punch at a time is rarely a smart move.

Ruiz (18-0, 12 KOs) will continue his progression toward contender status on June 8, when he meets veteran Carl Davis in

Las Vegas sports book directors are notoriously tight-lipped about their customers' wagers, and rightly so. They're particularly circumspect when it comes to reports of big-money wagers made by celebrities.

So there is no way of telling whether the otherwise innocuous tweet posted on Twitter by @Pregame_Steam that superstar boxer Floyd Mayweather bet more than $5.9 million (£3.85m) on the Miami Heat to defeat the Indiana Pacers in the final game of their play-off series with a seven-point handicap is true.

Yahoo! Sports was unable to reach either Mayweather or Leonard Ellerbe, the CEO of