Mark Kriegel has spent more than four decades digging for answers to that question and its corollaries: What transforms mere athletes into icons? What separates the fighter from his facade? And victory from virtue? The answers — culled from his work as a bestselling biographer, newspaper columnist and Emmy Award-winning television analyst (ESPN, NFL Network, Showtime and Zuffa Boxing) — have rendered portraits of ballplayers and boxers as you’ve never seen them before.
Kriegel is a two-time New York Times bestselling author. In 1990, his first magazine piece — “The People’s Court,” about the culture of basketball in New York — was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in feature writing. In 2021, he won the Nat Fleischer Award for career excellence in boxing writing. He’s also won three Sports Emmys for his work on Showtime and the NFL Network. His work has been anthologized in The GenX Reader, At the Fights: American Writers on Boxing, The Book of Boxing, Sports Illustrated’s Great Football Writing and Fathers & Sons & Sports.
“[Baddest Man] cements Mark Kriegel as the greatest chronicler of fighting and fighters, even ahead of such lions as W.C. Heinz and William Nack and Norman Mailer.”
“One of America’s finest living sportswriters.”
“The best writer on sports that we have.”