The Rumble is back up. Lot of problems over there last week, as I’m sure many of you saw. The Sporting News server has been crashing regularly and taking down all of their sites. But thankfully, it’s back up and running just in time for fight week. Just a reminder to all you Masians – all of our usual big-fight business will be going down over there, including the prognog and accompanying contest.
One more word – while we’re all going apeshit over May/Marquez, our man Kurt is headed over to Germany to watch his fighter, Giovanni Lorenzo, fight Sebastian Sylvester (one of the worst two-first-name names I ever did hear) for the vacant IBF middleweight strap. Let’s wish Kurt and Giovanni well and hope they come home with the belt in tow. For those of you who missed it, here’s my interview with Kurt from the summer of 2008 about the arc of Giovanni’s career.
It started with Cassius Marcellus Clay and now it’s come full circle to Muhammad Ali.
About seven years ago, I went to an auction at Sotheby’s and saw a photograph by Flip Schulke of Muhammad Ali,then Cassius Clay,in the Miami years before the first Liston fight. It was the only boxing photo in a large lot of photographs that had nothing to do with sport, so of course it immediately caught my eye. This was before Corbis and Getty had put their archives online and therefore before I had spent countless hours looking at old pictures of Ali. I had never seen images from that moment before. Clay was skinny and young, unmarked by the battles to come and full of the electricity of knowing how good you are before you’ve had a chance to prove it. In the photo, taken in Angelo Dundee’s 5th Street Gym in Miami, Clay’s side-stretching, hands behind his head as he leans left, eyes tracking the camera. He’s wearing a t-shirt that says Cassius Clay,in a Coca-Colaish font where a script C with a long tail stands in for the first letter of Cassius and Clay. Confronted by such beauty, I could only think one thing: I need that mother——- t-shirt. Read the rest of this entry »
No Mas and The Sporting News are partnering on a new website dedicated to both boxing and MMA to be called “The Rumble.” Below you can see the masthead, and if you want a more detailed view, you can just go on over to the actual site and take a gander.
There are a lot of kinks still to be ironed out, and we haven’t started publishing there yet, but the plan is that we’re going to get it up and running with content this week and then launch it officially and publicize next week in time for the pre-May/Marquez and UFC 103 festivities.
I’m very proud to announce the debut of “Hammer of Tor”, a new short documentary directed by Ben Younger, who wrote and directed Boiler Room and Prime, featuring up and coming New York City heavyweight Tor Hamer (7-0, 6KOS).
Click here to check it out, and if you’re interested in the behind the scenes read on after the jump.
I can’t help it, I kind of like Paulie Malignaggi. When I first started watching him he was enjoyable as a cartoon heel, a fun guy to root against. His fast-talking, guido, frost-tipped, metrosexual act made him eminently loathable. His fighting style is unattractive; a retreating, jabbing, clowning, and spoiling mush that can be borderline painful. He seemed a mockery of the slick African-American fighting tradition mixed with the righteous indignation and attitude I most prefer.
But he took his two beatings , from Cotto and Hatton , like a man and I started to warm a little. And Saturday’s fight against Juan Diaz was one to remember.
Now, first, let me say the cries of robbery seem a little overstated to me. I didn’t keep score, but I had the general feeling the fight was a pick’em with enough close rounds that it wouldn’t be a tragedy either way. Of course, I also knew who the HBO kept boy was and, as such, had no doubt that Diaz would be the winner.
No Mas’s agency side Office of AIR is now the agency of record for Everlast, and we’ve been working with them on videos to promote their new fight gloves. Historically they’ve only ever offered one fight glove but this year they introduced “The MX”, a made in Mexico punchers glove that compares favorably to Reyes, and the Protex 3. The Protex offers the kind of protection a volume puncher with fragile hands might be looking for, and Paulie, apparently consulted on its development.
Check the video below, wherein Paulie waffles on whether he’ll use the Protex 3 or the less padded Mexican. The glove he comes out in tonight may offer an early clue on his fight strategy.
btw, last few months have been crazy for me between getting married and the amazing things happening at The Mas (more to come on that soon). But I’m concerned I may have stiffed a couple contest winners. If you won and haven’t received your gear yet, please leave a comment below or get in touch direct if you have my email. Good luck tonight and congratulations to KRONK’s Andy Lee who we shot last night for The Undercard. 8th round TKO in Indiana.
(Gentleman, we’ve got the august Shoefly on the prognog piece this week, and yes, the contest is on. Call the round, call the cards, call it call it call it and win a Mas shirt of your choice. But remember… be specific, be very specific. -L)
posted by Shoefly
There’s losing, there’s losing by knockout, and then there’s losing by beating. The type of grueling, pounding, and unmanning hurt they don’t tell you about when you first walk into the gym; the sort of hiding a proud kid who always got his way could never imagine. I’m thinking here of a fight like Calzhage/Lacy. A man enters the ring as a champion and exits a bruise on legs.
I generally think the modern obsession with a fighter being damaged and faded following a loss is unhelpful and inaccurate, but when a boxer receives the deep hurt it’s impossible not to look for signs of a changed man.
And that’s what Saturday’s Diaz/Malignaggi fight is really about; how much of Juan Diaz is left? Did the great Juan Manual Marquez knock something essential loose when he ripped two-dozen of the most lovely uppercuts you’re likely to see into the younger man? It was a terrific fight, one of those classic encounters that are so familiar across the course of boxing history; the young lion vs. the old champ, the reckless pressure fighter vs. the counterpunching genius.
Dudes, again I refer you to my piece at The Sporting Blog, which touches on a subject near and dear to our hearts, the two gigantic, rival promotions of the fall.
To which I will add that this annoying situation where I am generally writing my pieces over at TSB and then linking to them here is going to be resolved soon once and for all, and I think to everyone’s satisfaction. More on that very soon…
Mayweather/Marquez vs. Pacquiao/Cotto Could Be the Fight of 2009
“If Floyd really wants to take a sure path towards making this fight enormous, and if he wants to immediately supersede any other news that surrounds him or his camp or the fight as it is posited right now, he has it in his power to do so… All he has to do, with his inimitable gusto, is insult the honor of Mexican boxers, Mexican people, and Mexico itself. Then, oh man … then all hell would break loose.”
Gents, I bring you my recent pieces from The Sporting Blog concerning Roy Jones’ performance against Jeff Lacy (in which I pay undue attention to an aging Phillies’ pitcher of note) and also last night’s highly disappointing news that the Pavlik/Williams fight has been postponed and consequently may never happen.
Roy Jones: The Pedro Martinez of Boxing?
He was embarrassed by Calzaghe, but Calzaghe was a truly great fighter still at the peak of his powers. I couldn’t help but wonder on Saturday while I was watching Roy take Lacy apart how he would fare in Showtime’s super middleweight tournament. Of course, Roy hasn’t fought at 68 in over ten years, and it’s unlikely that he’d be inclined to go back to that weight now. But if he did … could he compete in that tournament? Could he eke out wins over the likes of Jermain and Andre Dirrell and Carl Froch?
Kelly Pavlik vs. Paul Williams Postponed, Possibly Cancelled
What’s left now is to see whether the two promoters can come to some agreement on a make-up date, which is quite a dicey proposition in the ever delicate world of boxing negotiations. There always was something about this fight that seemed too good to be true , two big, exciting fighters in their primes taking a huge risk in agreeing to face each other in a matchup that, although hotly anticipated by boxing diehards, doesn’t even have the crossover juice to warrant big-time pay-per-view money.
I don’t believe in signs or meaning or an universal narrative arc except where myself and my inescapable impending misfortune are concerned. That said… man, it’s been a black-cat-passing-beneath-a-ladder-while-spilling-some-salt kind of summer hasn’t it? All we’ve had is painful negotiations, spoiled fights, and the lasting stink of the true violence and death that the sport is really a manifest pushing away from. It’s enough to convert even a true believer in the church of chance to doubt his own faith.
Which is why Roger Mayweather’s ’situation†has me worrying in ways that I prefer to devote toward morbid self-attention. Many dislike the Mayweathers, and I understand why, but I have always found them engaging and alive in ways that few are. They have a charm all their own, the out-sized self-love of the sociopath and the holy fool. Roger, in particular, mixes personal regard with gallows humor in a near vaudeville act that at points seems too perfect to be accidental.
“Why does Bill Gates still build them motherfuckin’ computers?”
