Merry merry, fight fans. If you’re a follower of the fistic arts and happen to find yourself holding a little extra holiday coin these days or one of those inevitable Barnes and Noble gift cards, you could do worse for yourself than to blow it on Jack Cavanaugh’s new biography of Gene Tunney, titled ‘Tunney: Boxing’s Brainiest Champ and His Upset of the Great Jack Dempsey.” It’s a strange book, ultimately unsatisfying, but still a relatively quick and engaging read.

As for its strangeness, the first thing you should know about the book is that to characterize it as a Gene Tunney biography is misleading. The subtitle is closer to the mark, because the book is as much about Dempsey as it is about Tunney. But for a good two thirds of the way through, it’s not really about either of them, or it is, but only in so far as you find them in the midst of a mishmash of boxing stories told in a rambling anecdotal style that often has little rhyme or reason. A description of Dempsey’s early days as a fighter in Colorado leads to a description of the corruption in boxing in the early part of the century which leads to a chronological history of Italian heavyweight Primo Carnera, a titlist in the 30′s known for winning fixed bouts. These types of illogical leaps and sidebars occur everywhere until Cavanaugh reaches the two Dempsey/Tunney fights, at which point he focuses and the story goes from meandering to gripping.

But Cavanaugh is an able boxing yarn-spinner, so even when he strays far off message (almost an entire chapter, for instance, devoted to the trials and tribulations of Battling Levinsky, who Tunney beat for the American light heavyweight title), he is entertaining and does a sound job of bringing the era to life. Which is gratifying for the true fight fan, because this is the golden era of the sweet science. The characters he’s dealing with , Levinsky, Harry Greb, Tex Rickard, Leo Flynn, Doc Kearns, Damon Runyan, Grantland Rice , are some of the biggest and most colorful the sport has ever produced.

Unfortunately, in the midst of this Dickensian cast, the main character gets short shrift, which is disappointing. I’ve always been fascinated by the Tunney myth , fighter as thinker, thinker as fighter , and I was eager for an intimate portrait of the man who twice tamed the true Man Killer of the Gilded Age and in between the two bouts took time off to give a Shakespeare lecture at Yale.

Clearly Cavanaugh is as taken with that myth as I am, and yet he doesn’t penetrate it in the slightest, such that if you know the thumbnail sketch of Tunney’s life going in , fighting Marine, smart, read a lot, a great fighter who beat Dempsey twice, married an heiress and retired young , you aren’t bound to leave the book knowing much more than you did in the first place. I suppose that’s a pretty damning accusation of a biography, but there you are. I enjoyed the book in spite of this glaring fault. In fact, I read it greedily. If you’re as fascinated with this era of boxing as I am, I think you’ll do the same.

I begin the week’s recap by reminding you to please, please, please send in your votes and arguments for The No Mas Fighter of the Year and The No Mas Fight of the Year. Aight. On to the week that was:

12/17
Looked like a right cross
An analysis of the Knicks/Nuggets smackdown along with some Youtube footage and another call for the Carmelo/Al Harrington fight for the Heavyweight championship of the NBA.

Jesus what a fight
Large breaks down the Jason Litzau/Jose Hernandez shocker and gives mad No Mas love to Hernandez for being El Mas Macho.

K.O.W. – Please Hammer Don’t Hurt ‘Em
The No Mas Knockout of the Week, with Julian “The Hawk” Jackson laying the heavy on Herol “The Bomber” Graham. “…the Hawk turned the tide like a freakin tsunami. He dropped a bomb on The Bomber in the fourth round that quite literally put his ass to sleep. If you’ve never seen this one before, brace yourself – it’s a mother. Graham did not regain consciousness for more than five minutes after the punch.”

12/18
The Mother of All Birthdays
A No Mas birthday celebration that includes shoutouts to luminaries like Cobb, Stone Cold, DMX, and Keith Richards.

12/19
Jarts mate… they’re called “jarts”
Large takes you back to the day the jarting died.

The White Shadow is running on YES
Thorpe? Check. Coolidge. Double check? Heyward? Are you kidding me? YES Network is running episodes of The White Shadow. Talk about Christmas coming early.

12/20
Sweet Like Sugar
The 60th anniversary of Sugar Ray Robinson winning his first world title, taking the welterweight crown from Tommy Bell with a unanimous decision.

12/21
“Show me a good loser and I’ll show you a loser”
The anniversary of Vince Lombardi’s last game, a loss, as his Redskins went down 20-10 to the Cowboys.

12/22
Death of a Salesman
No Mas remembers Doug Ault, who committed suicide on this day two years ago. “For all us baseball-card-obsessed sports dorks, he’s a sobering reminder that the majority of professional athletes are just normal people having their fifteen minutes on the big stage that fifteen minutes later no one will care much about one way or the other. At which point, they’re on their own in the big bad world, just like the rest of us.”

Here are the No Mas candidates for Fight of the Year. Again, all write-in candidacies will be given due consideration in direct proportion to the fervor of the argument. Roll the tape:

1. Manny Pacquiao/Erik Morales II – Don’t let the three-round debacle in November cloud your memory of the second fight in the trilogy back in January, because Pacquiao/Morales II was a great fight. El Terrible owned Pac Man early, but in his true warrior fashion, refused to pace himself for the late rounds and paid a dear price for it. Ahead on all scorecards, he ran out of steam at the midway point, and in many ways, by about the eighth round, it felt as if you were watching a once-great champion’s powers dissipating in front of your eyes. At which point, His Pac-ness did what he do, and got the 10th round stoppage.

2. Ricky Hatton/Luis Collazo - The fight in which HBO, Ricky Hatton and all his fans learned that Mr. Manchester ain’t no 147. Collazo got caught in the Hatton buzzsaw 10 seconds into the fight and landed on his back, but after the knockdown Luis C. represented his Brooklyn roots and stood toe-to-toe with Hatton for the duration of the fight. It was a bloody affair, and Collazo was robbed when the judges awarded a unanimous decision to Hatton. If anything, the fight should have been ruled a draw, and one couldn’t help but imagine that the big contract Ricky had just signed with HBO was weighing on the judges minds a little. Of course, Hatton saw the error of his ways immediately, and vacated the welterweight belt he won from Collazo to head back down to 140, where he’ll fight Juan Urango this January.

3. Marco Antonio Barrera/Rocky Juarez I – Another case of the star fighter getting a little more than he bargained for. Of course, unlike Hatton, Barrera has nothing to prove at this stage of his career after the great wars he’s been through. But hubris got the better of him in his May bout with Houston’s Rocky Juarez. Able to tag Juarez with ease in the early rounds, he clearly thought the stoppage was imminent, and went for it with abandon, standing toe-to-toe and slugging for the fences. As it turned out, Juarez is a slugger of the highest order who could take everything Marco was serving up and give as good as he was getting. Spent in the middle rounds, Barrera found himself in legitimate trouble against an under-appreciated, tough-as-nails puncher. From there, it was a race to the finish, as Juarez started to rack up the points and Barrera hung in for dear life, relying on his considerable guile and heart. When the scorecards were initially read, the bout was ruled a draw, which is probably how it should have stayed. But after the fight it was discovered that one of the judges had incorrectly calculated his scorecard and the bout was awarded to Barrera on a split decision. In September, Barrera erased any spectre of doubt from the first fight by schooling Juarez in a rematch, easily winning a unanimous decision. But it was duly noted that the great Mexican did not stand and trade with Juarez in their second meeting. Lesson learned.

4. Jason Litzau/Jose Hernandez – All’s I have to say about this fight I already said, in my post from this past Sunday titled Jesus what a fight. So check that out and then check out the highlights below.

5. Israel Vasquez/Jhonny Gonzalez – Four knockdowns, two for each fighter, a lot of blood, and a seesaw struggle that ended in controversy when Gonzalez’s trainer threw in the towel, never something you expect to see in the middle of Mexican-on-Mexican ultraviolence. Both of these guys have crazy skills and heart to match, and this fight had it all. Highlights below aren’t that good, but all the knockdowns and the stoppage are included.

Two years ago today, former Ranger and Blue Jay Doug Ault turned a shotgun on himself and committed suicide at his home in Tarpon Springs, Florida. He was 54 years old.

Ault played four seasons in the bigs in which his best was 1977, when he hit .245 with eleven homers for Toronto. He is remembered in baseball lore for one thing, which can never be taken away from him – he hit the first home run in Blue Jays history, and then the second, two dingers on Opening Day of 1977 at Exhibition Stadium.

Cut from the Jays after the 1980 season, Ault hung on with the franchise as an off-and-on minor league coach until 1994, during which time he endured a nasty divorce. He became a car salesman, first in Texas and then in Florida, where he remarried. Not much is known about what was going on with him in his last years. At the time of his suicide, he had recently been let go from a dealership in Tarpon Springs.

We do a lot of fallen angel stuff here on No Mas. We’re definitely preoccupied with the guys who fly too close to the sun and then have the all-too-familiar spectacular flameout. But that wasn’t Doug Ault. For all us baseball-card-obsessed sports dorks, he’s a sobering reminder that the majority of professional athletes are just normal people having their fifteen minutes on the big stage that fifteen minutes later no one will care much about one way or the other. At which point, they’re on their own in the big bad world, just like the rest of us.

It’s that time again people – the time for year-end lists left and right, top ten appendectomies of 2007, top fifty screen passes for a six-yard gain, best double anal, top ten Aerosmith concerts before a sporting event, etc.

We here at No Mas care about two year-end awards and two only:

1. Fighter of the Year
2. Fight of the Year

So we begin with topic one. I’ll lay out our candidates for Fight of the Year tomorrow.

We’re giving you five choices for Fighter of the Year, but this is definitely a democracy, so if you want to suggest a write-in candidate, by all means, write him (or her, if you absolutely must) on in. Leave your selections and your arguments as a comment or send them to us as an email. We’ll publish the winners with some of your best quotes next Friday, December 29th.

Aight. The starting five, in alphapbetical order. Let’s go to the videotape:

1. Carlos “Tata” Baldomir – Okay, okay, he finished his boxing year with an all-around pantsing by a one-handed Floyd. But still, this is some serious Rocky shit that transpired right here and should be given legitimate consideration on that front. Holms was a dirt-poor journeyman fighter for most of his life who sold feather dusters on the side in his native Argentina just to feed his family. He gets a shot to fight Zab, presumably to serve as a walking punching bag and give the Brooklyn boy a light workout in front of the hometown Garden crowd as a tune up for Zab’s mega-bout with Floyd. Instead, Tata ruins everyone’s night by pushing Super Judah all over the ring and winning a much-deserved unanimous decision. Then, seven months later, Tata takes his hard head to A.C. and pounds down Arturo Gatti in front of his home crowd. Yeah, Floyd turned his carriage into a pumpkin in November, but nevertheless, this was hands down the best Cinderella story in boxing since Buster Douglas.

2. Miguel Cotto - Right now you’re probably scrolling back over Cotto’s 2007 in your mind and saying to yourself, “wait a second… Large wants to give Cotto FOY for shutting up Paulie Malignaggi?” Well yes, that’s part of it. But more than anything, I think that by next year at this time Cotto is going to be a superstar. It looks like his summer 2007 bout with Antonio Margarito is on (unless one of them pulls a Zab Judah, that is) and that fight will get some major attention in the boxing universe. This was a big year for Cotto, two defenses of his light welter crown, one a high-profile beatdown of Malignaggi, and then a step up to 147 to win the WBA welterweight title by punishing Carlos Quintana. I think that work, along with what it has set up for his future, all makes this Puerto Rican brawler worthy of FOY consideration.

3. Wladimir Klitschko – Another one that I know has you scratching your head. “But Large, you hate Clinch-ko, straight up hate his ass.” Yes. I do. No doubt. Actually he seems like a decent guy, but his ring style is insufferable. But look, I love boxing, and the game is suffering mightily right now for the disheveled nature of the heavyweight class. And whether I like it or not, Wlad made a big move towards proving himself as the true heavyweight champ in ’06, and may well be on his way to unifying the belts in ’07. Two huge, convincing stoppages on the year for the Klinch – seventh-round destructions of Chris Byrd and my man Calvin Brock. I’m not a fan, I’ve made that clear. But I give the man his due on a breakthrough year.

4. Pretty Boy Floyd Mayweather – Two fights for Floyd in 2006, and neither really tested him that much. The Zab fight would have had more juice if Zab hadn’t already thrown up a turd against Baldomir. Nevertheless, for a fighter of Super Judah’s speed and savvy, the ease with which Floyd dispensed with his ass (and don’t give me that “he should have knocked him out” shit, because he was well on his way to the stoppage when the melee broke out) was impressive. Ditto what Floyd did to Baldomir – a guy who punished both Judah and Gatti, and Floyd made him look him like one of the Polish numbskulls in my neighborhood trying to find his way home after a long night at the Krakow. Add to that that he made the fight of the millennium with ODLH for ’07 and you have a first-rate candidacy for FOY – a great year for the pound-for-pound king and the seeds sown for a legacy-making superfight.

5. Manny Pacquaio – Last but not least. It’s gonna be very tough to argue against Pac Man in ’06. He fought the last two thirds of an epic trilogy with Erik Morales, both of them knockouts, with a dominant performance against the very competent Oscar Larious sandwiched in the middle. Manny Pacquiao is quite possibly the biggest fighter in the world right now, and he’s achieved that kind of star wattage at 130 pounds. When a little guy has that kind of stature, you know he’s something special. A Barrera/Pacquiao rematch is a possibility in ’07, and for the true fight fan, that is every bit as exciting a bout as Floyd/Oscar. All of these factors make the case airtight for Pac Man as the 2006 FOY.

So said Vince Lombardi, who coached his last football game on this day in 1969. His Redskins lost to the Cowboys 20-10.

A five-time NFL champion with the Packers, Lombardi (pictured right with fellow NFL Hall-of-Famer Bobby Mitchell) had taken over for the Redskins in 1969 after having spent the entire 1968 season in retirement. He led the team to a 7-5-2 record, its first winning season in 14 years. Quarterback Sonny Jurgenson said of Lombardi in training camp, “I learned more from him in five days than I have in the last twelve years combined.”

The indefatigable coach planned to return to the Redskins for the 1970 campaign, but in June of that year he was diagnosed with intestinal cancer. He died on September 3, 1970. A week after his death, the Super Bowl trophy was renamed the Vince Lombardi trophy.

The greatest pound-for-pound fighter of the 20th century won his first world title on this day 60 years ago. Walker Smith, Jr., a.k.a. Suger Ray Robinson, decisioned Tommy Bell on December 20, 1946, for the world welterweight crown recently vacated by Marty Servo. It was Robinson’s 76th fight as a professional, a brutal bout that saw Sugar Ray hit the canvas in the second, and then put Bell down in the 11th en route to a unanimous decision.

In the course of his astonishing career (173-19-6), Robinson never lost an officially sanctioned welterweight fight (he lost his second fight with Jake LaMotta in 1943 when he himself was a welterweight, but LaMotta weighed 160 and no title was at stake in the bout). He would relinquish the welterweight belt in 1950 to move up to middleweight, defending his title at 147 for the last time by decisioning Charlie Fusari in a great fight. At middleweight, Robinson went on to be a five-time titlist, winning the 160 crown for the first time from his old nemesis LaMotta in 1951.

I been spending a lot of time out in Cali lately so I have to ask – has this been going on for a while or did it just start? I was channel surfing last night and almost gave myself whiplash doing a double take when I came to the YES network and saw my man Ken Reeves droppin knowledge on his Carver crew.

The episode they’re currently showing is not one of the greats – Collins, a powder-blonde white boy from the rich part of town transfers in to Carver and joins the team. Soon everyone finds out that he left his old school because he’s gay and he was getting teased about it all the time and his pops wanted to send him somewhere to toughen him up. Collins and Salami mix it up at one point, which brings the whole thing to a head, prompting Reeves to make a ridiculous speech to the team about homosexuality which seems to basically boil down to “I don’t like it any more than you do, but… well, are sure he’s gay? are ya? maybe he isn’t! ya ever think of that ya bums…” Hey, it was 1979. Will and Grace was a long way off.

No doo-wop shower singing scenes in this episode, no Thorpe in the whole show and very little Coolidge, and a weepy after-school-special speech at the end from Vice Principal Buchanan to the gay dude about how when she was a kid her brothers got teased about being black and they didn’t like it either. On the other hand, there’s some vintage Heyward, who (and no offense to all you Thorpe-ites and Coolidge-ians out there) was always my favorite character on the show. Coolest ‘fro, and then just coolest period, with his quiet air of ladyliciousness and inner menace (wait a minute… maybe I’M gay…). Reeves goes to talk to him about the situation with Collins and Heyward breaks it down for him in no uncertain terms about how things are down in the hood. “It all comes down to your rep,” he says, and drops into a very credible boxing stance in case Reeves has misunderstood him. No Mas all the way.

This particular episode next airs on YES at 7 a.m. tomorrow morning, so get your DVR’s humming and watch that shit. We’ll be tracking every new episode as it runs here at No Mas and holding discussion groups and contests and bake sales and whatnot. Look, it’s the freakin White Shadow. In other words, hands down the greatest TV show ever.

Or lawn darts, whatever. What a great game. We had them back in the day – everybody in the neighborhood did. There was some actual way you were supposed to play jarts with the ring and points and shit, but like all kids when confronted with something pointy, me and my friends just ran around the yard throwing them at each other.

Now, personally I don’t know what all the fuss was about, cause I took more than a few lawn darts up the ass and, well, they hurt, but not “banned from sale” hurt. Nevertheless, on December 19, 1988, just in time for the Christmas season, all lawn darts were banned from sale in the U.S. They were evidently the cause of death for several children and were even cited in causing “skull punctures” (obviously some people were playing a different brand of jarts than me and my boys ever did).

I close with this appropriate line from the Wikipedia jarts article – “It should be noted that the specific incident that caused lawn darts to be made illegal also involved beer.”

But they couldn’t exactly ban beer now, could they? They already tried that. No, jarts, my pointy little friends, that was a battle you were bound to lose.

Indian runner Santhi Sounderajan won the women’s 800 meters at the Asian Games on December 9th but was stripped of the medal yesterday after being informed that immediately after the race she had failed a gender test.

No Mas has managed to acquire a top-secret copy of the test that they administer to women to make sure that they are not men posing as women, which is a huge problem in India these days.

Indian Track and Field Gender Test for “Women”

1. Are you a woman or a man?

2. How big is your cock?

Evidently Santhi got tripped up by question number two.

Indian runner fails gender test, loses medal (ESPN.com)