5/25
Texas v. Texas A&M, 1998
ESPN Classic, 4 p.m.
Long before the weed, before the yoga and the personality disorders and the ridiculous beard, Ricky Williams was straight-up bubonic, a fact for which this game serves nicely as Exhibit A.

WWE Smackdown
CW, 8 p.m.
Finlay, Batista, Mark Henry and Kane battle in a fatal-fourway match to determine the #1 contender to Edge’s Heavyweight title.

Anthony Peterson v. Luis Ernesto Jose
ESPN2, 9 p.m.
Friday Night Fights brings us a double bill of the fast-rising Peterson brothers, Anthony and Lamont. These two are D.C. kids who primarily have fought out of Memphis, and tonight they return home to the D.C. Armory (afterparty at the Unsilent Mansion). Both brothers are undefeated – Lamont (on the right in the picture) fights at 140, and will be going up against another record-padding tomato can tonight, but Anthony (on the left), at 135, is making a step up in competition against Jose, a.k.a. the Dominican Butcher.

UFC Fight Night
Spike 9 p.m.
Featured bouts include: A 2006 Match of the year candidate between Diego Sanchez and Karo Parisyan. Plus, Josh Koscheck vs. Jonathan Goulet and Chris Leben vs. Jorge Santiago.

60 Minutes on Classic
ESPN Classic, 10 p.m.
One of the segments here is a profile of Mr. Awesome himself, Tony Hawk.

Evander Holyfield v. Carlos De Leon
ESPN Classic, 11 p.m.
Taking us back to when the Real Deal was the real deal. In only his seventeenth professional fight, Evander unified the cruiserweight belts by stopping De Leon in the eighth. Carlos was no slouch, either, although he was a little past his best years in this one.

International Fight League
Fox Sports Net, 11 p.m.
Renzo Gracie’s New York Pit Bulls take on Matt Lindland’s Portland Wolfpack.

5/26
Bloodfist III: Forced to Fight
TMC, 4:30 a.m.
Man, it sucks when you’re just FORCED to fight. Of course, when you’re Don “The Dragon” Wilson, once they actually force you to fight, well, then you just start wrecking motherfuckers. Especially when you got freakin Shaft on your side.

Rocky Marciano v. Roland LaStarza, 1953
ESPN Classic, 7 a.m.
Here’s one from the Classic vault, one that I’ve never seen on this channel before. LaStarza is one of four men to ever fight Marciano twice (the other three are Walcott, Charles, and Gino Buonvino) and in their first bout, in 1950, he nearly beat the Rock – the ref had to turn to the supplemental scoring system to award Marciano the victory. In the rematch in ’53, with the heavyweight crown on the line, LaStarza once again held his own until about the eighth, at which point Rock started rocking. Ends with an 11th-round TKO – very entertaining fight well worth checking Tivo-ing.

The Bullfighters
FMC, 10:30 a.m.
Laurel and Hardy are working as detectives in Mexico (of course). But Laurel happens to look exactly like a famous matador who has suddenly disappeared, so he is enlisted to step into the ring. If that doesn’t sound funny to you, you wouldn’t know funny if it ate your ass.

The Harder They Fall
TCM, Noon
Personally, I am a huge fan of this film, Bogey’s last, the movie of Budd Schulberg’s essential novel of boxing and corruption. Both Jersey Joe Walcott and Max Baer make appearances, and believe me, Jersey Joe wins that heavyweight acting belt by more than a few rounds.

NCAA Lacrosse Semi-Finals
ESPN2, Noon
Duke plays Cornell and surprise semi-finalist Delaware meets perennial powerhouse Hopkins.

NBA’s Greatest Games
ESPN Classic, 1 p.m.
Celtcis/Pistons – game five of the ’87 Eastern Conference Finals. As far as great 80′s rivalries go, you don’t hear too much about it anymore but the Celtics/Pistons smackdowns were some serious shit. This is the famous one where Bird steals Isiah’s inbounds pass in the last seconds and dishes to D.J. for the win. Only time in my life I probably ever rooted for the Celts was during that period. I loathed Laimbeer.

A.J. Foyt SportsCentury
ESPN Classic, 3 p.m.
Arguably the greatest IndyCar racer in history, a winner of four Indy 500′s.

Air Bud
Animal Planet, 7 & 11 p.m.
Our fascination with movies about animals that suddenly, magically, become superstar athletes has never ceased to amaze me. Here’s a piece of work central to that canon, a film about a basketball-playing golden retriever. This conceit managed to spawn five – FIVE – sequels.

Ringside
ESPN Classic, 8 p.m.
This episode of Ringside promises to investigate boxing’s greatest rivalries. Sounds to me like they’ll just be re-cutting all the past Ringsides into a “new” show. But whattya gonna do? This series was bound to run out of steam pretty quickly.

UFC 71
PPV, 10 p.m.
Chuck Liddell goes after the only loss on his resume that he has yet to avenge when he defends his Light Heavyweight title against Quinton “Rampage” Jackson. Plus, Josh Burkman vs. Karo Parisyan and Keith Jardine vs. Houston Alexander.

5/27
American Ninja III: Blood Hunt
MOMAXe, 4 a.m.
Here’s the TV Guide description – “A martial arts champ tries to prevent germ warfare.” I actually think that Franchise wrote the script for this thing.

French Open
ESPN2, Noon
First round gets under way at Roland Garros.

Play it to the Bone
ESPN Classic, 1 p.m.
Look, it ain’t Fat City by any means, but I actually think this boxing/road picture is a little underrated. Hey – it’s a Ron Shelton joint.

Indy 500
ABC, 2 p.m.
91st edition of the big race. Helio Castoneves has the pole, and three women are in the race – the most ever – with Danica Patrick of course being one of them after qualifying eigth.

Ali: Duke It Out
ESPN Classic, 12 a.m.
Oh man this is a must-watch No Mas nugget, an hour-long doc from 1971 right before the first Ali-Frazier fight in which Ali spends pretty much the entire show shooting the shit with Cus D’Amato and vamping for the camera. This one really takes you back to that precious time in the sports-media when the powers that be knew they had something, but they just didn’t know what to do with it. And so you ended up with shows like this, ones that were gloriously ill-conceived and all the more entertaining for it.