5/20
Panther Sees a Ghost
Large recaps the beatdown Kelly Pavlik laid on Edison Miranda on Saturday night, an early candidate for Fight of the Year. “Pavlik must have hit him with at least thirty shots that were worthy of knockouts. By the end of the fight, Miranda’s face was a swollen mess, a combination of Gatti after the Floyd fight and Malignaggi after the Cotto fight.”

5/22
Bring Back George
Stefan Fatsis steps into the No Mas batting order with this lament for the lost days of Billy, Reggie, and the madness of King George. “There was an urgency to those championship years, and not because the Bronx was burning or because winning was predictable. Steinbrenner was irrational, impulsive and irredeemable, but damn if he didn’t make you care. George performed the neat trick of allowing New York to say fuck you to the rest of baseball while also saying fuck you to him.”

K.O.W. – A Righteous Right
Our No Mas Knockout of the Week features the beloved Canastota Onion Farmer, Carmen Basilio, in his 1956 revenge demolition of Johnny Saxton.

5/23
Deep Tennis with Steve Tignor
This week, Steve gives us a veritable history of the iconic rackets in tennis past and present, from Laver’s Dunlop Maxply to Roddick’s Babolat.

5/24
Sharpshootin’ with The Franchise
Think Liddell is going to get his revenge on Rampage? Chise doesn’t. “Liddell is known to be one of the best takedown defenders in MMA but once Jackson finally brought him down there was no turning back for the Iceman. Trust me when I say that no one has ever manhandled Liddell like this before and Jackson is probably the only MMA fighter out there who could do it again.”

5/25
Cruel Summer
We begin a truly No Masian celebration for the thirtieth anniversary of the summer of ’77. To kick off the festivities, Large investigates the book, and upcoming mini-series, Ladies and Gentleman… The Bronx is Burning. “It’s amazing in retrospect that the city actually survived that summer, and yet it’s even more amazing that New Yorkers today manage to have a nostalgia for the summer of ’77. In the post-Friends/Sex and the City era of New York as yuppie paradise of Jimmy Choo skankatroids, hipster restaurants and Disneyland in Times Square, it seems like everyone who lived in the Big Apple in the 70′s (and many, it must be admitted, who did not) have come to yearn for the lawless days of disco.”