Forty-nine years ago today, Brazil won its first World Cup Final, defeating the Swedes in Stockholm. It was the completion of one of soccer’s greatest coming-out parties, as the 17-year-old Pelé was announced to the world as a football phenomenon. Pelé was coming off a semi-final against France in which he broke a 2-2 tie in the 52nd minute and then proceeded to score two more goals for a natural hat trick that sealed the 5-2 victory and a trip to the final.

5-2 was again the score in the final, and Pelé again scored the last goals for the Brazilians, this time the last two, the first of which was a goal for the ages. Although I’m sure you’ve seen this goal many times, check it out again below. Equally amazing to me as the feat itself is how effortless he makes it seem, such that the whole transaction almost looks like the most natural thing in the world – of course, faced with an oncoming defender, he would just chest the ball to his feet, lob it over that defender, and then take it on the volley into the corner of the net. I mean, what the hell else was he going to do?

6/29
Wimbledon
ESPN2, 8 a.m.
Two seeded Spaniards went down yesterday, David Ferrer and Tommy Robredo, while the only other surprise in the men’s draw was a five-setter for sixth-seed Nikolay Davydenko against unseeded Aussie Chris Guccione. Only upset yesterday in the women’s draw was 13-seed Dinara Safina losing to Akiko Morigami, spoiling what I thought would make a fine women’s third-round match between Safina and Venus. The cradle will start to rock now, at least in the men’s draw – some third-rounders to get worked up about include Blake/Ferrero, Federer/Safin, Nalbandian/Baghdatis.

Still We Believe – The Boston Red Sox Movie
IFC, 2 p.m.
The 2004 Red Sox movie of collective mourning, ironically titled, given what happened in 2004. Fans, players and front office alike chime in about the miserable 2003 seven-game ALCS Grady Little-designed loss to the Yankees.

Friday Night Smackdown
CW, 8 p.m.
I have no idea what’s happening on Smackdown tonight. Look, for a complete sports-obsessed lifelong slacker, I’m a pretty busy guy. Is Vince McMahon still dead? Anybody out there want to interview for Franchise’s now-vacant post?

Michael Moorer v. Evander Holyfield
ESPN Classic, 8 p.m.
What is with all the Holyfield fights on Classic lately? Jesus, give us a break. Anyway, this is an important one, Michael Moorer getting the crazy pep talk from Teddy Atlas in his corner with Teddy sitting on his stool, etc. I wrote about this one this past April in a post called Southpaw Jinx.

60 Minutes on Classic
ESPN Classic, 10 p.m.
Two half-hours of classic 60 Minutes – the first is devoted to Tiger Woods and his effect on golf, and the second profiles Pete Sampras and James Blake.

James Toney v. Adolpho Washington
ESPN Classic, 12 a.m.
If you are a fan of ole Lights Out (and I know you is) then you’ll enjoy going back to a much slimmer edition’s of JT handing out a beatdown to Adolpho Washington in this cruiserweight bout from 1999.

Ali
TNT, 1:30 a.m.
Hey you really really need to watch Will Smith do a mediocre job of pretending that he’s the most charismatic man in the world in a bunch of strung-together scenes of The Greatest that primarily re-create moments that, if you so chose, you could watch actual footage of… well, if that’s your bag, then here you are. The Champ meets The Fresh Prince.

6/30
Wimbledon
ESPN2, 8 a.m.
Third-round finishes up.

Wimbledon
NBC, 2 p.m
NBC takes over the coverage. It goes back to the deuce at 3.

Ringside
ESPN Classic, 2 p.m.
The Mike Tyson collected Ringside, by which I mean it’s the early and late editions – six total hours of Iron Mike. It features, among others, George Chuvalo’s commentary for some reason. I can’t remember what exactly Chuvalo has to say on the Tyson legacy. It is my belief that Chuvalo did not fight Tyson, but I could be wrong on that. He fought just about everybody else.

There’s Something about Mary
FX, 6 p.m.
Yeah there is. She can golf.

Ringside
ESPN Classic, 8 p.m.
This Ringside is all about the great rivalries of boxing lore – you got your Ali/Frazier and your Zale/Graziano and your Holyfield/Bowe and your Robinson/LaMotta. Not sure if Pep/Saddler made the cut on this show. It is, as might imagine, a heavy duty Bert Sugar joint.

7/1
Classic Battle Lines
ESPN Classic, 7 a.m.
Calling all Sooners and Huskers – it’s an early wake-up call on Sunday. This show documents the history of the Oklahoma/Nebraska football rivalry, paying special attention to the 1971 donnybrook, known as The Game of the Century and routinely hailed as the greatest college football game of all time.

Monster in a Box
IFC, 7:10 a.m.
Dah… don’t they mean “Dick in a Box”?

Wimbledon
NBC, 12 p.m.
Seems like the first Sunday always ends up getting some tennis anyway due to all the rain, but even if they don’t play, presumably NBC will show the first week’s highlights.

Lords of Dogtown
Starz, 2:10 p.m.
I never saw this, and having seen Dogtown and Z-Boys, I never thought there was much point. Then again, I like to watch androgynous blonde pubescents on skateboards as much as the next pervert, and there’s a very good chance that I will have nothing to do on Sunday at 2:10 p.m. and that I may suddenly decide to subscribe to “Starz” whatever that is.

Brazil v. Chile
Mexic0 v. Ecuador
Univision, 4 p.m.
La Copa America, two matches back to back.

Born to Run
FMC, 10 p.m.
Here’s TV Guide on this – “Richard Grieco as an outlaw drag racer whose love of the sport is threatened by the local mob boss.” And you know what I say to that – Wendy let me in I wanna be your friend I wanna guard your dreams and visions…

NO MAS MOVIE REVIEW

La Vie en Rose (La Môme)
Director: Oliver Dahan
Starring: Marion Cotillard, Sylvie Testud, Gerard Depardieu
Produced by Légende

I recently saw this Édith Piaf bio-pic, which is titled La Vie en Rose in English for some strange reason, titled La Môme (The Kid) in French. To call this film La Vie en Rose, with its implicit suggestion of a life viewed through rose-colored glasses, certainly seems like a cruel joke given the true nature of Piaf’s life, and especially given the version of it that finds its way onto the screen here. Most notable in No Masylvania for her famous affair with the great Algerian-born middleweight Marcel Cerdan, Piaf lived a life that in its rudiments bears more of a resemblance to that of a longshot club fighter than a preternaturally gifted entertainer, a life that left her as damaged in the end as any oft-pummeled pug who took his one too many far too early in the game. She died of cancer in 1963 at the age of 47, her body a withered, humpbacked shell, ravaged by years of hard drinking, drugs, and despair. Her curious version of la vie en rose.

This is one of those movies in which time is elastic, and the jumps are jarring at the beginning. Not until around the midway point does it find a groove between scenes of the cancer-ridden Piaf right before her death, the dying but resilient Piaf battling to return to the stage in 1961, and the younger, more vibrant edition as she navigates the many tragedies of her life.

Although her childhood was on the whole a tale that would have made Dickens cringe (abandoned by her mother, taken in by her alcoholic, contortionist father and his borderline grifter’s existence, ultimately left to sing on the streets for her booze money), the most prominent of these tragedies is her doomed affair with Cerdan (Cerdan and Piaf pictured right), doomed because the fighter would die in a plane crash before their love could ever come to any satisfaction. The scenes between Cerdan, the beauty (played by the ridiculously handsome actor Jean-Pierre Martins) and Piaf, the beast, are the best of the film, although as fleeting as their affair was in life. Cerdan summons Piaf to a date in Manhattan under the pretext that they are both ex-pats who are longing for Paris. After taking a whiff of the pastrami at the rough-and-tumble joint where they meet (“it smells like a wet dog”), she whisks him off to a majestic restaurant and orders him a proper meal. They proceed to flirt in believable fashion, and soon the first bell has rung on their affaire de coeur.

It will be of great interest to the No Mas faithful that the Tony Zale/Marcel Cerdan middleweight title fight (Ring’s Fight of the Year in 1948) is shown at length, with Piaf ringside, just as she was in real life. The fight itself is as preposterous as all movie fights, but the scene is perfectly staged to resemble a technicolor version of an old-time fight stadium (the Zale/Cerdan bout was in Jersey City of all places), and if Martins is just a little too dashingly Gallic to pass for the admittedly handsome Cerdan, whoever they got to play Tony Zale is a dead ringer.

Cerdan won the middleweight crown from Zale, and then lost it in his first title defense a year later to Jake LaMotta. Flying back to the States in October of 1949, where he had a rendez-vous planned with Piaf before he was scheduled to begin training for a LaMotta rematch, his plane went down. His death catapulted Piaf onto an even steeper descent of self-destruction than she already had been traveling. According to the film, after the Cerdan tragedy she became even more impossibly demanding and shrewish than she was before, only later to be redeemed by the humbling fact of her imminent death. This seems like the greatest crime of the film, for if, as I have read elsewhere, that along with being intermittently impossible Piaf was also regularly magnanimous and generally charming, she’s been done quite an injustice by the La Vie en Rose treatment. The beast is primarily on display here – a beast with good reason in the film’s cosmology – but a beast nonetheless. There is a lot of darkness and doubt (to bring the Mekons into this), a hell of a lot of shrieking in abominable pain, and not much magnanimity to speak of.

Still, this is a gripping film, and for more than just a brief re-visitation of a great chapter in middleweight history. Cotillard is breathtaking in the starring role, making one of those rare bio-pic transformations that achieves the alchemy sought in these films. It’s also a great movie to look at on the whole, and the music is divine. If you aren’t stirred by the “Je ne regrette rien” finale, than you don’t have a pulse. I tell you, it’s more moving than a toupéed Frank, or even a dangerously obese Elvis, singing “My Way”. If you don’t believe me, check out the real deal below. On s’en émerveille.

Wimbledon
ESPN2, 8 a.m.
The biggest result of the day so far is Wayne Arthurs upsetting the 11-seed Tommy Robredo. No one of interest has yet fallen from the women’s draw. Nadal, Hewitt and Sharapova are all in action later today, and His Henman-ness is playing right now, down two sets to Feliciano Lopez. (p.s. – Federer/Safin third-round – Rog might have to actually break a sweat before the semis.)

NBA Draft Preview
ESPN, 1 p.m. & 7 p.m.
It’s on. Hopefully you were at the No Mas Lottery show last night to get yourself all primed and ready.

Enter the Dragon
AMC, 1:30 p.m.
One thing I’ve noticed about AMC since I’ve started doing this TV Guide – Enter the Dragon is on pretty much every day. I wonder what that’s about.

NBA Draft
ESPN, 8 p.m
Sixers pick 12th. Simmons and Ford have them getting Al Thornton. I can’t see it happening myself, but believe me, I’d take it. Although I don’t know why I care – the Sixers are in bad, bad shape and Al Thornton ain’t gonna do shit about that. Oden maybe, maybe, would have put them on the map. Stupid useless late-season surge. Anyhoo…

Evander Holyfield SportsCentury
ESPN Classic, 9 p.m.
Classic is slowly becoming the “all Evander all the time” network. I haven’t seen this SC in a while, so they may have updated it to cover all the roids shit. On the whole it’s a good watch, though. Good footage of his spread in Atlanta, which is regal.

TNA Wrestling Impact
Spike, 9 p.m.
Heavyweight champ Kurt Angle defends his title against Christian Cage and Rhino.

Mike Tyson SportsCentury
ESPN Classic, 10 p.m.
In my memory of this show, they pretty much attribute every insane thing that Tyson has done over the years to bipolar disorder and the fact that he has been on the wrong medications the whole time. Interesting theory. Maybe, though, it’s just cause he’s a batshit crazy ultraviolent motherfucker. Did they ever think of that one? Huh?

Jimmy Kimmel Live
ABC, 12:05 a.m.
Big George Foreman is on with Kimmel. Hoppefully Kimmel won’t have him drugged right before he walks on set.

Late Night with Conan O’Brien NBC, 12:35 a.m.
A repeat with best bikin’ buddies Jake Gyllenhaal and Lance Armstrong.

Thank God. It looks like Lil Floyd’s retirement, which lasted approximately an hour, has ended at last. He’s quoted today as saying that he will “come back” to the sport of boxing to shut up Ricky Hatton, something that, if I’m being honest, I don’t think is going to be a very tall order for Floyd.

Frankly, I’m disappointed. I thought that Oscar’s refusal of a Floyd rematch was going to lead to a superbout between Floyd and Sugar Shane, and I think that’s a much better fight than Floyd/Hatton. People are raving about Hatton’s defeat of Castillo this past Saturday, and yes, he did look more inspired than he had in his two prior fights, but still, I wasn’t that impressed. Castillo is very near to finished, and he was counted after a body blow. Just a note here – was Hatton’s “perfect shot” to the ribs any more devastating than the “chopped liver” Bernard served up to Oscar a few years ago? Not at all, mate. And yet somehow, Hatton’s punch was reported as being so “perfect” that naturally Castillo couldn’t continue, while Oscar was roundly doubted for his mettle. It’s all in the telling, lads, all in the telling.

Hatton is not particularly fast, or a particularly hard puncher. I know he has the rep of a killer, and he’s unquestionably tenacious, but look – do you think Floyd is going to fear the shots of a 140-pound Hatton more than those of a 154-pound Oscar? I doubt it. And the weight won’t be an issue, either. Floyd bulked up to 150 to fight Oscar, but even if the fight gets made at 140 (and that’s doubtful), he’ll make it no problem. The kid is a physical specimen, and he lives to train. And if the fight gets made at a catchweight, or at 147? Sheesh. Hatton is a small 147 at best – we saw that when he nearly lost to Brooklyn hardass Luis Collazo in his American debut last year.

So what he have here is the best fighter of his era, coming off an impressive victory in the most important fight of his career against a much bigger, more skilled and dangerous fighter, facing a smaller, slower, under-skilled opponent. Hatton better hope dearly that Floyd has a big letdown. But let’s face it, folks – that won’t happen. My early prognosis is very bad for Hatton. I think Floyd will hav only slightly less trouble hitting him than he did Gatti. I say TKO in, oh… the 7th to the 9th. Maybe even earlier.

Mayweather demands a Hatton summit (Guardian Online)

Wimbledon
ESPN2, 8 a.m.
No major outs yet, but something tells me that will change today. Right now I’m watching Moby Fed in cruise control against this interesting young Argentinian, Juan Martin Del Potro. The Rod already had himself a three-set morning today, and Serena won in straight sets as well, although she struggled a little in typically unfocused fashion. Still to play, Lord Henman, who once again has raised the hopes of John Bull with his five-set (13-11 in the 5th) victory over Carlos Moya, and who undoubtedly will dash those hopes, possibly today when he plays Feliciano Lopez.

Evander Holyfield v. Ray Mercer
ESPN Classic, 8 p.m.
Holyfield’s raging heart turned into a serious heart condition, one that kept the Real Deal out of the ring for 13 months in the mid-90′s. This was his first fight back, after claiming that his heart was healed by God. A good chance to look at a younger, badder Ray Mercer, one who potentially could have represented the sweet science a little better against the MMA barbarians than the older edition did against Kimbo Slice.

Brazil v. Mexico
Univision, 8:30 p.m.
La Copa America action on Univision. Gotta keep Zarko happy.

Late Show with Dave Letterman
CBS, 11:35 p.m.
Dan Patrick and Keith Olbermann with Dave. In other words, Snarkfest ’07.

Mike Tyson v. Michael Spinks
ESPN Classic, 12 a.m.
Don’t blink.

Legends
TVG, 12:30 a.m.
A profile of hall-of-fame horse trainer Ron McAnally, who trained, among many others, the great John Henry.

Wimbledon
ESPN2, 8 a.m.
Among the big names in action today – Nadal, Sharapova and her Venus-ness. Couple of interesting matches to watch out for – a golden-oldies showdown between Tim Henman and Carlos Moya, and what should be a veritable laser-show of a match between James Blake and Igor Andreev.

Hector Camacho v. Tony Baltazar
ESPN Classic, 9 p.m.
Mostly when they show the Macho Man on Classic, they’ve got these awful late 90′s fights when he’s all bloated and stupid-looking in his short shorts, so it’s nice to see them break out some footage of him in his prime. This isn’t the greatest fight you’ll ever see, but you do get to enjoy Camacho at his best pretty much throwing a shutout in true Macho-licious “I will hit you many many times and conversely you will NEVER hit me” style.

Wimbledon
ESPN2, 7 a.m.
The deuce has first-round action from Wimbledon until 5 p.m. Some potentially interesting first-round matches – Blake/Andreev, Ginepri/Gonzalez, Moya/Henman (that ‘Enman, never gives up that lad) and Berdych/Massu in the men’s draw, and in the women’s… nothing. Probably won’t be a good match in the women’s draw until the third round, when Venus could face Safina.

Champion
TCM, 3:15 p.m.
A classic of that era of Hollywood movies where boxing was the big-screen’s default symbol of tawdry corruption and greed. Kirk Douglas was nominated for an Oscar for his turn as Midge Kelly, an unscrupulous pug trying to fight his way to the top. The tagline for the movie – “This is the only sport in the world where two guys get paid for doing something they’d be arrested for if they got drunk and did it for nothing.” Hear hear.

Evander Holyfield v. Bert Cooper
ESPN Classic, 8 p.m.
By 1991, most people thought that Smokin’ Bert Cooper, once the charge of Joe Frazier, was a completely shot fighter, but a manly showing in this fight with Evander briefly resuscitated his career. This is really some ultraviolent shit right here. Whatever you do, don’t miss the third round.

Monday Night Raw
USA, 8 p.m.
Vince McMahon’s memorial service. I guess he’s dead. John Cena, Batista, Edge, and Bobby Lashley stop by to pay their respects. Ah McMahon, we hardly knew ye.

Late Show with David Letterman
CBS, 11:35 p.m.
Tony Parker tells Dave how it feels to be so robustly, passionately awesome.

For those who read his prodigious output every day here on No Mas, it should not come as a huge surprise that our wordsmith-in-chief Large was tapped to write MSG’s new “Mecca of Boxing”, a celebration of the greatest fights in the world’s most famous arena.

But what if I told you that the man had also composed three original songs for the show and appears in several montage sequences: singing, strumming a guitar and, at one point, shadowboxing to his own deep groove? Well, you might have your doubts. But that’s probably just because you didn’t know that Large a.k.a Dave Larzelere has yet another stage name: Dave Lear. And basically, whatever he feels like calling himelf, he is a seriously talented sumbitch.

The show premeires tomorrow night at nine on MSG. Check the preview here with Large all up in there. In the next week we are gonna be offering a free download of “Ali/Frazier”, one of the songs that appears in the show.

In the meantime, congratulations to Large and to our man Stephen Palgon, who produced the show.

On June 23, 1939, 67 years ago today, Bronko Nagurski won the NWA World Wrestling Title by defeating the young, future wrestling legend Lou Thesz in a championship match in Houston. Bronk would proceed to lose, regain and then lose the NWA title again over the course of the next two years.

Of course, Nagurski is best known for having played football. He was the John Riggins of his day (and there’s a line that would make many an old-timer squawk – “Compared to Bronk John Riggins was a freaking 98-pound woman!”), a bruising fullback renowned for busting through the line and punishing all who dared to step in his path. He also was a fearsome force on defense, a precursor to Butkus and Singletary as the prototypically ferocious Bears’ linebacker. And like Butkus, Sam Huff, Jack Lambert, L.T. to name a few, in his day the name Bronko Nagurski was accepted nationwide as a two-word synonym for rugged badassitude on the gridiron.

In 1938, the Bears refused Bronk a raise, and he went all Jim Brown on them, brusquely retiring and making the jump full-time to professional wrestling, an endeavor he’d pursued on the side for years. Wrestling was a fractured enterprise at the time, but the money was good, and Nagurski was as much of a powerhouse in the ring as he was on the football field, not much interested in fancy moves, but very interested in that which had always interested him – a no-nonsense brand of ass-whupping. He was a star attraction as a wrestler until 1960, when he retired to run a gas station in his hometown of International Falls, Minnesota. Thereafter, he never had many kind words for the sport, and in interviews he rarely talked about his long wrestling career, preferring to dwell on his football greatness.