The world of sports lost a lot of luminaries in 2007 – Bill Walsh, Phil Rizzuto, Eddie Robinson, Evel Knievel and Barbaro just to name a few. Today here at No Mas we’re going to take some time to remember a group of 25 lesser-known sports figures who died in the past year. Some of the people you’ll read about below are more famous than others. Some were household names in their day and saw their fame quickly ebb with time. All but three essentially died of old age, and the three who didn’t came to tragic ends indeed. Some were as great as great could be – 2007 saw the deaths of arguably the finest bridge player, rodeo rider and fencer that ever lived.

I was awestruck while compiling this list at what a window into the past these names provided. The entire No Mas enterprise is rooted in the idea that the history of sport is as varied, impassioned and bizarre as the history of man itself. For me, that concept is fundamental to just about everything I write, and yet never did I suspect that a group of disparate lives connected to sport, lives that all happened to end in a single calendar year, taken together would tell such a wild story of the 20th century, a story I’m quite sure I’ve never heard before.

Lou Palazzi was a stand-out linebacker as a walk-on at Penn State, and played two seasons with the New York Giants. He then went on to serve 30 years in the NFL as an umpire, working three Super Bowls (IV, VII and IX) and nine NFL championships, including the epic 1958 edition. Eighty-five years old, he died on January 7th in Dunsmore, PA.

Maureen Orcutt was a star women’s golfer in the 20′s who also wrote avidly about the game. She was only the second women’s sports reporter in New York Times history. Orcutt golfed until she was 87 years old – she died on January 9th at the age of 99.

Max Lanier was 91 when he died on January 30th. He was a lefty pitcher who spent 14 seasons in the bigs, and 12 of those with the Cardinals. Max was the winning pitcher of game 6 of the 1944 World Series, the clinching victory for the Cards over their crosstown rivals, the St. Louis Browns. His son, Hal, also played in the majors.

Filippo Raciti was not an athlete, but sports indirectly and most horribly caused his death. A 30-year-old Italian policeman, he died of severe liver trauma on February 2nd from injuries suffered during a riot following a Serie A match between Catania and Palermo in Sicily. The tragedy spurred national outrage in Italy against football hooliganism and caused all Italian football matches to be suspended for a week.

Eddie Feigner, the clown prince of softball, died at the age of 81 on February 9th. Capable of hitting 100mph with his underhand heater, in 1967 he struck out Willie Mays, Willie McCovey, Brooks Robinson, Maury Wills, Harmon Killebrew and Roberto Clemente in succession, which must be considered among the greatest feats ever accomplished in the history of bats and balls.

Playing for Blackpool in 1942, footballer Jock Dodds set a record that still stands today, scoring a hat-trick against the Tranmere Rovers in just two and a half minutes. Dodds, however, is most famous for his efforts with Sheffield Wednesday, helping the franchise make the FA Cup Final in 1936, which they lost to Arsenal. He was the oldest surviving player to have played in a final at Wembley when he died at the age of 86 on February 23rd.

Maurice Flitcroft, God love him, is the type of sportsman you have to raise your glass to in this day and age. A duffer of the highest order whose day job was operating a crane at a shipyard, Maurice longed to play at the British Open, and eventually managed to pull it off by sneaking into the 1976 tournament under an alias. He did this despite the fact that he’d never played an 18-hole round of golf in his life. One glorious day he golfed at Royal Birkdale, carding a 49-over par 121, which remains the highest 18-hole score ever posted in Open history (it’s not bad if you ask me, given the circumstances). Sadly, his score tipped off the authorities and he was given the royal hook. Maurice ascended to the big course in the sky on March 24th at the age of 77, and no doubt as I write he is pounding his way out of some celestial fescue with a mashie made of diamonds.

Lou Limmer was 82 when he died on April 1st in Boca Raton. A Jewish first baseman from the Bronx, Limmer saw limited playing time in two seasons with the Philadelphia A’s. But that cup of coffee was enough to make him a part of baseball history. Batting for the A’s in 1951 against the Tigers, he was part of the only all-Jewish pitcher/catcher/batter at-bat ever recorded in a major league game. Saul Rogovin was on the mound for the Tigers and Joe Ginsberg was behind the plate.

Frenchman Loïc Leferme was a pioneer in the sport of free diving, underwater diving without an oxygen tank. He twice set world records, most recently in October of 2004, when he submerged to 171 meters below the sea without breathing apparatus of any kind. Thirty-six years old, he drowned on April 11th while training for another shot at the world record.

Alvin Roth was the “Babe Ruth of bridge,” quite possibly the best player of all time. Ninety-two when he died on April 18th, he had won 26 national championships with 11 different partners, although his best-known partner was another bridge legend, Tobias Stone. Together with Stone, Roth played a famous game of bridge with Dwight Eisenhower while serving in the Army in WWII.

Arthur Milton died on April 25 at the age of 79. Having played 6 test matches for the English cricket team in 1958-59, and a match with the English national football team against Austria in 1951, Milton was the last surviving man of twelve in history to have represented the Jolly Old at the highest level in both of those sports.

Simply put, Jim Shoulders was the greatest rodeo rider who ever lived. Over the course of two decades he won 16 world championships and five all-around Pro Rodeo Cowboy Association championships. In his prime in the 1950′s, he was all but unbeatable. He’s also the only professional cowboy honored in the Madison Square Garden Hall of Fame. He was 79 when he died on June 20th at his home in Henryetta, Oklahoma.

Pete Mead, who died on July 2nd at the age of 83, was a middleweight journeyman who fought several times at the old Garden in 50′s. He faced such notables of the time as Fritzie Zivic and Randy Turpin, and in his last bout he was knocked out in the third by Rocky Graziano. His fight with Joey DeJohn at the Garden in 1949 was a Gatti-Ward bloodfest of its day – Ring magazine once called it one of the ten greatest fights ever. Mead wrote an autobiography in 1989 called Blood, Sweat and Cheers that is now out of print and highly sought after by collectors. If you have a copy, we’d love to hear about it.

Gato del Sol was one of the biggest longshots ever to win the Kentucky Derby, winning the Run for the Roses by two and a half lengths in 1982 at 21-1 odds. He was euthanized on August 7th at the age of 28.

A true renaissance man of the 20th century, Switzerland’s Hans Ruesch first achieved fame as a race-car driver in the 1930′s, winning 27 races in his career including the 1936 British Grand Prix. By the 1940′s, he had moved to the U.S. and was writing popular fiction in English, including two best-selling novels, The Racer and Top of the World, the latter of which would be made into a film by Nicholas Ray. Amazingly, Ruesch’s life had a third act, as he became one of the best-known animal rights activists in the world in the 1970′s, founding The Center for Scientific Information on Vivisection and writing a very influential book, The Slaughter of the Innocents, in 1978. He died on August 27th at the age of 94 in Lugano, Switzerland.

Former Clemson basketball star Clarke Bynum succumbed to cancer on September 3rd at the age of 45. Bynum was a stalwart forward with the Tigers in his four years at Clemson, but he is most well known around the world for his heroics in December of 2000, when he helped subdue a Kenyan hijacker who attacked the pilot of a British Airways jet en route to Nairobi.

Enrique Torres was one of three Mexican-American brothers who were popular pro wrestlers in the 40′s and 50′s. Extremely agile and known for his drop-kicks, Enrique never took an alias, though he was known in the press as the “Latin Flash.” He won the California world heavyweight championship in 1946, but lost the belt the following year to wrestling legend, Gorgeous George. Torres died in Calgary on September 10th at the age of 85.

The owner of six Olympic medals, four of them gold, Christian D’Oriola of France was named the Fencer of the Century by the international fencing federation in 2001, stating that “Christian d’Oriola was fencing perfection personified as no-one else has ever been…” He died at the age of 79 on October 29th.

Austrian Ellen Müller-Preis won three Olympic medals in fencing, including a gold in individual foil at the 1932 Games in Los Angeles. She competed in every Olympics from 1932 to the 1956 Melbourne Games, when she was 44 years old. She was 95 when she died on November 18th.

A stalwart defenseman, Tom Johnson played 15 years for the Montreal Canadiens in the 1940′s and 50′s, winning six Stanley Cups and a Norris Trophy with the team during that span. He also coached the Bruins to their last Stanley Cup victory in 1972, two years after he was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame. Johnson died at the age of 79 on November 21st.

Jockey Bill Hartack won an amazing eight Triple Crown races in his Hall of Fame career, and is one of only two jockeys (with Eddie Arcaro) to win the Kentucky Derby five times. Over the course of his 21 years in horse racing, he rode 4,272 winners, and graced the covers of Sports Illustrated and Time magazine. Seventy-five years old, he died of natural causes on November 26th while on a hunting trip.

At his death on November 29th, Congressman Henry Hyde had served as a representative from the 6th district of Illinois for nearly 32 years. Over that time, he came to be known as one of the most respected members of the House on both sides of the aisle. Back in his college days at Georgetown, Hyde also was respected on the basketball court as one of the leaders of the Hoyas in their 1943 run to the Final Four. Hyde was 83 years old when he died.

In his famous Green Monster jet-powered cars, Art Arfons held the land speed record three different times from 1960-62. He was eighty-one years old when he died on December 3rd in Springfield, Ohio, and three days after his death he was inducted into the International Motorsports Hall of Fame.

But for Nat Fleischer, there probably was no man who ever lived who knew more about the sweet science than Hank Kaplan. Nicknamed “The Lord of the Ring”, Kaplan was one of the sport’s foremost journalists and historians, a stature that earned him induction into the International Boxing Hall of Fame in 2006. His credits are too massive even to begin to list – basically, if a publication ever covered boxing anywhere on God’s green earth, Kaplan wrote for it. He died of cancer on December 14th at the age of 88.

Ryan Gracie was Brazilian jiu-jitsu royalty, grandson of the great Carlos Gracie and brother of the famous Renzo Gracie. Known as the bad boy of the Gracie clan, Ryan more than lived up to his image, dying of a massive drug overdose in a Rio de Janeiro jail on December 14th. He was 33 years old.

I have to confess that reading the news yesterday that Eddie Sutton is returning to coaching brought only one major thought to my mind – God I hated Don Sutton. I mean, I really HATED the guy.

This led me to think about an argument I once lost, one that still burns me. It was with this gravelly-voiced asshole of a Dodgers-fan bartender at Teddy’s in ’98, the year that Don Sutton got elected to the Hall. I was sitting there bitching and moaning about Sutton making the Hall and saying how I thought he didn’t deserve it, etc., and this mamaluc actually came around the bar with his Baseball Encyclopedia in hand (he was exactly the kind of jerkoff who keeps a Baseball Encyclopedia nearby at all times) to set me straight.

I got slaughtered, the acid-reflux memory of which led me to other such memories of defeat, and in the interest of purging them I thought I would share my ignominy with the No Mas community. So without further ado I bring you The Top Five Baseball Arguments Ever Lost by Large in a Bar. It should tell you something about the list to know that the above Don Sutton donnybrook didn’t even make the cut.

5. Dave Winfield v. Dave Parker
Teddy’s – Brooklyn, NY – 1996
Lost this one to a Teddy’s bartender as well, and again it wasn’t a throwdown I was looking for exactly – I was just there at the bar mouthing off and the next thing I knew I was getting taken to the mat. I was on the Winfield side of things, and in retrospect I still think I’m right about that on the whole. Then again, as we all know, bar arguments have nothing to do with being right. It’s a lot like a bar fight really – the timing and force of your first punch is nearly everything. In this case, I just happened to be up against a Pirates nut who was loaded for bear and came out throwing bombs. Later on, when the argument was mostly over and I was all bitter I tried tweaking the guy about the overall crap-liciousness of the Pirates as a franchise and he started talking about how historically they could field the second best team in the bigs next to the Yanks, and I was like bullshit no way, and the next thing I knew he’s hitting me with “Paul Waner.” I mean, when you’re in a bar baseball argument and your opponent busts out a name like “Paul Waner” without even giving it a second thought, you know you’re about to drink an ice-cold can of asswhup.

4. Rod Carew v. Don Mattingly
Trump Plaza – Atlantic City, NJ – 2002
This is the only one of these arguments that I could nail down to a specific date, because it was the night of the Lennox/Tyson bout. I was down at my folks’ place in Brigantine and I went over to AC to watch the fight on the big screen. Later on, I was eating at the bar and I struck up a conversation with a Yankee fan who was going on about how Mattingly belonged in the Hall, a point that I took issue with. He said something like, “name some first basemen who’ve gotten in the Hall lately,” and admittedly there had been some weak ones right around that time – Tony Perez, Orlando Cepeda – but then I hit on Carew (inducted a decade earlier, and perhaps more a second baseman than a first, but still…), which really set him off. “You’re gonna compare Rod Carew with Don Mattingly?” We went back and forth for a while, and of all the arguments listed here, this undoubtedly was the best contest, which is the reason I include it in the top five. And though I do feel like I lost in the end (again, another one where I feel like I was completely in the right, but just didn’t execute), unlike so many bouts of bar-blathering, it was one of those sound competitions that ennobles rather than degrades the participants.

3. 1980 Phils v. 1998 Yanks
The Harvard Club – Manhattan, NY – 2003?
I’m a little iffy about the date on this one, but it was sometime in the early part of the millennium when I used to meet my friend Ed at the Harvard Club to play squash. Then we would eat dinner and watch baseball games at the bar. I’m just ashamed of this thing all around – in retrospect I was just ridiculously wrong and in the moment I lost a humiliatingly quick exchange when I thought I was going to sound all erudite and creative and ended up sounding like some out-of-town mook who probably had a hard time tying his shoes that morning. And let me tell you something people – that shit will happen to you in the Harvard Club. Best to keep your mouth shut up in that motherfucker unless you got the nuts.

2. Al Kaline v. Al Kaline
The Brooklyn Nights – Brooklyn, NY – 1994
Oh my brothers and sisters this is a bad one. I don’t really remember much of what transpired but I am told that I ardently defended the honor of Al Kaline against a professional wrestling sized ringer from Detroit who evidently thought that Kaline was overrated, but who also (I’m told) didn’t give much of a shit either way. It’s funny really, because I hardly know the first thing about Al Kaline other than that he played for the Tigers and he had 3,007 hits (I pretty much had the 3,000 hits club memorized when I was a kid). I never saw him play and I have absolutely no strong feelings about the man or his game, but on this night, fueled by alcohol and youth, I was passionate on the matter. This one, I’m sorry to say, turned into a fistfight, which I also lost, lost it badly. Al Kaline, wherever you are, I want you to know that I went to the mat for you sir, was prepared to give my life for the cause of your honor, and to this day I have no idea why. Someday perhaps you will return the favor.

1. Joe Carter’s Walkoff v. The Heartbreak of an Entire Borough
Turkey’s Nest – Brooklyn, NY – 1995
I want to begin by pointing out that this is back when the Turkey’s Nest was a dive, and not a “dive.” This one right here is no doubt the most efficient KO I’ve ever swallowed in my career of arguing about baseball in bars, and I have to say it was the most satisfying too, sort of like getting knocked out by Joe Louis or Rocky Graziano, a piece of history you’re proud to be a part of even on the losing end. I was in the Nest one night watching a Knicks game and when it was over everyone left and I was solo with the crusty old bartender who had a facial tic and seemed like he was a bit touched on the whole. SportsCenter was on the tube with the sound down and for some reason they showed a highlight of the Joe Carter walkoff in the ’93 Series, and I, deep in my cups and melancholy as an Irishman out on bail, said out loud to no one in particular, “that… was the worst thing that ever happened.” My barman made straight for me then, stood in front of me with a froth of a look and yelled, “the worst thing that ever happened! the WORST THING that ever happened? THE WORST THING THAT EVER HAPPENED WAS THE DODGERS LEFT BROOKLYN!” Then he poured me a buyback and walked to the other end of the bar, a neutral corner. No need to even count me out. He’d finished me with a single blow.

Some strange news from the world of tennis today, as the WTA announced that it would award the number one ranking to Evonne Goolagong Cawley retrospectively for a two-week period in 1976.

This came about due to the recovery some lost records that indicated that Goolagong had overtaken Chris Evert for a fortnight in that long-passed bicentennial summer.

This bit of news brought two thoughts to my mind. The first was… who in the hell is sitting around some godforsaken office somewhere looking for these lost files of the WTA from 1976? Is this a mystery they’ve been trying to solve for years now? JESUS. I guess you have to admire them in a way. Myself, I have to imagine I might have given up by now on the whole “those mysterious two weeks in the summer of ’76″ controversy.

After I pondered that, however, I turned to a more pleasant second thought, which of course was of the righteous Miss Goolagong in her prime. I was fascinated with her as a child tennis fan, first and foremost because she had the greatest tennis name that ever there has been. And then she had a countenance that was entirely worthy of her Goolagong-ness – she played with laconic grace, her skin was bronze and her legs eternal, and she always had a mysteriously detached air about her on the court, as if she were there and yet not really there at all. Yet she played ferociously in big moments, despite frequently, as Bud Collins used to put it, going on “walkabout” in her matches.

It was only later that I realized the implications of this characterization of Goolagong, implications that perhaps do not reflect all that well on crazy ole Bud. Only later, too, did I realize that I was witnessing real history as I watched her in the 70′s, because I was watching the Althea Gibson of Down Under, the first Australian aboriginal to win a Grand Slam title and the first to achieve worldwide fame as an athlete. Throughout her climb to the top, she battled racism of the kind that would be all too familiar to African Americans in the States, and was only permitted onto a tennis court in the first place because a white local noticed her peering through the fence at a world and a sport from which she was excluded at the time due to her aboriginal status.

She won seven women’s Grand Slam singles crowns, and was a Grand Slam runner-up an amazing 11 times. Behind Margaret Court, Billie Jean and Chrissie, she was the fourth best women’s player of the 70′s in maybe the most competitive decade the women’s game has ever known. But more importantly, she became an icon of liberation and equality for all Australian indigenous people, a fact underscored by the reverence which she has enjoyed there for decades now. For evidence of that, just check out the video below and ask yourself if you’ve ever heard a song about Chris Evert.

I didn’t get to this yesterday, so my apologies to the many athletes who share with Christianity’s biggest all-star the distinguished birthday of December 25th. The Xmas/b-day double-trouble pictorial below includes six baseball players (MLB’s first 300-game winner, an outfield-mate of Mel Ott, two great second-baggers [one so ill-matic it's hard to even comprehend his ill-ness in human terms), a former Ham fighter turned Beantowner, and baseball's version of Christ if you happen to be The Rooster (although Rickey probably would say that Christ was just Christianity's version of Rickey)], three footballers (a former Scottish captain, an Angolan whose hairstyle is straight-up loco, and a Brazilian who often finished Pele’s feeds), two American footballers (a mad Hungarian fish and a very VERY big kid), two cricketers (a bowling pioneer and a burgeoning batsman), one half of America’s Most Wanted, a Mesoamerican expert in the much-underrated sport of sorcery, a race-car driver better known for his cars than his racing, an Olympic boxer better known as the father of a tennis champion, and an avid fisherman and sailor better known as a hard-boiled gumshoe, or a hard-living pilot, or a hard-luck owner of a very famous gin joint.

You probably didn’t see this over at sportingnews.com, so let me be the first to inform you that I, Large, am officially joining the team at The Sporting Blog. I was hired by Chris Mottram, the manager of the The Sporting Blog who is known to most of you out there in the blogdome as one half of the Mottram brother-team that brings us Mr. Irrelevant.

I have to say, I’m very excited to be writing in any capacity for The Sporting News – it’s a very No Masian publication, one that I associate with the childhood mystery of sports at its finest. Me, I think of that magazine and I immediately see it’s iconic script in my mind and then I’m about seven years old again. For some reason, Dave Parker springs to my mind.

I haven’t figured out exactly what I’m going to be doing over there yet, but to start I imagine I’ll keep it pretty No Mas in its orientation – a lot of history in the No Mas vein, a little bit of classic/now, and, of course, fisticuffs galore. Eventually I probably will start doing some kind of material exclusively there and some sort of material exclusively here, and when that breakdown occurs, rest assured that I will let you know. I’ll most likely be pimping my Sporting Blog material most egregiously here at No Mas (and vice versa) so, you know, you’ll be in the loop.

NO MAS BOOK REVIEW

My View from the Corner: A Life in Boxing (2007)
Angelo Dundee with Bert Sugar
McGraw-Hill, 337 p.

Anyone even remotely connected to the boxing universe knows that Angelo Dundee is one of the nicest guys, if not THE nicest guy, in the business. I met him on the set of Classic Now and approached him meekly just to shake his hand and profess my admiration for his work. He jovially complimented me on my Everlast hoodie and then engaged me in conversation. When I mentioned that I’d recently watched the Clay/Doug Jones fight, he started telling me everything he remembered about the fight, and was about to start in on Leonard/Hearns when his segment was ready to tape. After that, whenever he was on the show I would talk to him, and though he never remembered who I was (and why would he?), he always was as eager to shoot the shit with me as he was the last time we’d met. Once I got his autograph in one of my boxing books, and he signed it, “Dear Dave, thanks for asking,” as if the honor was all his.

Even Dundee himself alludes to his legendary niceness in his new memoir, My View From the Corner, mentioning that it was once said of him that if someone started badmouthing Charles Manson in his presence, he probably would say “ah, I don’t know, he had some good traits.”

What I’m trying to get at here is that I’m conflicted about reviewing Dundee’s book, or more, conflicted about badmouthing a book written by a man who wouldn’t badmouth Charles Manson.

So I’ll guess start with the good stuff. The first 50 pages or so are engrossing, telling the story of Dundee’s rise through the trainer’s spit-bucket education on the coat-tails of his semi-bigtime promoter of a brother, Chris. Here we get a taste of what feels like the unadulterated reminiscences of Angie, written in a lively prose that genuinely captures the cadences of Dundee’s unique speech patterns. These chapters paint an insider’s picture of a bygone universe that fascinates me, one that I admit I am inclined to heavily romanticize – Stillman’s, the old Garden, Toots Shor’s, Blinky Palermo and Frankie Carbo, Whitey Bimstein, Chickie Ferrara, Charlie Goldman. Unquestionably for me, the most compelling passages of the entire book are Dundee’s memories of sitting around a table at the Natural or the Garden Cafeteria as a trainer’s apprentice listening to the giants of his trade swap stories about their fighters. I could have done with about a hundred more pages of that business.

Sadly, the entry of young Cassius Clay onto the scene (and the disappearance of Willie Pastrano) signals the beginning of the end of the good stuff, a problem that is only partially Dundee’s fault. For the story of Clay/Ali is such heavily trod territory to a boxing fan today that once the book turns into a sequential recitation of The Ali Journey, it loses most of its originality and starts to seem like a halfass SportsCentury. Dundee’s voice gets obscured as well by that of his ghost-writer Bert Sugar, a problem that plagued the book for me after the opening chapters, as what previously felt like a folksy and intimate conversation with Dundee turns into a Bert Sugar-styled history lesson written in the first person of another man.

This maybe would be forgivable if Dundee’s memories added much to the familiar tale that we didn’t already know, but there’s precious little of that here. Angelo slicing and then removing Clay’s “damaged” glove in the Henry Cooper fight to buy his injured fighter some time? Clay’s blood pressure going through the roof as he did his crazy routine at the Liston press conference? Angelo shouting down Bundini Brown in Ali’s corner to stop the humiliation of the Larry Holmes fight? Take these three anecdotes above as indication of how interesting this book might be to you. If you’ve never heard these stories before, they are well told here and this thing is probably worth your while. If you have heard them, however, heard them maybe a hundred times, then you’re not missing much by taking a pass on My View from the Corner.

After the Trevor Berbick debacle and some kind, banal words on the spirit of Ali, Dundee moves on to his time with Sugar Ray Leonard, a gig that he was less enamored of for sure than his tenure with The Greatest. In fact, in these memories Dundee finds a man evidently more odious than Charles Manson himself, because he goes out of his way to heap scorn upon Leonard’s ironically named lawyer, Mike Trainer. Nevertheless, insight-wise, the Sugar Ray chapters are about as bland as the Ali material. In other words, if “you’re blowing it son!” is a line that means nothing to you, you’re going to hear a few stories you’ve never heard before, but otherwise you’ll be on very familiar ground.

The book finishes with a cursory treatment of Dundee’s stint with George Foreman in the 90′s, and here I confess I did learn something new – that Angelo started working with Big George only after George disposed of one of Angie’s fighters, the long-lost heavyweight contender Adilson Rodrigues. The Foreman stories are a punchy way to end the book and take the story out on a high note, but the brief wrap-up final chapter left a bad taste in my mouth largely because of an anecdote that I have to believe an editor might have caught and taken out of there. In writing of the boxing death of Davey Moore in 1963 (yes, that Davey Moore, the subject of Dylan’s boxing protest number, “Who killed Davey Moore why and what’s the reason for?”), Dundee claims that it’s a double tragedy in his memory, because not only was it his fighter Sugar Ramos who beat Moore to death that night, but also because another one of his fighters, Luis Rodriguez, won a great victory on the undercard that was completely overshadowed by Moore’s death. This callous assessment of the situation doesn’t sound anything like Angelo Dundee to me, and I can only imagine it’s some twisted translation of what actually came out of his mouth on the topic. I hope it gets scratched from future editions.

Otherwise, look, to tell it in Angelo-ese, it is what it is – 50 pages on the good old days, 170 on Ali, about 50 more on Ray Leonard, 30 on Big George and a coda to close it out. Myself, I wanted a lot more insight into the nitty-gritty details of a trainer’s profession, and hell of a lot more anecdotes about Dundee’s other well-known charges, fighters like Pastrano, who gets short shrift at best, and Carmen Basilio, an all-time great and fascinating figure who inexplicably gets the shaft, about a page and a half total mention.

But hey, we all know it’s names like Ali and Sugar Ray that move units, and even given my qualms, as a last-minute gift for the boxing fan on your list, you definitely could do a lot worse than this.

(As promised, we are proud to bring you the return of our prodigal son, The Franchise, once a regular No Mas contributor and now the proprietor of one of the best fight-sport sites on the web, jarrypark.com – a.k.a., The Coliseum of Combat Sports Interviews. Chise joins us today to bring his expertise to bear on the number one issue du jour, Floyd Mayweather and his proposed MMA gambit – L)

“UFC’s champions can’t handle boxing. That’s why they are in UFC. Put one of our guys in UFC and he’d be the champion. Any good fighter, he’d straight knock them out…Take Chuck Liddell, put him in the ring with a (boxer) who is just 10-0 and Chuck Liddell would get punished.”

-Floyd Mayweather Jr.
April 2007

To those who follow mixed martial arts, Floyd Mayweather’s latest flirtation with the sport is actually old news. Think back to the weeks leading up to De La Hoya-Mayweather. At this point, the boxing vs. MMA debate was the talk of the combat sports world and naturally Money May felt compelled to dress down MMA (while Mayweather mentions the “UFC” in his quote I have to think that he was talking about the sport in general. Contrary to what the UFC says, there are, in fact, other viable MMA organizations out there).

In light of his comments, UFC president Dana White reportedly offered up then-UFC Lightweight Champion (155 lbs), Sean Sherk, to face Mayweather and settle the debate once and for all. I mean, that’s why MMA was created in the first place, right? To see which form of combat sports would reign supreme in a given match or tournament. However, for one reason or another, any talk of an MMA vs. Boxing mega-fight quickly died down following Mayweather-DLH (and, no, Kimbo Slice vs. Ray Mercer doesn’t count).

Now comes news that Mark Cuban is trying to lure Mayweather to compete for his new MMA promotion – HDNet Fights. ESPN and every other sports news outlet under the sun is buzzing over this rumor but let it be known that it was in an interview with JarryPark.com that Cuban first mentioned his intentions of signing Mayweather to an MMA fight.

Truth be told, I have some mixed feelings about all this. I honestly don’t believe that we will ever see Mayweather fight an MMA match anytime soon. Maybe in five years when all his mega boxing fights have been accounted for but, right now, I wouldn’t hold my breath. The biggest issue with these discussions is that both sports are actually really different. Just because an athlete runs in a football match and a basketball game doesn’t make the sports similar. But I suppose that’s a different argument for a different day.

Let’s forget about my cynical ways for one second. Let’s just say he really is interested in settling this debate once and for all. In order for this fight to be presented properly there are several hurdles to conquer: First off, he will probably have to go up against a featherweight MMA fighter (145 lbs). While White offered Sherk as a potential opponent, I can’t see Mayweather fighting at 155 lbs nor could I see Sherk or any other MMA lightweight fighter move down to 145 or 147. Right now, the top 145-pounder in the world is the current World Extreme Cagefighting champion, Urijah Faber. He may also be the best pound-for-pound fighter in the world too. The problem with Faber is that his contract is owned by Zuffa (the parent company of the UFC). Cuban has 30 million dollars to spend on a guy like Mayweather. Zuffa doesn’t and it would never lend out one of its fighters to another promotion. Witness the fact that they would rather let Randy Couture sit on the sidelines than co-promote a bout between him and the universally recognized top heavyweight fighter in the world – M-1 Global’s Fedor Emelianenko.

The next problem is that the WEC is home to most of the top featherweight fighters in North America (Jens Pulver and Jeff Curran come to mind) so if Mayweather really wants to prove himself against the best, well, he is barking up the wrong tree by dealing with Cuban.

That said, they don’t call him Money May for nothing. If Cuban is really interested in signing him for 30 million dollars he could challenge a top Japanese fighter like Akitoshi Tamura or Takeshi Inoue. It would be like Inoki-Ali all over again! On second thought, maybe we would rather not see that again.

Anyhow, for the sake of this discussion, let’s just say Mayweather and Faber end up fighting each other. For Mayweather’s debut to truly mean something to MMA fans Faber needs to be the one representing the sport. The California Kid is almost as cocky as Pretty Boy Floyd (almost), holds an impressive record of 20-1 and is currently enjoying a 12-fight winning streak.

But here comes Mayweather’s next hurdle: Faber is a former Division 1 college wrestler, the all-time wins leader for UC Davis (how’s that for a coincidence Mr. Large?) and a two-time NCAA D-1 qualifier. Simply put, the man can wrestle. Mayweather, on the other hand, can’t.

So, the fight begins. Mayweather is dancing around feeling his opponent out and looking to work in his jab and then…BAM! Faber shoots on him and takes him to the ground. Unchartered territory for the boxing champ, indeed. MMA purists love to point out that you can always teach a wrestler how to box but it’s a lot tougher to teach a boxer how to wrestle. They just aren’t used to it. Furthermore, a former wrestling champion like Brock Lesnar will probably make a smooth transition into MMA (his UFC debut is on 2/2/08, by the way) because his wrestling skills will lead to a better understanding of jiu jitsu which is the foundation of MMA. You see, Faber’s wrestling skills will only take him so far in an MMA match. Once he is on the ground he then goes into jiu jitsu mode. He can look for the ground-and-pound or a whole host of different submissions. How in the world is Mayweather going to defend this? Does he know how to fight off his back? Does he know how fight off an arm-bar submission or a rear-naked choke? Of course not, although he could certainly learn.

And that’s where the next and final hurdle comes in. For Mayweather to successfully compete in MMA he needs to learn at least two (maybe three) fighting disciplines. Learn them. From scratch. We’ll give him a pass on kickboxing but there is no way he can enjoy the kind of success he is used to in an MMA cage without mastering the art of wrestling and jiu jitsu. Faber has been at this for several years now. He’s also been honing his boxing skills since making the transition from wrestling to MMA. This could be one of his easier fights ever.

Mayweather has been actively competing in professional boxing for over eleven years. As witnessed in 24/7, his body has experienced its fair share of bumps and bruises. Is he even able (or willing) to learn two new fighting disciplines at this stage of his career? That remains to be seen.

Floyd, you won’t be fooling anyone by taking a fight against another boxer turned MMA fighter where they never go to the ground once yet are competing inside a cage. That’s not MMA. If you really wants to excel in your new-found “interest” go away for 18 months – at least. Learn jiu jitsu, learn how to wrestle and while your at it learn how to throw some kicks. Then we can talk. Until then, shut up and fight Cotto already.

No Masians, I ask you, what are your thoughts about Floyd Mayweather’s potential jump into the octagon? It’s a revolutionary concept, and certainly ironic that the news was floated to the media on the very same day that we crowned him as The No Mas Fighter of the Year.

As for myself, I will offer just a few thoughts. I like MMA and consider the growth of the sport to be good for boxing – I’ve always thought the pissing-contest debates about the octagon versus the squared circle were just so much keyboard-tapping and gum-flapping. I don’t follow MMA with any regularity and I admit that when I do watch it, my enjoyment does not begin to approach my enjoyment of a good boxing match. But I’m not sure that fact is even relevant – I don’t enjoy most movies as much as I do a good boxing match either, but I still go to the movies. A good MMA fight is an awesome sight and I have no doubts that the sport is here to stay and only will continue to grow in leaps and bounds until it is a money-making enterprise to rival and even surpass boxing. To that end, as most of you remember, I was very invested in having regular coverage of it here on No Mas, and all-too-briefly that was the case with our crack correspondent, The Franchise. Chise, however, now has his own site, jarrypark.com, devoted to the combat arts of all stripes, a site that is pretty quickly getting a lot of attention as one of the best fonts of MMA and wrestling information on the web, not to mention a place where one can hear one Mr. Large flap his gums on a regular basis.

Basically, though I am far too much of a dilettante to call myself a fan, I am definitely an MMA supporter, and so, unlike many boxing purists I suspect, I have no problem with the idea of Floyd making the jump to the octagon. In fact, it makes perfect sense to me. The only thing that bothers me about it is that there’s one more huge fight left for Floyd in the ring, and as far as I’m concerned, after he takes that bout he can go out on the pro arm-wrestling circuit for all I care. But RIGHT NOW is the time for Mayweather/Cotto, while Floyd is still reasonably close to his prime and Cotto is at his best. That is the most perfect “styles make fights” match-up of undefeateds that I can think of since, Christ, since Meldrick fought Chavez. I have no reservation in saying that it would be this generation’s Ali-Frazier, and as a boxing fan I literally salivate at the prospect.

And yet I fear it is never going to happen, or if it does, it will happen in three years, when the skills have deteriorated and the excuses are rampant and we are all left to watch and wonder what might have been if only it had gone down when it should have gone down. Of course, Floyd’s rationale for ducking the fight is clear to me and anyone paying attention. Cotto is a punishing fighter of great skill and force who does not have anywhere near the drawing power of Floyd’s previous two opponents. It won’t be the marquee mega-event that he has become accustomed to, and he very well might lose.

A jump to MMA, on the other hand, is almost guaranteed to be a stratospheric spectacle. Cuban evidently is talking 30 mill cash money for Floyd’s MMA debut, and if indeed Money’s just got money on his mind, well, get ready octagon, cause here comes Money May.

But beyond the interminable Onslaught of Bling, there has been another recurrent strain to Floyd’s self-promotional hype machine over the last few years, and that is a desire to claim for himself the mantle of the greatest boxer ever. It’s a preposterous boast, something that is unachievable really to a fighter in this day and age when one considers the accomplishment of, say, a Sugar Ray Robinson (let alone a Kid Gavilan). But nevertheless, I want you to listen to me Floyd, because you need to get this straight right now while you are weighing your various options. If your place in the history of the sweet science occupies even a tiny part of your diamond-encrusted mind, you should be persuaded in no uncertain terms of a single, undeniable fact: There is a boxer on the scene right now who is undefeated, who has a legitimate claim to the welterweight crown, and who will give you the fight of your life, a fight that will make your Ricky Hatton square dance look like the glorified sparring session that we both know it was. In short, if you duck this fight, Floyd, true boxing fans will know exactly why you did it – you were afraid to get hurt, and you were afraid to lose. It’s your prerogative, of course, but it’s not exactly the path to all-time greatness.

(p.s. – For all of you Franchise fans out there, I just received news from him that No Mas should be receiving his thoughts on the Floyd/Octagon question before the day is out. Stay tuned…)

First, let me say that No Mas Nation did an excellent job of weighing the debates for the 2007 No Mas Fight and Fighter of the Year. There were a lot of thought-provoking comments and I got a slew of well-written and passionate emails. We sorted through all of the evidence last night and after crunching and re-crunching the numbers, arguing and re-arguing the merits, we arrived at the winners. The envelopes please…

No Mas Fighter of the Year
Floyd Mayweather

This one surprised me. As I said in a comment, I thought for sure this debate would break down as Cotto v. Pavlik and instead No Masians almost universally saw it as Mayweather v. Pavlik. I actually thought Cotto might prevail amongst the No Mas faithful, because he was a happy medium between what I see as the primary FOY qualifications – enormity of fights, and distance traveled career-wise over the course of the year.

But our readers for the most part felt that Cotto’s achievement, and Pavlik’s as well, paled in comparison to what Floyd did in 2007, not only for himself but for the entire sport. An anonymous commenter made a convincing argument on this front, writing:

Pavlik was the breakthrough fighter and he deserves that honor, but Floyd was the fighter of the year. I mean, just think about it this way. Twenty years from now This will be Floyd’s year. The biggest fight in history, and the biggest non-heavyweight, non-oscar fight in history.

An email I received from Walt also made a strong case, saying “in the future this year will be remembered as the year that boxing did a complete 180, and without Floyd that never would have happened – Pavlik beating an overrated Jermain is just not a comparable achievement.”

As I read these arguments, I found myself agreeing with them. Over in the Jarry Park awards with Franchise I gave the nod to Pavlik, but that was before the Floyd/Hatton bout, and there’s no doubt that Floyd’s performance in that fight and then the numbers that it did made a compelling case for Floyd as the king of the sport in ’07. He won the two biggest events of the year after helping to make them into such big events in the first place. And those events almost by themselves changed boxing’s profile in the mainstream media. It is indeed a mammoth achievement for a single fighter, and for that, I hand him the gold statue for No Mas Fighter of the Year without reservation.

No Mas Fight of the Year
Kelly Pavlik v. Jermain Taylor

There was less debate on Fight of the Year than there was for Fighter of the Year in the No Mas spectrum. While there were a few pleas for Oscar/Floyd, and a worthy write-in from Unsilent for the Katsidis/Amonsot bloodfest, the battle pretty much shaped up cleanly as Vasquez/Marquez II v. Pavlik/Taylor. And Pavlik/Taylor was the overwhelming favorite. Charles put his argument very succinctly – “A classic fight for a classic belt featuring a classic comeback.” Exactly.

It definitely helped this fight’s FOY case in my mind that the recognized middleweight championship was at stake, and that it turned out to be a battle worthy of the great lineage of 160 title fights – Graziano/Zale, Robinson/LaMotta, Hagler/Hearns et al. In the Jarry Park awards I went with Vasquez/Marquez, but in retrospect I realize that was because I knew I was giving Fighter of the Year to Pavlik, and I wanted to throw some love on that amazing super-bantamweight throwdown. Here, however, I am more than happy to hand the statue to Pavlik/Taylor. As you probably know, both I-berg and I were at the fight, and it was one of the most exciting sporting events either of us have ever attended. For the magnitude of the event, the Rocky atmosphere in the arena, and the sheer guts and improbability of Pavlik’s comeback, it is a most worthy selection as the 2007 No Mas Fight of the Year.

I’m not sure that I’m content to allow Bill Simmons to jump on the boxing bandwagon right now, even though I took considerable pleasure from his latest piece in The Magazine about his trip to the Mayweather/Hatton fight. To summarize said piece – he had a smashing good time of it at the big bout in Vegas and now thinks boxing is back and so let’s all hug it out.

Ardent No Masians no doubt will recall that our very distinguished guest Unsilent laid into the Worldwide Leader in September for their systematic burial of boxing, and also that I took serious issue with the Sports Guy back in April when he wrote this piece about the Oscar/Floyd showdown, calling it in no uncertain terms “The Last Big Fight” and on the whole proclaiming the sweet science a crumbling edifice in need of condemnation. And I quote:

The sport resembles a broken-down mansion that seems as if it can be salvaged — right until the housing inspector tells you about the water-damaged walls and termite-infested foundation rotted to the core.

Contrast that with his latest pronouncement – “Boxing ain’t dead, at least not yet.”

But all right, all right, enough of my smug Simmons-bashing. I will just say one more thing to you, Sports Guy, should you happen to be reading this in your Sports Penthouse Made of Diamonds – promise us true fight fans that you will not write another “boxing is dead” piece for at least five years. You owe us that much, and if you stick to the deal, we’ll welcome you back into the fistic family with open arms. Clearly you are a fan in your heart of hearts, and this Floyd/Hatton piece you’ve written perfectly illustrates in its boundless, giddy enthusiasm what to me is the central point to be made about the sport on the whole: It’s unpredictable, cyclical, and plagued by vultures, yes… but the fact remains that there is nothing, NOTHING, in all of sports as electrifying as a big fight that delivers on its promise. In a world where we are bombarded with competition and relentless analysis of that competition on a daily basis, where something seemingly goes into overtime every hour on the hour, the vagaries of that electricity strike me even more as something to be celebrated and not disdained. Dilettantes and posers are quick to note a drought and solemnly announce to the world that it will never rain again. But the true believer stays alert, watching for lightning, which, as we all know, strikes when it strikes. That’s why they call it lightning motherfucker.