(He’s back, and he means business. Our secret soccer agent Baggiesboy files his report this week from God-knows-where, with his mind on his Beckham and Beckham on his mind. -L)

And then there were five. Yes, after journeying thousands and thousands of miles, giving interviews galore and refining the stump speech countless times, the unstinting campaign to win David Beckham his 100th England cap ended in Paris, France on Wednesday evening. Vive Le Becks! Billy Wright, Bobby Charlton, Bobby Moore and Peter Shilton are the other distinguished members of the England Centurion Club. But none of them stage-managed their triple-digit cap fanfare like the MLS man.

The coronation, of course, came earlier on Sunday. In a metro-sexual moment for the ages, the new Centurion showed Anderson Cooper how to bend the ball 180 on 60 Minutes. Or as The Huffington Post headline so deliciously put it: ‘Anderson Cooper plays with David Beckham on 60 Minutes.” If it wasn’t yellow-card disturbing enough to watch CNN’s intrepid ‘anything for ratings” anchor moonlighting on CBS and doing 360s along the goal line to prevent old Goldenballs from scoring on pseudo-free kicks, then there was the tattoo tour. That was a straight red card. In this new era of respecting officialdom dear reader, I’ll brook no arguments on this one. I have nothing against ink. I just don’t want to see it while I’m chomping on my last chocolate Easter bunny.

Apparently the latest Chinese proverb engraved inky prick by inky prick on the Beckham body beautiful translates as: ‘Death and life have determined appointments. Riches and honor depend upon heaven.” So, there you have it. Gloria Vanderbilt’s silver-haired little lad did point out (while playing with Beckham), that the Englishman has accrued financial riches second only to Tiger Woods among today’s athletes. There has to be a Chinese proverb to put that in perspective, but I remain confused while waiting for Confucian enlightenment.

Lets face it, Brand Beckham is built on the success of a Hollywood movie he had little or no involvement in, not ‘Woodsian” dominance of the soccer field. Beckham is a fine player who is deserving of his 100 caps. He has carved a permanent niche in soccer history by becoming the game’s first specialist player. He does two things as well as anyone who has ever played the game: provide dangerous crosses from the right wing, and score highlight reel worthy free-kick goals. But he is far from the only one with these powers. Gun to your head: Beckham or Cristiano Ronaldo on your all-time Manchester United XI? Granted memories are short, but I doubt many pundits would pick Beckham.

The Katie Couric replacement-anchor-in-waiting told America on Sunday that ‘performing under pressure” is what Beckham is all about. Hem… guess no 60 Minutes producers were in Portugal in the summer of 2004. The last England player to perform under pressure was Gary Lineker at the 1990 FIFA World Cup against Cameroon. He also put away his penalty in the semifinal shootout against die Deutsch Nationalmanschaft.

Beckham is not the only member of the England Centurion Club to discover that ‘soccer is a kick in the grass.” Bobby Moore played for a fistful of dollars with the San Antonio Thunder and the Seattle Sounders in the old NASL. The World Cup-winning captain didn’t generate anything remotely close to the Beckham publicity or dollar grosses (or get to play with Anderson Cooper for that matter). And while Beckham’s desire to win 100 caps for England is all about football glory, his American sojourn still looks too much like a money grab. I’m sure no one at MLS HQ was too thrilled to hear Super Cooper announce that Beckham had come to America to play for a ‘little known soccer team called the LA Galaxy.” Ouch! Of course, while that little known 2-time MLS Cup winner is preparing for the new season (the Galaxy kick off in Colorado this Saturday night), its multi-million dollar man was taking time out from the Home Depot Center locker-room banter he claims to love so much to head to the City of Light. (Last week, he jetted to New York in the middle of the week to present an award to Pelé at the FC Harlem fundraiser.)

Number 23 might have a clause that allows him first dibs on a new MLS franchise, but its time he starting taking care of business with the team that he already runs. I’ve no doubt that 19Entertainment are already planning the knighthood campaign. But there is an MLS campaign at hand, and if Beckham wants to cap his career with more than numbers and dollars then he should emulate his uncoordinated 60 Minutes training partner and start giving MLS and the Galaxy the full 360 treatment for 365, 24/7.

I’m in San Francisco this week with Mrs. Large and my folks, and last night we went to this Italian place in North Beach called Trattoria Contadina. It was one of those pictures-of-celebrities-on-the-wall type places, all the usual suspects, Deano, Lena Horne, Cosby (I swear to God, Cosby has eaten in every restaurant in the U.S.). But it was the above row of autographed shots that caught my eye, particularly the arrangement. You got a great lambchop shot of Joe Morgan, a young McCovey, Charlie Hustle, a very young Johnny Bench, and then… AND THEN… over on the far left sits none other than the great Carl “Bobo” Olson, a middleweight title-holder of the mid-50′s who fought most of his career out of S.F. Olson is best remembered for having fought Sugar Ray Robinson four times, losing all four, three by KO. But Olson fought most of the greats of his era, and once beat Randy Turpin, Kid Gavilan and Rocky Castellani in the space of a single year.

In the dream infield above, however, it seems that Olson would be forced to play shortstop. Maybe the Trattoria Contadina knows something about ole Bobo that we don’t.

Ninety-two years ago today, at the second iteration of Madison Square Garden, heavyweight champion Jess Willard (pictured right) made his first title defense, a lackluster 10-round bout with Frank Moran that went the distance and ended, as the contract stipulated, with no decision being rendered. Most reporters at ringside had Willard winning every round, and of course the champion kept his title.

Jess Willard, “The Pottawatomie Giant,” is famous today for only two fights, defeating Jack Johnson for the heavyweight crown in 1915 and then losing it to Jack Dempsey in 1919. In this way, Willard’s reign is somewhat akin to that of Larry Holmes, in that he is largely forgotten by history for having succeeded a legendarily flamboyant champion and preceded a legendarily vicious one.

It’s a nice comparison on paper, but it doesn’t hold up much beyond the words I wrote above. In fact it’s tremendously unfair to Holmes, who was an outstanding and unfairly undermined heavyweight champ where Willard was something of a sideshow, a lumbering giant with little actual boxing ability. The bout that Willard fought with Frank Moran (known as “The Fighting Dentist,” pictured left ) on March 25th, 1916 is less notable as a heavyweight title fight than it is as the first promotion that Tex Rickard ever made in New York. Rickard would go on to become boxing’s P.T. Barnum with Madison Square Garden his personal circus, so much so that the third Garden became known as “The House That Tex Built.”

Amazingly, there is footage of the Willard/Moran fight, which I present to you below. It’s uneventful, although interesting just to see the stand-up style of the times in action. Also, you have to hand it to the Dentist. Overmatched in just about every way, he’s still swinging for the fences in there.

God does boxing need a heavyweight right now, a big guy with a big punch who can capture people’s imagination. That’s all I could think last night as I was watching that mind-blowing lineal lightweight title bout between Joel Casamyor and Michael Katsidis in which Casamayor triumphed in a back-and-forth battle with a stunning 10th-round stoppage.

There have been three FOY-quality fights in the last three weeks – Vasquez/Marquez III, Pacquiao/Marquez II and now Casamayor/Katsidis. The sweet science is so chock-full of electrifying fights and marquee match-ups right now that it’s hard for me to think of a better time to be a fight fan in recent memory.

And yet the bitter taste of the Klitschko/Ibragimov debacle still lingers, and the fact of the matter is this – as the heavyweights go, so goes the sport in mainstream culture. Devoid of a heavyweight star, boxing remains condemned to the back of the sports pages, if it makes the sports pages at all, and depends on the ongoing Money May sideshow and the glorified exhibitions of a superstar past his prime to garner headlines.

Well, so be it. Enough of my belly-aching. We die-hards are on a hell of a run right now and we should enjoy it while it lasts.

On the matter of Casa/Katsidis, let me begin with a personal note and offer my sincere thanks to Andy Lee. I won myself a nice piece of change betting on Casamayor last night, and I placed my bet almost immediately after Lee got stopped on Friday Night Fights. I looked at the odds (Casamayor +185 at the time) and I thought about Andy Lee and then I thought about Katsidis, and I said to myself, “who the hell has Michael Katsidis ever beaten that he’s almost a 2-1 favorite over a guy who twice beat Chico Corrales and took Castillo the distance in a war?” Yes, Casamayor is 36, and yes he looked very bad in his last fight and deserved to lose it on the scorecards, but still, didn’t Nate Campbell recently show us what a determined and crafty old vet can to do to an over-eager up-and-comer if he sets his mind to it?

So I laid down my money, and I felt very good about my wager. And then when Casa put Katsidis down twice in the first round, well, I felt like French kissing myself. Exactly, I thought. Another over-hyped white boy about to get exposed in front of a national television audience.

Of course, it didn’t turn out that way, not by a longshot. After getting dropped by two of Casamayor’s pinpoint straight lefts in the first, Katsidis settled himself, made a few key adjustments (slip right against a lefty, Mike) and went to war. He lost a 10-7 round in the first, and then I had him losing both the second and third, but despite being swollen and bloodied and an all-around mess, he turned the tide in the fourth with relentless pressure and a damn-the-torpedoes brawling style. In the fifth, his swarming tactics seemed to be taking a heavy toll on Casamayor’s 36-year-old legs, and then in the sixth Katsidis very nearly earned the stoppage after sending the crafty Cuban through the ropes in the middle of the round.

At that point, Casa’s craftiness was quite literally all he had to work with in there, but he used it to great advantage, clinching his way through a very dicey sixth and then getting on his bicycle to stabilize himself in the seventh. Katsidis might have been able to get him at that point if he’d had the wind, but he clearly had punched himself out with his sixth-round onslaught and a valuable opportunity was lost.

With his legs back, Casamayor won both the eighth and ninth to my eyes, boxing with the elusive in-and-out precision of his prime. Come the tenth, it seemed like Katsidis felt his advantage slipping away from him, and in true warrior fashion he resolved to double his efforts and regain the momentum with another onslaught of pressure and output.

That resolution, however, courageous though it was, cost him the biggest win of his life. Fools rush in where angels… don’t lead with their heads. Lunging at Casa from the opening bell of the 10th with go-for-broke haymakers, Katsidis dove right into a mighty left hand and his brain promptly exited the building. He made it to his feet on auto-pilot and the ref wisely stepped in soon after that, with only Max Kellerman (more a one-man Michael Katsidis fan-club than an announcer last night) protesting the stoppage.

You really can’t ask much more from a fight – slick-boxing veteran and proud young brawler, a shifting narrative that saw both fighters get up off the canvas and seize back the momentum with a strategic adjustment, all topped off with a late-round full-throttle concussification that left absolutely no question about the outcome. It was an instant classic, and yet it says all there is to be said about the quality of the fights that took place this past month when I write that right now I probably have Casamayor/Katsidis third (or maybe tied for second, I have to think about this…) in the Fight of the Year sweepstakes.

And people, Jesus, it’s only March.

Man the hits just keep on coming. Two fights like Vasquez/Marquez and Pacquiao/Marquez in the space of two weeks, and now the demise of the Andy Lee juggernaut on Friday Night Fights. I have to say, I get almost more excited by these kinds of bouts than I do the big PPV affairs, these bouts where a young highly-touted prospect gets exposed by some hard-head who doesn’t seem to have gotten his copy of the script.

If you didn’t watch FNF last night, then you missed a corker – Manny Steward’s prized charge, the big-punching Irish southpaw Andy Lee, getting stopped by Contender vet Brian Vera in the seventh-round of an all-out slugfest. Lee knocked Vera down in the first round, but even then he didn’t seem to me to be in control of the fight, although credit must be given on that score to Vera’s chin, because he took a load of clean straight lefts right down the pike and ate them like a man’s man.

And the chins really proved the difference in the fight, because what emerged early on as a pattern of exchange was Vera taking Lee’s left to counter with big roundhouse rights, and in those exchanges it was Vera’s and not Lee’s punches that took a heavy toll. As early as the fourth I started to feel the upset on the way, as it became more and more clear that the Irish prospect’s vaunted power simply wasn’t enough to stop the hard-charging Vera from getting inside and roughing him up. On that count, Lee proved virtually incompetent, unable to clinch effectively and clueless as to how to handle himself in close quarters. In the fifth, his legs started to go, and then the fight became an all-out war, Lee’s left, Vera’s right, lather rinse repeat, and suddenly what was supposed to be a walkover was shaping up as an FOY candidate. With sheer determination, Vera seized the upper hand in the fifth and took it with him into the sixth, when he wobbled Lee with one of his big wide rights and the chase was on. Bleeding badly from an eye-cut and staggering backwards around the ring, Lee was just target practice for Vera in the seventh, and that’s when the ref put an end to it, a bit prematurely no doubt (on the punch from Vera that sealed the stoppage Lee was firing back a left-hand counter just as the ref stepped in), but I had some sympathy for the referee in that situation, because for the entire minute beforehand Vera had landed one haymaker after another, almost all of them unanswered. The ref probably was at that point where he was thinking, “all right, one more of those and I’m stepping in,” and then that one more comes and that’s the one that Lee fires back on.

It didn’t look good, but hey, if Manny Steward wasn’t complaining, you know it wasn’t that bad, because if the stoppage really had been unjust Manny would have been going nuts. What a tough night for Steward. He’s been talking this kid up so relentlessly this year, talking about him fighting Winky before the year was out, talking about how he could beat Kelly Pavlik right now. Those are some awfully big words to have to eat, and yet you have to feel like he deserves to eat them with relish after having the audacity to flap his gums so hard about a kid so woefully inexperienced and unskilled as Lee proved himself to be last night. Manny has never been one to shy away from talking very big about his fighters, but in this case, it seems like he should have known better.

Of course, all credit goes to Brian Vera, the only person in the building last night who hadn’t read too many of Andy Lee’s press clippings. And besides Manny and Lee himself, there were two other big losers of note – Irish boxing, having to suffer yet another highly touted native fighter getting exposed on a very big American stage (following John Duddy’s disaster against Walid Smichet on the Klitschko/Ibragimov undercard) and Bob Arum, who recently signed Lee to a big promotional deal. Right now, it seems like he bought himself a lemon.

I did an interview with Franchise today over at Jarry Park. We talked a lot of WWE, segued into the Pacquiao/Marquez controversy and went on to talk about the fate of Ricky Hatton, the promise of David Haye, Andy Lee’s appearance on FNF tonight and looking forward to Bernard/Calzaghe.

(The international man of football mystery, Baggiesboy, returns to the pages of No Mas with this dispatch filed straight from the press box at LP Field, where the U.S. under-23′s took care of business tonight, prompting Sir Baggie to display a rather patriotic and uncanny knowledge of modern American country music, which has caused some here in the No Mas offices to revisit the prevailing theory that the Bagman is a Brit – L.)

Nashville, Tennessee was the place to be this week. The Grand Ole Opry extended membership privileges to Country chanteuse Carrie Underwood, Sam Moore played the Ryman Auditorium and the United States Men’s Olympic soccer team was in town to punch its ticket to the Beijing Games. I was last drawn to the ‘Music City” for a Travis Tritt profile. His first big hit was: ‘Here’s A Quarter (Call Someone Who Cares.”) A catchy, if somewhat less than chivalrous, tune that US Soccer was desperately hoping wouldn’t become their Olympic anthem.

Well in the words of Lee Greenwood: ‘God Bless The USA.” Yes, Freddy Adu And The Olympic Dreamers bounced Shania Twain’s countrymen in Thursday’s CONCACAF Olympic qualifying semifinal and now, unlike four years ago, the Parade of Nations beckons for the red, white and blue. Not for Mexico though. In this Olympic cycle the Osama chants were replaced by calls for the firing of Hugo Sanchez. And I thought the England manager sat on a hot plate.

Life is all about expectations. Sanchez claimed his young charges were destined for a podium spot in August. But Señor Soothsayer misfired, something he rarely did as a player. And what of the expectations for Team USA? Well, they’ll be stepping into an Olympic ring of fire.

The Beijing field will be stacked with great young talent: Lionel Messi, Fernando Gago and Sergio Aguero should be helping Argentina go for gold again. Archrivals Brazil will have Alexandre Pato, Anderson and Thiago Neves eligible, with Kaka clamoring to be selected as one of the overage players. Italy could bring New Jersey’s own Giuseppe Rossi, plus other big time prospects such as Lorenzo De Silvestri and Riccardo Montolivo. Salomon Kalou could play for Ivory Coast even though he nearly played for the Netherlands at the 2006 FIFA World Cup. The Dutch will almost certainly bring Ryan Babel and Royston Drenthe to China. A formidable lineup of potential foes, but the US squad has talent too.

Adu isn’t as good as he thinks he is, at least not yet, but he has shined in age-restricted international competitions. A fine performance at last year’s FIFA U-20 World Cup landed him his current deal in Portugal. And his goals went a long way towards putting the US back in the Olympics. Jonathan Spector, Michael Bradley and Jozy Altidore are all senior internationals, and worthy of the distinction. But unlike some of the Olympic favorites, the US needs help from its three overage players to win a medal.

Head coach Peter Nowak was doing a Tennessee waltz on this issue in Nashville. He invoked team chemistry, and the senior team’s World Cup qualifying overlap. Fair enough. Now lets get real. Nothing grabs America’s attention like a gold medal winning team contending for a Wheaties box cover shot. To that end I would suggest the presence of this trio of plus 23s at the Games: Tim Howard in goal (Kasey Keller or Brad Guzan could cover the World Cup games), Carlos Bocanegra on the back line alongside Spector, and Brian McBride leading the team as well as the front line.

Now before you go all Minnie Pearl on me, I know McBride has announced his international retirement and that Clint Dempsey would be left off the roster. But for me, McBride is the best player ever to don a USA soccer jersey, (Michelle Akers would come a close second.) He is also the only player I know where its better for his team physio to have enswell on hand rather than the magic sponge. This guy goes where angles fear to tread. He has spilled more blood than a ‘Kill Bill” extra in the cause of American soccer. Last weekend he returned to the score sheet for Fulham after a long injury layoff. Its no coincidence that the Cottagers plunge into the deadly EPL relegation waters came during their captain’s absence. And there is no reason for him to be absent from the Olympics. This is a man who thought long and hard before making the move to London because he didn’t want to uproot his family from Columbus, Ohio. Hey, that’s what I call a true patriot.

My guess is he would play if asked. And if US Soccer needs a compelling argument to get him to recant his retirement, at least temporarily, then they need look no further than the title of the debut album of his Country star namesake Martina McBride: ‘The Time Has Come.” The album didn’t go gold, and that would be too much to ask of this US Olympic team as well. But with McBride up front, Freddy and the other young Americans would be a tough team to beat.

By the way, I can’t speak to Carrie Underwood, but Sam Moore? Well, let me tell you, he is the tonic for whatever ails you.

On this day eleven years ago, the great Tony Zale died. A two-time middleweight champion, Zale’s name is etched in boxing’s collective memory forever in connection with Rocky Graziano and their knockdown drag-out trilogy in the 40′s that still today is always mentioned in any discussion of the greatest trilogies in the history of the sport. Zale beat Graziano in his penultimate fight to regain the middleweight crown, but lost it in his very next and final trip to the ring to the Frenchman Marcel Cerdan, a legendary fight both because of its brutality and because of the ringside presence of chanteuse Edith Piaf, there to root on her Gallic lover.

Below is some video from Cerdan/Zale, and also a classic that I’ve shown before here on the Mas, a show hosted by Dick Schaap with Don Dunphy, Graziano and Zale as guests, talking about and watching Graziano/Zale III.

After the big Pacquiao/Marquez donnybrook this past weekend, boxing (along with entertainment, commerce and just about everything else of note in America) takes a bit of a break for March Madness. The next time that marquee fighters will step into the ring is on Saturday, April 11th, when Miguel Cotto takes on Contender alum, Alfonso Gomez, with Antonio Margarito on the undercard in a highly anticipated rematch with Kermit Cintron.

Still, for those of us noble souls among us who have no need of college basketball in our lives, there are a couple of notable fights this weekend, including a lightweight title fight on Saturday’s B.A.D. broadcast between Aussie star-in-the-making Michael Katsidis and the Cuban battleaxe Joel Casamayor.

I’ll have more of my thoughts on that bout on Friday, but for our No Mas Knockout of the Week, I turn my attention to the much-ballyhooed Irish southpaw Andy Lee, who will be in action this week on Friday Night Fights. A 2004 Olympian with just 15 professional bouts under his belt, Lee has got it all working for him right now. He’s trained by Manny Steward, recently signed a big-time deal with Top Rank, and his startling knockouts along with Manny’s constant promotion of his talents have his name reaching surprisingly stratospheric heights for such a raw prospect. Over and over again, Steward has told anyone who would listen that Lee would beat Kelly Pavlik with ease, and evidently all that repetition has put the Irishman on Pavlik’s radar screen (the fact that Arum now promotes both fighters probably hasn’t hurt Lee’s chances on that score either).

Whether this tall (6’2″), gangly middleweight is worthy of all the hype is impossible to say at this point, but one thing we can say with certainty is this – he do be knocking m.f.’s out stone cold. As exhibit A, I present to you our K.O.W. below, one of the most pristine “timber” knockouts you’ll ever see, Lee’s sleepification of Carl Daniels almost a year ago today. On Friday, Lee is the FNF headliner against “Contender” fighter Brian Vera, and for once I must say I’m looking forward to Friday Night Fights.

Last year, the most righteous Unsilent Majority stepped in and gave us some excellent March Madness coverage and that was an acceptable solution to the whole situation. This year, well, I haven’t communicated with Unsilent, but I imagine he has enough on his plate already, and look, I think it’s time we just faced the facts on this question – College Fucking Basketball and March Fucking Madness is just not our bag over here at the Mas. I’m finally at that place in my life where I can admit it without shame – the whole thing bores the crap out of me. I know, I know, it’s great for gambling, blah blah blah… like there aren’t enough things to gamble on. Like EVERYTHING isn’t great for gambling. This morning I set the over/under on when I’d take my first dump of the day at 9:15 a.m. I took the over and held out for the win.

Bottom line, take your pissass bracket somewhere else and rah-rah yourself to death with it. If a particularly good brawl breaks out and someone lands a haymaker of note, feel free to bring it up. Otherwise, we’re taking a pass.