No Masios,

Alright we got the blog operational and now I figured out how to get the comments settings right so you’re lost gems are back from the abyss. Please fire at will now there will be no more problems on that score.

And since you’ve suffered the greivous loss of your words, we thought someone else’s suffering might cheer you up. If you’re into Schadenfreude Boxing Cinema, these jammies right here are classics.

Without further adieu, here is Staten Island’s Gary “Kid” Stark Jr. on the night of his rematch against Andres Ledesma, the hard-hitting Colombian who stunned Stark with a fifth round KO in May of 2007.

Part One: Rematch

Part Two: Lumps

In the coming weeks, we will also be featuring the Undercards on No Mas TV with a few added features and way higher quality resolution. Until then, we’ll always have youtube.

posted by Large

Unlike most sports debates, the debate over which fight constitutes the biggest upset in boxing history is one in which most people at least agree on the major contenders. Whichever you deem to be number one probably depends on your age and level of interest in the sport, but no doubt the fight you would choose comes from the list below:

posted by Large

It appears that the Oscar De La Hoya farewell-year drama is proceeding towards an inevitable one-fight conclusion with Manny Pacquiao. Awful as it is, it just makes too much dollars-and-sense for it not to happen.

posted by Large

As you are probably aware out there in No Masylvania, Don King’s new video game, Prizefighter, drops this week, a game that purports to take you outside the ring and into the seamy backrooms of the boxing biz. I recently interviewed King for The Sporting Blog and though what I got from The Donald was pretty much his standard Boilerplate of Bluster, there were some gems thrown in there. To wit, consider this nugget: “Irrespective and irregardless of whether you put on boxing gloves, you’re still fighting in the struggle of life for upward mobility and elevation and academic redeeming factors.”

Academic redeeming factors? Don’t stop him, he’s on a roll.

“I Have Great Respect for the Psyche of Human Beings”: An Interview with Don King (The Sporting Blog)

posted by Large

Four fights of consequence last night, and only one of them went according to plan – as expected, Kelly Pavlik out and out destructificated Gary Lockett and laid a serious claim for an upgrade on the rapidly changing pound-for-pound list.

Otherwise, however, on the same day that Big Brown went way down, there were three surprises in the boxing ring as well, and none more so to me than Paul Williams’ first-round TKO of Carlos Quintana.

As far as analyzing that bout goes, there’s not a hell of a lot to say. Quintana got caught with a big shot and tried to survive by pushing forward and hanging on. Williams got him a few more times and he took a long walk down queer street. He never made it back.

It was stunning turn-around from the first fight between these two, when Quintana gave Williams a boxing lesson for 12 rounds and derailed the Paul Williams’ express that at the time looked bound for bigger and better things. Now that train seems back on the track, and one place I have to imagine it won’t be stopping is the station known as Carlos Quintana Trilogy Land. Smart money says The Punisher wants to put as much space between him and his Quintana nightmare as possible so he can turn his thoughts to another Puerto Rican. Is a Cotto fight out of the question for Williams? I wonder. Of course, with the retirement (?) of Money May Not, suddenly it seems like Cotto has rocketed to the top of ODLH’s dance card.

And speaking of Puerto Ricans from Caguas… did anyone out there predict Juan Manuel Lopez knocking out Daniel Ponce de Leon in the first round? First of all, Sir Ponce has never even been down, let alone out. Secondly, he’s a bit of a banger himself. Me, I saw this going deep with heavy damage accrued on both sides. Never did I expect such a succinct conclusion, and if you’d told me that someone was going out in the first, I would have laid down a lot of dough that it would be Lopez.

So much for my once ballyhooed prognostificating skills. Lopez now seems like he can get into the Israel Vasquez sweepstakes. He also seems like the next big-time Puerto Rican sensation.

As for Sergio Mora’s victory over Vernon Forrest, it was well-earned. He worked hard for it, although Vernon certainly didn’t look like he had a lot in the tank. You have wonder have much further the Viper can go with his career. Who is he going to fight now? This loss definitely puts him out of television territory unless he can find himself an up-and-comer to play opponent to on Friday Night Fights.

Mora, meanwhile, now has Oscar in his sights for an all-East L.A. smackdown. He called out De La Hoya after the fight in about the most respectful fashion that a calling-out can be done. He might as well have sang him “I Who Have Nothing.” I guess with the Mayweather announcement, everybody is going to be lining up to fight the Golden Boy. In fact, I’m calling out Oscar right now. You hear that, Oscar, you bitch. Let’s fight.

posted by Large

Shocking news just crossed the desk here at No Mas, courtesy of our old friend The Franchise, who is now manning the helm over at mmarated.com.

The news is this – Floyd Mayweather just announced his retirement via email to the media. Here’s the full text of the message:

Dear Media:

Floyd Mayweather Jr.

Now I know, I know, Lil Floyd has never been shy about retiring. He’s done it before, he’ll do it again. If I had to wager right this very moment as to whether or not we’ll be seeing him in the ring again, I would lay down a respectable amount on the “yes” vote. The timing of this announcement can be interpreted in a number of fashions, but the one that leaps to my mind is one that is never far from the mind of Money May – money.

I think back to the beginning of the year when Dmitriy Salita was on Oscar’s shortlist for a fight in May and I discussed the prospect with Dmitriy’s attorney, Kurt Emhoff. “When Oscar comes calling,” Kurt told me, “you listen.” Now, of course, Floyd occupies a quite different galaxy of the boxing stratosphere than Salita, but the point is this – it’s been years now that Oscar has dictated the terms in just about anything he wanted to do in relation to the sport of boxing. You pretty much have to go back to the Tito Trinidad fight in ’99 to find an opponent who had anywhere near Oscar’s q-factor.

Coming off last May’s bout with Oscar, however, Floyd has gone to great lengths to build his q in to a Q – Dancing with the Stars, NBA Celebrity All-Star Game, and of course, lest you’ve forgotten about it already (did that actually happen), Wrestlemania. You factor in the success of the Hatton PPV and no doubt Money May is feeling like he’s gold to bargain on equal footing with The Golden Boy.

No doubt The Golden Boy disagrees. Round about the time of the Stevie Forbes fight was the first time I noticed a crack in the inevitability of Oscar/Floyd II, when Oscar and his people started talking to the press about the fact that Floyd hadn’t signed on the dotted line yet and that they weren’t worried about it, because if he backed away they would get Pacquiao, and hell, they might do that anyway. There was clearly a little brinksmanship going with the negotiations at that point, and this is clearly the next salvo – Floyd demonstrating, like any experienced haggler, that he’s more than able to put his wallet back in his pocket and go home.

Maybe it’s real, maybe it’s legit, but myself, I sincerely doubt that this will be the end of it. There’s just too much loot at stake for both parties. Maybe the overwhelming bad press that greeted the prospect of a Mayweather/De La Hoya rematch finally won out and both parties rethought their strategies. Maybe the game now is (depending on a Cotto victory over Margo – one hell of a big if) an Oscar/Cotto fight in the fall with Floyd taking the winner of that.

But somehow I doubt that too. With all the potential props floating around out there, I’m still taking “Floyd/Oscar II” as the most likely outcome of all this scuttlebutt about, well, “Floyd/Oscar II.”