posted by Large

After a Beijing-ian layoff of note, the professional wing of the sweet science gets back to the bigtime blackboard tonight with another notable Puerto Rico/Mexico smackdown of note, a junior flyweight contest between P.R.’s Ivan Calderon and Mexico’s Hugo Cazares for Calderon’s WBO title at 108 pounds. This is a rematch, as I’m sure you know, of the Calderon/Cazares bout that went down almost a year ago today, where Calderon won the WBO belt from Cazares in a hotly disputed split decision despite being knocked down in the eighth round. With the atmosphere of Margarito/Cotto still hovering around the fight game, and with Tony himself planning to be ringside to support Cazares (who calls Margs his personal hero), it seems likely that from the opening bell this thing will get all “el mas macho” to the nth degree of mas. What with the break, I have to say I’m more eager than I usually might be for a light-fly title fight.

The Margo/Cotto fallout hovered over the big boxing news of the week as well, which involved a Mexican from one of the most infamous P.R./Mexico showdowns in history, none other than The Golden Goose himself, who finally threw Manny Pacquiao whatever extra points on the package he needed to get that deal done once and for all. As I mentioned in my Friday boxing notes over at The Sporting Blog, the real news from the Golden Boy camp wasn’t the announcement of the Pac Man debacle, but the fact that Oscar has backed away from his retirement plans in no uncertain terms.

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(Ladies and gents, I bring you Baggiesboy’s final installment of insider commentary on the Beijing Olympics, where he was, befitting his station, in a position of some considerable power. Many many thanks to the Bag for his always excellent work on the Games. No doubt he is in Zurich as we speak on some matter of espionage involving the Weltklasse Track Meet and the rising suspicions that Usain Bolt is a space alien. -L)

Tibet, Internet access and the protest application count would seem to be the burning questions of the Beijing Games. But that impression is drawn exclusively from reading newspapers and watching television newscasts. Inside the International Broadcast Center there was only one question on anyone’s mind: How do you say that name?

While prim, grim IOC spokesperson Giselle Davis was shooting dark looks and poorly scripted answers at the assembled media during the five-ring rulers’ ever more sporadic press conferences, I was offering advice on the age old question: is it ee-gor or I-gor? Like Ms. Davis, I rarely let my composure slip as I proffered an answer I wouldn’t like to have to repeat under oath.

I was on even less solid ground with India’s first Olympic gold medal winner in an individual event. Abinav Bindra just had to be Ab-hee-nav Been-dra, right? The shooting star of the Indian team not only struck gold in the 10m air rifle: he earned a free rail pass for life courtesy of Indian Railways and a serious stash of rupees from the Indian Cricket Board. Me, I got some strange looks from my colleagues.

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The Undercard is up on Nomas.TV in high-resolution splendor. Four episodes you may already have seen on youtube (Kid Chocolate, Gary Stark I and II, and Gotham Boxing) plus a brand new profile on Cedric Kushner, which gets into the game from the promoter’s point of view. We are working on a way to integrate commenting into the video site, but until then would love to hear any feedback from true school No Masians here. Hope you enjoy.

posted by Baggiesboy

(To get you all riled up for tonight’s Nigeria/Argentina gold-medal men’s soccer game (CNBC, 12 midnight, but then you already knew that because you read Large Screens TV), Baggiesboy brings us some of his thoughts on the Argy/Brazil semi this past Tuesday night. Was he there, you ask? Obviously you don’t know The Bag. It was a bit of an ordeal, but true to form, he got the job done… -L)

The budding USA-China sports rivalry is going through a growth spurt at these Games, but frankly it has a long way to go. Watching the uneven bars gymnastics final on Monday, I was a tad disappointed that Cold War-style bad blood did not permeate the film of hairspray and chalk dust that hung in the air. Tuesday night, the Games of the XXIX Olympiad saw the real thing: Brazil versus Argentina.

No manufactured buzz was needed for this encounter. For the first time in my experience at these Games the media lane was clogged all along the main drag to the stadium. The thousands of people milling around the Worker’s Stadium needed no introduction to the names on the marquee: Ronaldinho and Lionel Messi replica jersey’s dominate the knockoff emporiums of the Pearl and Silk Markets. The Holy Trinity of sports merchandizing was completed by the presence of Kobe Bryant. My arrival coincided with his. Make no mistake though dear reader, the explosion of popping flashbulbs was all for him. Right then, I should have realized this was going to be no ordinary evening.

The penny began to drop when I encountered the rugby scrum at the foot of the stairs leading to the media seats. There’s a certain sense of entitlement among the Olympic press corps (any press corps for that matter) that extends to automatic observer seats for any, and all events. Alas, every scribe worth his salt knew that the recently renovated remnant of the Mao-era along the Gongti Road was the place to be on Tuesday. What followed was my first glimpse of a crack in the Great Wall of congenial hospitality that has been ever present here in Beijing. Mandarin is not my language, but body language is universal. A squat, thick-necked man with a short fuse to match his stature suddenly appeared to scream something, to me at least, that sounded a good bit stronger than: ‘No observer seats for you.” When the jostling continued a non-Chinese venue official informed an intrepid newshound: ‘You can talk to me or you can talk to the police.” I didn’t want to talk to anyone, and bid what I hoped was a graceful retreat. It was the best thing I’ve done at these Games.

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posted by Large

A bunch of you have written me asking for some thoughts about the boxing in Beijing and so at long last, I am weighing in. I apologize that I’m weighing in through a piece at another site, but I think you all are aware that I have a monthly nut to meet over at The Sporting Blog, and so forgive me for routing you over there yet again. But I think you’ll get the gist of my general thoughts from my opening couple of grafs below, and then you can check out the full piece over there or just weigh in with your opinions. Very curious to hear what everyone is thinking out there.

I’m pretty passionate about the fight game… and I’m more than familiar with the role the Olympics has played in launching the careers of some of the biggest fighters of all time — Floyd Patterson, Joe Frazier, Evander Holyfield, Oscar De La Hoya, not to mention a certain young loudmouth from Louisville named Cassius Clay.

So it pains me to have to venture forth with this piece. But I have no choice but to call it as I see it, and admit that Olympic boxing is a disaster. Such a disaster, in fact, that they might as well get rid of it. As sport, it’s highly dubious to the point of being near ridiculous…

It May Be Time to Eliminate Olympic Boxing (The Sporting Blog)

No Mas is featured on page 154 of the September issue GQ. We have now been written up in GQ, Esquire, and the Sporting News. SI hurry up and get some of this so I can die happy. Special thanks to GQ transplant and former Fader man Will Welch, who did us very right.

posted by Large

With things moving ever slowly in the dog days of August, both here at the Mas and in the fistic world at large, I direct your attention to some of the highlights of my recent work over at The Sporting Blog:

Top Five Names at the Games
“It was the men’s track and field 100 meter final that made me realize what my subconscious had been telling me since almost the start of the Beijing Olympics , man, there are some righteous names floating around at these Games. In my humble opinion, here are the top five…”

AdWatch: “I Got Soul But I’m Not a Soldier”
“Nike really excels at these many-frames-per-second sports montages set to stirring music that are the very definition of much sound and fury signifying the gradual decline of Western civ. Nevertheless, they are very fun to look at when you’re all high.”

Friend or Foe? – Springsteen at the Super Bowl
… Though I absolutely hated the choice of Tom Petty for last year’s halftime, the selection of the Boss gibes pretty well with me, at least on paper, because I have this fleeting fantasy that the military-industrial culture of the Super Bowl could get much more than it bargained for from their star attraction in Tampa next year.

Round by Round: Weekly Boxing Notes
In which I discuss Pacquiao’s future, Calzaghe’s retirement talk and Oscar’s sudden concern for the honor of Paul Williams.

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posted by Baggiesboy

(Baggiesboy filed this dispatch from Beijing this past Monday, and I’ve been so swamped with work this week that I’m just now getting it up for your enjoyment. Seems as if China is being kind to his eyes and unkind to his feet. Even when you’re an international man of mystery, it’s always bloody bleeding something, innit? -L)

All around Beijing banners proclaim ‘One World One Dream.” My dream right now is a cure for blisters. Last week I made the classic Great Wall of China rookie mistake: I wore flip-flops. Since then I’ve heard tales of pre-pubescent gymnasts twirling around the uneven bars with separated shoulders, swimming studs slicing through the water with broken hands, and legally blind pole-vaulters (but only in one eye) leaping to new heights. No doubt, these Olympians are all dreaming of a gold medal. But in the spirit of the Games, I’m sure they don’t mind me having a different mission here.

Beijing is not what anyone would call a walking city. The tarmac concession in this town must be worth more than the GDP of most of the 204 countries on hand for the five-ring festivities. Such is the detail of organization here that even painful feet seem to have been catered for. For a couple of weeks at least, it’s relatively easy to get around Beijing on wheels. For starters, half the cars are put in park on an every-other-day rotation. Next, the ring roads all boast that splendid Olympic host city invention: the media lane. For the credentialed fourth estate Beijing’s clogged arteries offer a smooth ride. And then there are the taxis: very cheap and most cab drivers refuse a tip. What more incentive do you need to stay off the pavement? None. But this is the Olympic Games and its time to step out and dream a little.

Now, I make no claims to being a Robert Korzeniowski, but I enjoy a good Olympic walk. It’s amazing what you see strolling through the Olympic Green. Light shows galore for one. The Water Cube is not just a blue bauble of wonder: it’s the aurora borealis. Its panels transform from blue to purple to red to gold and every other combination of the color spectrum. As I walk by the Cube every night, I fight the urge to reenact the scene in Local Hero where Knox Oil and Gas point man, MacIntyre, calls his boss, Houston oilman Felix Happer, from a phone box in a Scottish fishing village and tries to describe the northern lights. ‘Sir, its amazing , its green, its yellow, its red , IT”S RED ALL OVER!!!”

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We’ve had this recent debate raging on the message boards here on my last post about the Judah/Clottey fight, a debate prompted by our man Ricky Roe’s suggestion that Tito Trinidad would be a good opponent for Tony Margarito’s fall fight. I thought I’d address this debate directly because to my mind it’s about much more than who Margarito will or will not fight this November. It’s about what we as boxing fans want from our sport.

First, to recap the argument. Ricky Roe’s point, as I read it, is that Margarito earned a big payday with his win over Cotto and that because the two men who are in the most reasonable position to give it to him – Oscar and Floyd – don’t seem like they’re going to take the bait, maybe Bob Arum should think outside the box a little rather than just positioning Tony for another tough welterweight fight that will not bring in much loot – i.e., Josh Clottey. Ricky’s suggestion was Tito – offer him a lot of cash to get down to 162 and wham, you’ve got yourself another Mexico/Puerto Rico showdown with an instant PPV-worthy storyline – the old Puerto Rican icon trying to redeem the honor of the young one.

Among others, Trickster, Butch Huskey (glad to see that we’ve got Butch here at No Mas – I knew he’d come around eventually) and our crack prognosticator Ryan (who, I imagine, has been writing his messages with a big fat Cohiba in his mouth on the pristine beach of the island he just bought with all his Margarito winnings) took the position on the admittedly unlikely Margo/Tito pairing with the response of – look, that would be just another bullshit sideshow fight to take our money and otherwise tell us absolutely nothing about either man, so why even bother bringing it up? As boxing fans, we should be happy about Margs/Clottey II because it’s going to be a great fight, and we should welcome the winner fighting Paul Williams.

I’m sure these guys will straighten me out if I’ve misspoken their positions, but I think that’s pretty much the meat of the matter right there, and it’s an argument that to me gets to the essence of the peculiarity of being a boxing fan in this country, where the sport is marginalized and the best fighters are often not the biggest stars and don’t make the most money. To become a legit headlining PPV attraction these days in the States is an unpredictable science, a much more delicate one than the sweet science itself.

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posted by Large

Man, Zab Judah really didn’t cover himself in glory last night. I don’t know what the hell Kellerman was going on about showering Zab with praise for his performance, because:

1. He got destroyed.
2. He effectively quit, if the ring doctor is to be believed.
3. He had the audacity after the fight to suggest that he won.

That he lost the bout conclusively was to this fight fan’s eyes inarguable. If you didn’t see it, the fight was stopped in the ninth round by the ring doctor because, as the doctor explicitly said afterwards, “Zab claimed that he couldn’t see.” He had a bad cut over his left eye that the ref mistakenly attributed to a butt (HBO did a great job of picking up the exact punch that opened it) but according to the doctor he was going to let Zab continue fighting in spite of the cut. Until Zab told the doc that he couldn’t see, at which point the doc administered a quick vision test that Zab failed and the fight was waved off.

Ten minutes later Zab was in the center of the ring in shades pounding his chest and whipping the sparse remains of a small crowd into a frenzy about the unjust decision. Miracle of miracles, he seemed to have reclaimed his vision at that point.

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