(Our man Brad showed up on the boards a couple weeks ago and has rapidly distinguished himself as an authority on fighters from Ayub Kalule to Scott “The Pink Cat” Walker. This dispatch from the Motor City is his debut post on The Mas.)

In November 2006, the Kronk Gym in Detroit closed after it was vandalized by thieves who stole copper piping, bathroom sinks, even old toilets. It never re-opened. Emanuel Steward, who managed/trained 30 world champions at Kronk is now trying to rebuild a new Kronk gym with Johnathon Banks and Andy Lee leading the team back. Steward hasn’t had a homegrown champ since 1985. Last night was the first chance at a championship for the “new” Kronk…bad start.

My buddies, who have all followed boxing since the 70′s, thought downtown Detroit was the appropriate place to drink and hopefully watch Kronk’s return to glory. We were wrong. There seemed to be no interest at all in the fight. We called dozens of bars simply trying to find one with Showtime and willing to turn it on at 11:00. We finally found one just down the street from Joe Louis Arena but the bartender refused to turn on FNF until the insignificant Red Wings-Kings game ended. The game mercifully didn’t go to O.T. and we saw the Johnson-Judah fight. During the Johnson fight the bar filled up with hockey fans all wearing Red Wing jerseys. We tried to get them to stick around and watch Banks, but no luck. The only time the hockey crowd showed any interest was when I told stories about how Manny use to train legendary hockey goon’s Bob Probert and Joey Kocur at Kronk. It’s a true story, Steward introduced technique into Probert and Kocur’s fight game.

By the time the Banks fight started the place was emptying out. Everyone going back to the suburbs, not interested in Banks. Banks looked good thru 4 rounds and we thought he may just pull it out, then Adamek’s relentless body attack turned the fight. The bad days continue here in the D. Still no championship for Kronk. I did notice a sign that hung behind the bar that read “Tough times don’t last, tough people do”. For us in the Motor City, I hope that’s true.

About the Author: As the youngest of five brothers growing up in Detroit, Brad White quickly learned that a good big man always beats a good little man. He is 44, married with 4 kids, and happy.

Our man is deep in TV land, so we may not get a Largian Baby Bull v JMM preview, but wanted to hit you fellas with the short videos we made with Diaz for Everlast around their photo shoot at Gleason’s this month. In the first we have the Baby Bull going toe to toe with his trainer Willie Savannah, and losing a unanimous decision for air time on Don King, the Galaxy Warrior, Katsidis, and Marquez.

Have a look and post your predictions for Saturday night. Best stylistic analysis of how the fight will unfold wins shirt of your choice. Closest to the the winner and the round or the judges scorecards for a decision wins shirt of your choice. Hit it on the button and get five shirts of your choice or a shirt and a hoodie. Must post before the fight starts to win. Good luck good sirs. Do Large proud.

After the jump are shorter topical clips, wherein we hear direct from Diaz on his “inner mexican” and training regimen.
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Fellas, you missed a good one last night at BB King. KOs for our dudes Tor Hamer, Will Rosinsky, and Sadam Ali. But not to worry: There Will Be Video.

Ben Younger (writer and director of Boiler Room and Prime) who helmed an Undercard special feature yesterday about Tor. We stepped production up with a sound man and two cameras: highly coveted free agent DP Darren Lew and our homegrown star Nick Strini on camera two. Was an amazing day (besides a near nervous breakdown from I-Berg when our digital offloading system briefly failed), and we are all psyched to see the finished product.

Photos by Jason Mcdonald, who was late to the party, but came with guns blazing.

(Gents, before you read this piece below on the Beckham situation by our Bag, I ask that you head on over to the Sporting Blog and read my interview with Baggiesboy about the whole Beckham in America debacle. I’ll tease that interview only by saying that the Bagman is uniquely situated to speak on all things Becks, having served as the producer of David Beckham’s Soccer USA on FSC. Also, if you check out the interview, you will learn the true identity of the man known as Baggiesboy. Or, at least, what I think is his true identity. He’s playing a lot of hands, that bloke. Sort of like the soccer equivalent of Kim Philby… -L)

The one time I interviewed David Beckham he graciously shook my extended hand. Clearly he’s no Howie Mandel. Yet like the notoriously germ-phobic game-show host, Beckham is the main attraction in a big-bucks game of Hollywood chicken. In the Englishman’s case, however, there are no babes with suitcases, anonymous bankers or freaked family members screaming from the sidelines. Just plenty of screaming headlines.

Unlike NBC’s popular game show, Beckham’s big electronic deal-board, according to widely circulating reports, includes both names and numbers. On the low end of the scale is Milan’s reported initial bid of $3million. At the high end, a straight-up trade: Ronaldinho for Beckham. In between are a series of possibilities, from escalating dollar amounts to a combination of deals involving money plus players: apparently including such stars as Dutch veteran Clarence Seedorf and Czech international Marek Jankulovski.

The Galaxy’s formidable President and CEO Tim Leiweke has been vocal in letting all concerned know that any potential Beckham exchange is a business deal not a soccer trade. The Galaxy’s sponsors have paid to be associated with a multinational megastar, not Edson Buddle. Now, in fairness to Buddle, back in 1998 when I appeared on the short-lived syndicated talk-fest, The Howie Mandel Show, I didn’t predict that the eponymous host would be one of television’s most popular stars a decade later. But even with that disclaimer, I still don’t think the Galaxy striker, while named after Pelé, will ever be confused with the great man. These days, sadly, the same can be said for Ronaldinho.

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No Masios…

Here’s the deal on Broadway Boxing Wednesday the 25th. No Mas TV guys Tor Hamer and Will Rosinsky are both gonna be on the card. Tor is fighting a 5-0 guy (Chris Hancock) so this is his first real step up. The Headliner is Shaun George vs. Jaffa Ballagou. Doesn’t mean a ton to me, but in my experience, the best thing about these cards is rarely the headline bout.

The fight is at BB King’s rather than Hammerstein. Ticket options are $150 ringside, $100 stage, and $55 general admission. I was not able to get discounted pricing or special food and drink on this one as we are not rolling deep enough. We can get tickets in Tor’s stage section if we want, or general admission is also a good option because the space is so small you have a great view from the bar. Our crew will get a Tor poster (we designed it.) and some face time with Tor and Will. Let me know who’s down for what in the comments and purchasing is best done through torhamer.com

I quote Harold Lederman in my title to sum up an utterly bizarre night of boxing, one marred by disgraceful refereeing and blind-as-a-bat-ass judging, but ending with a memorable scrap that, just by a hair, redeemed the evening. Let’s go straight to the videotape:

Alfredo Angulo – TKO5 – Cosme Rivera
There’s not much to say about this fight that we didn’t know going in. Alfredo is hard as the nails that all the other nails are afraid of. That cut he got was seriously nasty, and just like Paul Williams last November against Verno Phillips, he brushed it off like it was less than a scratch. Of course, Cosme Rivera is welterweight and a journeyman by profession, a damn good one and game as they come (more on that in a second), but an undersized journeyman nonetheless, not at all a guy destined to hang in for very long against a perro with Angulo’s kind of bite.

So why, WHY, did Rivera have to take so many lethal shots before… Christ, before the Commission rep had to jump in the ring and save his ass? JESUS. Did you see Shannon Briggs in the crowd yelling for it to be stopped? He looked exactly like I did at that moment – hands on his head, pain in his eyes, screaming for someone to stop the goddamn fight.

It was horrendous to watch. Boxing is absolutely digusting when a ref and a corner don’t do their jobs to save a poor fucker like Rivera from himself. Because, look, Rivera is a Mexican nobody fighting on HBO on short notice. He knows he’s there to give the fans a good show, and like many a proud Mexican before him, he’s got the will and the heart of a thousand rhinos. Angulo probably would have had to shoot him in the face a couple of times before he would have hit the canvas of his own accord.

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posted by Large

(Be sure to check out Baggiesboy’s piece on tomorrow’s U.S./Mexico soccer match below this post. I had to bury him due to the breaking Margo situation, but as always he brought his A-game to the pitch. -L)

As I’m sure you guys have read or heard by now, Tony Margarito and his trainer Javier Capetillo both had their licenses revoked by the California State Athletic Commission after a hearing today into the handwraps controversy that emerged prior to Margarito’s fight with Shane Mosley on January 24th.

Our crack commenter Howard in NYC, who I gather doubles in his non-Masian existence as a lawyer, pointed out last week that because Mosley’s trainer, Nazim Richardson, had removed the suspiciously hard pads from Margarito’s dressing room and taken them to Mosley’s, there would be chain of custody issues raised by Margarito’s defense team, and indeed there were.

But apparently, nobody was biting on that line. Margarito’s trainer, Capetillo, also tried to take the entire blame upon himself, saying that he himself was responsible for the hard pieces being inside the fighter’s wraps and that Margarito had no knowledge of the matter whatsoever. As for what he’d done, Capetillo said it was “an innocent mistake.”

Nobody swallowed that, either. A year of license suspensions was voted by the Commission for both men to the tune of 7 yeas and zero nays. Down goes Margo.

Perhaps the most stunning revelation of the day, however, had no influence on the final judgment, though it is certain to lead to mass speculation and perhaps further punitive action against Margarito and Capetillo. During the proceedings, a deputy attorney general for the prosecution, Karen Chapelle, tried to introduce a claim that Margarito had worn similar pads under his gloves for the Cotto fight last July. The Commission refused to hear it, saying that it was irrelevant to the question of what happened at the Staples Center prior to the bout with Mosley.

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posted by Baggiesboy

(Our football expert, the one and only Bagman, gives his thoughts on tomorrow’s big Mexico/U.S. tangle in Columbus, paying particular attention to two pressing matters – the faltering Swedish-Mexican alliance and the mystifying powers of voodoo brought to you by Radio Shack – L)

While David Beckham tries to settle his affairs in Los Angeles and get back to being a peripheral role player on a good team, as opposed to a non-existent role model on a peripheral team, the man most mesmerized by the ‘Goldenballs glamour” is heading to America. Yes, Sven-Goran Eriksson will be in Columbus, Ohio on Wednesday night. And the man from Sweden had better not lose this week’s installment of the ‘Guerra Fria” or he will be out into the cold.

Why did it all go so wrong, so quickly? No, I’m not repeating the question echoing around the aisles of the Home Depot Center, but the one cascading down the Mexican futbol corridors of power. This time last year, El Tri’s greatest ever player, Hugo Sanchez, was set to lead a wave of hugely talented young players to Olympic glory and much more. But ‘Hugol’s” undoubted charisma wasn’t enough to integrate such exciting young talents as Giovani Dos Santos, Andres Guardado and Carlos Vela with the likes of Rafael Marquez and Cuauhtemoc Blanco. So, adios Sanchez.

After a brief dalliance with interim head coach Jesus Ramirez, Mexico turned to a coach well versed in the irrational fanaticism stirred by a sporting secular religion (and the tabloids) that rarely offers its followers any hope of salvation. Enter the aforementioned former England head coach. How much do Mexican fans want to see their team end its 0-for-10 years non-winning streak on US soil? Take a gander at a promotion The Record, a Mexican newspaper struck with Radio Shack.

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posted by Large

Dudes, I realize that football owns the headlines at the moment (although I can’t help but feel myself that the presence of the Arizona Cardinals makes this the Anything But Super Bowl…) but my piece on the Margarito handwraps controversy is up at HBO today. In it, I give Nazim Richardson’s detailed account of what transpired in Margarito’s dressing room before the Mosley fight, an account that clears up a lot of wrong information and rumors that have been floating around on the web about the incident.

I was unable to get any comment from either Margarito’s camp or the California State Athletic Commission. The CSAC will not offer any further comment until the final ruling, and Margarito’s co-managers did not return any of my phone calls. So I only had Nazim’s story to go on. That said, his is a pretty nuanced and damning story that leaves very little wiggle room for interpretation. This piece is pretty much a news story as I wrote it for HBO, so I did very little editorializing, but I think you’ll find that the material speaks for itself. So please check it out, and enjoy the Springsteen concert. I got 4-1 the Boss opens with “Born in the U.S.A.” -L
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Tale of the Taping (hbo.com)
“When I asked Richardson if he thought that Margarito would have gained an edge against Mosley if the pads had been allowed to stand as they were, he laughed. ‘With the kind of condition we had Shane in,’ he said, ‘I figure if Margarito had a stick in his hand he wouldn’t have beaten Shane that night.’