We are very excited to announce that The Undercard will make it’s broadcast TV debut tonight at 8pm on SNY as part of Broadway Boxing. The “Notorious” and “Willpower” shorts will appear before Tor and Will’s fights, respectively. Special thanks to Lou DiBella, Meredith Greenberg, Joe Quijambo and everyone at DiBella Entertainment for partnering with us to make this happen. And a huge shout out to Tor Hamer, who in addition to starring in the Undercard shorts and the Broadway Boxing telecast, was instrumental in conceiving this partnership and connecting us with DiBella Entertainment.

Congratulations to our man Nick Strini who shot and edited both pieces.

This is a very proud day for us at No Mas, and hopefully just the beginning of getting our video work out to more people.

If you miss the broadcast, you can see all the Undercard episodes on NoMasTV.

by Ron Ross

(Large and I heard Ron Ross read from his highly recommended Bummy Davis vs. Murder Incorporated at Think Tank 3 gallery two years ago during Charles Miller’s amazing show, Jewish Boxers. Ron is like the Jose Oquendo of the sweet science–he’s fought, managed, promoted and chronicled. Today he plays umpire, calling some recent cries against our man Dimitriy Salita foul.-CI)

There are fighters who have fought the equivalents of their grandmothers in compiling a ‘looking good on paper” record. Despite the hoots and put-downs of his growing legion of detractors , the silent hecklers are now emboldened and stepping forward as the ranks of vocal detractors grow , the quality of Dmitriy’s opposition is better than most of his contemporaries and even most of the list of sacred ‘golden age” greats. His opponents have won 369 of 590 fights for a 625 percentage. In comparison, Ricky Hatton, in his first 30 bouts, fought opponents with a 570 percentage, Andreas Kotelnik’s opposition 554, and Junior Witter’s, a still respectable 510. We then come to former WBA titleholder, Gavin Rees, who in his 26 bouts prior to fighting for , and winning , the WBA light-welterweight crown, came in on the back of opponents that won only 305 bouts out of 1,040 , a 290 percentage. And rather than denigrate or belittle his accomplishments, they sang his cheers and accorded him a champion’s veneration. Cinderella never had it so good! Read the rest of this entry »

Gents – again I redirect you over to a few pieces at The Sporting Blog, where I today wrote about what I saw as the utter travesty visited upon Marco Antonio Barrera this past Saturday night and also about the imminent theatrical release of the Tyson documentary that was all the rage at Cannes last year. The new trailer for Tyson is below, followed by the links. – L

Tyson Trailer Hits the Streets (First Cuts)
“…Just as Ali’s story was the fundamental sports story of his generation, so is Tyson’s to mine. If this film delivers on its promise, if it truly does penetrate to a deeper portrait of the fighter than we’ve ever seen before, then it looks to be the first genuine eyewitness document of a story that transcends mere sport to be almost Shakespearean in its scope.”

Why Won’t Anyone Admit Barrera Was Robbed? (The Sporting Blog)
“… With a packed house of rabid Manchurians present and much at stake for Khan’s future, integrity was thrown out the window, and with it the career of one of the greatest fighters of this generation. I don’t understand why more outrage isn’t being expressed by the boxing community about the situation at the moment, why everyone seems so willing to sign on to the presiding interpretation of what happened Saturday night — that Khan destroyed a past-his-prime Barrera and looked great in doing so.”

posted by Baggiesboy

(Yes, you read that title up there correctly. The mysterious Bagman happens to be good mates with first-ballot No Mas Hall-of-Famer Giorgio Chinaglia. Well, “mates” might be overstating the case a little. But evidently, when the Great Bag comes-a-calling, ole GC picks up his celly, and that’s good enough for us. -L)

By chance, a couple of years ago, I happened to be in Venice on the last night of Carnevale. It was a night of wonders: an open-air masked ball replete with gorgeous costumes and stilt walking fire-eaters all capped by a spectacular fireworks display over the Grand Canal. This week the UEFA Champions League version of the old Anglo-Italian Cup resumes, and I’m expecting to see a few more Italian pyrotechnics.

At half time of the England-Italy smack down for ‘world’s best league supremacy,” bragging rights are very much in the balance. Manchester United dominated in Milan against Inter only to be stoned by Julio Cesar. Claudio Ranieri was deserving of a better fate at Stamford Bridge than a 1-0 loss for his Juventus charges, but the ex-Chelsea boss is probably used to not getting his just desserts in West London. Roma are presumably happy to escape a 7-1 hiding any time on their English travels, and will be confident of turning over the first leg lead of Arsene Wenger’s young Gunners, an Arsenal team not expected to make a second visit to the Eternal City at the end of May.

Now, I’m not much of a prognosticator (ed. note – I believe the term it’s “prognostificator,” Bagman) , every week in my online ‘Predictorship pool” I pick the Albion to win 2-0 , but I’m certain of one thing this week, there will be fireworks. The long-running football-calcio cultural exchange program is littered with more fistfights than goals. Back in 1970, my beloved Baggies had a much less savory Venetian experience than my own , but no less memorable: it featured a match against Lanerossi Vicenza in the actual Anglo-Italian Cup. That game was abandoned after 75 minutes due to what one report described as: ‘fighting both on the pitch and in the stands.”

Read the rest of this entry »

After last night, my gut feeling about James Kirkland is this: So long as his chin holds up, he’s going to give us all one hell of a ride. As I wrote in my recap piece over at HBO, no one since Gatti in his heyday has been such a devotee of the manly art of no defense.

You have to feel for Joel Julio. The guy was definitely game, took a shitload of punishment in there, and also pretty much executed his game-plan to perfection, staying on the move, countering effectively, and more than anything, landing any number of big power shots that he and the rest of us might have expected eventually would level the playing field and slow the charging Mandingo train.

No dice, however. Kirkland’s chin, already suspected of granite status after his haymaker-fest with Brian Vera, now may have to be upgraded to the ultimate, code-red tier of chin-material – Baldomirian. My only caveat to putting him in that category right now is that I’m not completely sold on Julio at 54. He looked a little undersized in there to me, which will happen when you’re facing a block of ripped marble like Kirkland, but still, I felt like he just wasn’t quite big enough to make his shots completely count last night, and I wonder what will happen when Kirkland eats bombs like that from a hard-punching, legit junior middle. I disagreed with the announcers (I watched the replay when I got home) that Julio wasn’t sitting down on his shots enough. Yes, he was throwing a lot of counters while backtracking, but Kirkland was stepping right into them, and I can tell you something from my observation at ringside – even those backtracking shots packed some pop. And then when he did set his feet and get into the windmill exchanges, Julio got off with some gigantic bombs right on the button.

Read the rest of this entry »

Dudes, I have four pieces posted elsewhere that I thought I’d bring to your attention, a feature on the James Kirkland/Joel Julio fight tomorrow night, a recap of the final presser and a recap of the weigh-in, all of which are up at HBO Boxing, and then my weekly boxing notes over at The Sporting Blog, where I discuss the weighty matter of Ricky Hatton’s weight. I’m hoping to get a preview of tomorrow’s fights up here either tonight or tomorrow, but I can’t make any promises, cause these last few weeks have drained Large’s resources considerably and absolutely wiped me out writing-wise. But I will be ringside for tomorrow’s event and posting a recap up at HBO – I should be able to get something up here at the Mas also after the fights are over. In conclusion, I’ll just say this – as I pointed out in my weigh-in piece, Brother Mandingo is a fierce-looking motherfucker up close and personal. Julio does not, at first inspection, look equal to that task by a longshot.
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James Kirkland Steps Up (HBO Boxing)
“This is definitely James Kirkland’s first major league fight,” Kellerman told me. “Before this it was like triple-A and now this is a major league fight he’s having on Saturday. And if he wins this one, and then one more major league fight, then he’ll be looking at the postseason, the really big fights.”

Fight Week Blog: The Presser (HBO Boxing)
“I always have my eye out for the fly details of fighters’ regalia at press conferences. And while there were some very cool tracksuits on display today – Arnaoutis’s team in matching white “Team Mighty Mike” togs and Joel Julio’s trainer wearing a jacket with “Joel Julio” on the back in a decidedly throwback, block script – far and away the coolest piece of gear I saw on the afternoon was the windbreaker worn by Victor Ortiz, with a logo on the left breast, “VVO,” in cursive script with two red boxing gloves dangling through the center…”

Fight Week Blog: Weigh In (HBO Boxing)
“There was absolutely no way you could look at those two men standing next to each other and think that Julio has a chance in hell to defeat Kirkland in a prizefight. Then again, great bodies don’t win fights (you hear me, Frank Bruno? Jeff Lacy?), and neither do furious stares. That’s why they play the games, as they say…”

Round by Round: Weekly Boxing Notes (The Sporting Blog)
“… Just last fall, after his fight with Paulie Malignaggi, Hatton’s new trainer, the one and only Floyd Joy Mayweather Sr., was telling the press that he thought Ricky’s drinking and rapid weight fluctuations were catching up to him, and that if he didn’t cut it out his career was in jeopardy. And though Floyd Joy is often full of the most preposterous blarney, in this instance, one is inclined to think he’s on to something.”

Oh my people, what a night. Let me just put my apologies up top here for being MIA for a while and then get right to the good stuff. I have indeed been mired in some television-type business as I-berg pointed out, not to mention that I recently moved Mrs. Large and Reggie Large to a new house. Things have been non-stop. But I will tell you this – I’m going to be doing some fight-week reporting from San Jose next week for HBO leading up to next Saturday’s BAD card headlined by what promises to be a meanass smackdown, James Kirkland vs. Joel Julio. I will certainly bring some of that insider love here to the Mas.

It was impressive how much Diaz went for right from the opening bell. The kid was all the way down damn-the-torpedoes lane. There was a marked physical disparity in there too that I wasn’t expecting to see. Diaz looked considerably bigger, and with his relentless forward momentum, it felt a little like what in my memory Oscar/Floyd looked like in the first couple of rounds – a bigger man bum-rushing the shit out of a smaller man to the extent that the smaller guy, despite being the more skilled and savvy fighter, couldn’t help but seem concerned.