Dos Mas

There have been some dubious inductions into the International Boxing Hall of Fame the past few years, so we here at No Mas are thrilled that the class of '07 will be headed up by two bonafide first-ballot Hall-of-Famers - Roberto Duran and Pernell Whitaker.

To celebrate, we take you back to a signature fight for each boxer, beginning with Duran winning Davey Moore's WBA junior middleweight belt at the Garden in 1983. It was the third world title for Ole Hands of Stone in his third different weight class, and it was the fight that seemingly redeemed him in the fight crowd's eyes for the ignominy of the No Mas debacle three years prior. A warning, people - this here is some brutal shit. The unwillingness of the ref, just a year after the Duk Koo Kim tragedy, to step in and save Moore's broken, beaten, swollen ass is unfathomable. I was a writer on that MSG 50 Greatest Moments show that's running now and I was disappointed that they chose this one-sided affair to represent Duran at the Garden and not his battle with Ken Buchanan from 1972 when he won his first title. I would have shown that here, but I wanted to love on Roberto a little bit today, and that Buchanan fight, though great, is weird. It kind of ends on a foul. This fight, on the other hand, ends in two-fisted slaughter.



In the same spirit of not choosing the Buchanan fight for Duran, I didn't want to choose what is probably the most famous of all the Sweet Pea Whitaker fights, his unconscionable draw with Julio Cesar Chavez in 1993, a rob job that marked Whitaker's career ever afterward, certainly one of the worst decisions of our time. So instead I thought I would go back to 1990 and Pernell's lightweight bout with a fellow Hall-of-Famer, the Professor, Azumah Nelson (and oh yeah, no doubt, I love me some Azumah Nelson). In the condensed highlight-reel of that fight below, I think you see Sweet Pea in all his glory, the fighter that many (okay, mainly Max Kellerman) deem to have been the best of his generation. Watch this clip, No Masians, and then answer me this - Whitaker in 1990 against Floyd right now, at, say, 140... who you taking?