K.O.W. - Pure Magic

It's been a good week for boxing. Roger Mayweather's out of jail back training Lil Floyd, Barrera/Marquez did surprisingly robust PPV numbers, and the best news of all by far, ABC is getting back into the fight game, scheduled to broadcast Antonio Taver's return to the ring against Elvir Muriqi ("The Kosovo Kid" - nickname pantheon alert) on Sunday, April 22nd at 1:30 p.m.

We here at No Mas greeted this news by dancing around the offices in our pajamas and hugging each other like Promise Keepers. Boxing on ABC takes us back to the glory years of our childhoods - we learned to love the sport from watching those Saturday and Sunday afternoon matches and listening to Cosell's listless, self-promoting commentary. We saw Howard and Ali clown together on ABC, we saw Sugar Ray Leonard TKO Wilfred Benitez on ABC. Bobby Chacon and Bazooka Limon, Boom Boom Mancini knocking out Arturo Frias (not to mention Duk Koo Kim), Mike Tyson annihilating Marvis Frazier... all on ABC in the glory of our youths.

So to celebrate boxing's return to network television, we thought we'd hype the bout a little and take you back to Antonio Tarver's finest moment for our No Mas Knockout of the Week. We're not the biggest Tarver fans here at No Mas, but this one was pure magic for the Magic Man, and but for Douglas over Tyson, maybe the most shocking knockout of our lifetimes. I still vividly remember watching this and not being able to BELIEVE what I was seeing. It was the end of an era, to be sure.