No Mas Weekend TV Guide: 3/16 -3/18

MUST-SEE NO MAS TV
NCAA Tourney
CBS, constantly
Duke is the first casualty, and I don't know about you, but whenever Duke goes down ignominiously I feel like good has triumphed over evil, if only for that one day.

BEST OF THE REST
3/16
Tyson Fest
ESPN, 12 noon
ESPN getting down and dirty again today, running wall-to-wall Tyson fights against the tourney on CBS. From 12 to 5, you can see Iron Mike throttle Michael Johnson, Mike Jameson, Jesse Ferguson, Steve Zouski (oh is Steve Zouski a prince amongst tomato-cans), Quick Tillis, and then a bunch of poor sumbitches in Tyson's Greatest Hits II. Then they finish off the action with the Buster Douglas fight. Lest you not know this and get suckered into watching Mike instead of basketball, ESPN Classic shows every one of these fights almost once a week.

Gimme Shelter
Sundance, 4:30 p.m., 5:15 a.m.
Okay, okay, I can't even pretend that this has anything to do with sports, and we have strict rules about this here at No Mas, but look, this movie is apocalyptically great and it's not on regular TV too much. I promise it won't happen again. "People... people.. everybody just needs to chill out..."

WWE Smackdown
CW, 8 p.m.
You want madness??? How about Undertaker taking on King Booker. If that's not maddening enough for you Batista is this week's guest on MizTV.

Marco Antonio Barrera v. Rocky Juarez I
HBO2, 11:30 p.m.
In anticipation of the big Barrera/Marquez bout on Saturday night, HBO airs a fight that revealed the great Barrera just does not have the pop anymore to score easy knockouts, at least not against tough bastards like Rocky Juarez. The Baby-Faced Assassin runs out of gas in the middle rounds and almost gets his ass assassinated. He wins it by a narrow split decision - it was a draw on Large's card.

Juan Manuel Marquez v. Manny Pacquiao
HBO2, 12:20 a.m.
It's a little unfair to Barrera that they're priming us for Saturday with his disappointing performance against Juarez and then showing Marquez/Pacquiao, which is undoubtedly the shining moment of Marquez's career. JMM gets knocked down three times, and very near to knocked out, in the first round, and then comes back from a 10-6 start to earn a draw. If you've never seen this fight, don't miss it - it's everything that's great about boxing, brutality and fear and guts and a chess match all rolled into one. (HBO2 runs these two fights again on Saturday morning at 11 a.m.)

Futuresport
USA, 4 a.m.
All stupid crazy high at 4 a.m. alert - this movie is about a dreadlocked Jamaican gangster of the future who has invented a sport so awesome that it has made every other sport obsolete (we've been working on something like this for three years in the No Mas laboratories and we've gotten nowhere). There's also a Hawaiian terrorist group threatening to destroy the universe, and a bunch of other shit that only makes sense when you're high.

3/17
The Irish In Us
TCM, 8:30 a.m.
A movie from 1935 about three Irish brothers, one of whom, played by Jimmy Cagney, is a ne'er-do-well boxing promoter who thinks he's finally found the blue-chipper who's going to take him to the top.

Bring It On Again
USA, 1 p.m.
The sequel to Bring It On. I didn't even know this existed. Is there a Bring It On III? Bringing Some More On?

UFC Fest
Spike, 3 p.m.
Three consecutive Fight Night replays for the true college basketball haters out there, like Kevin.

Ringside
ESPN Classic, 8 p.m.
Ringside counts down the 25 greatest knockouts in boxing history, a.k.a. "the 25 greatest knockouts we own the rights to." Whatever - expect a LOT of Tyson, and there's a Jersey Joe beheading in the promo they've been showing that looks pretty deep.

UFC Fight Night 7 & 8
Spike, 8 p.m.
A card from December, 2006 and this past January - Fight Night 7 featured Diego Sanchez v. Joe Riggs in the main event, and true to form, Sanchez got dirty. Fight Night 8 ended with Rashad Evans knocking out Sean Salmon with a kick to the head that left him unconscious for about five minutes after the fight ended.

Marco Antonio Barrera v. Juan Manuel Marquez
PPV, 9 p.m.
I know it's a surprise that this is not listed as Must-See No Mas TV, but I'm just not feeling it that much. It'll certainly be an entertaining fight, although whether it'll 5o bucks entertaining is a long shot. There's a good undercard, however, featuring both Daniel Ponce de Leon and Demetrius Hopkins, Bernard's nephew, a genuine talent at 140.

3/18
Classic Battle Lines
ESPN Classic, 7 a.m.
A look at Bobby Thomson's infamous home run off Ralph Branca in 1951. Expect a lot of Sal Yvars, former Giant catcher and insufferable blowhard who came clean about the sign-stealing controversy years ago and hasn't shut up about it since.

Slap Shot
MOMAXe, 8 a.m.
Watch it AGAIN godammit.

Wimbledon
TBS, 9 a.m.
Just a terrible, terrible movie about tennis, a fact that our own Steve Tignor pointed out in last week's Deep Tennis. It does, however, have the merits of being on when there are no basketball games to watch. And it is about sports...

Pernell Whitaker v. Buddy McGirt II, 1994
ESPN Classic, 3 p.m.
Dirt McGirt does manage to knock Pernell down in this thing, in the second round I think, but then he proceeds to get a boxing lesson. On the other hand, he sports one of the illest boxing looks of all time, tube socks pulled to the knee, them Pony boxing shizzles, and his blue velour trunks with "Magoo" stencilled on them. The bald/moustache thing. If I ever interview Buddy McGirt the first question I'm going to ask him is why he doesn't wear the stash anymore. It was a great look for him.

The 35th Iditarod
VS., 10 p.m.
Highlights from the dog-sled race that ended on Tuesday. Lance Mackey won, becoming the first musher to win major long-distance North American sled dog races back-to-back. If you think for a second that I'm not Tivo'ing this shit you're crazy.

Milan v. Muncie Central, 1954
ESPN Classic, 1 a.m.
Classic shows the legendary Indiana state championship high school basketball game from 1954, the one that inspired the movie Hoosiers.