This Week in No Mas

3/4
Puerto Weirdo
Large breaks down the Saturday's HBO card, including Edison Miranda's cat-and-mouse (and by cat, I mean, big cat) game with Allan Green, and Miguel Cotto's uninspired outing against Oktay Urkal. "Maybe Cotto took this fight too easily - it certainly seemed that way - but watching it I had to wonder... if Urkal can shoeshine him like that, what's a fighter with real speed, like, oh, say, Zab Judah, going to do to him?"

The Winter of Our Discontent
A Large dispatch from Philly, where discontent is the air that they breathe. "... sports-fans in Philly are without a doubt the angriest sumbitches in the world. They should form some kind of paramilitary organization. It would immediately challenge Al Qaeda for the title belt awarded to The Most Unreasonable Violent Bunch of Crazy Bastards in the World."

3/5
K.O.W. - The Puncher from Ponce
Our No Mas Knockout of the Week comes from the great Puerto Rican lightweight, Carlos Ortiz, who lays the smack down hard on Flash Elorde in this bout from 1966.

Jeff Pearlman thinks boxing is for losers
Large goes after Jeff Pearlman and his idiotic anti-boxing piece on ESPN.com. No word yet on the catchweight for the Pearlman/Large bout, but let me tell you something people - the smart money is on Large.

3/6
Hebrew Hammers
CI travels to Think Tank 3 to see Charles Miller's "Jewish Boxers" exhibit. "...as a Jew and a fight fan and someone who has written and thought about the idea of Jewish boxers, I have to admit I was probably more predisposed to rant than to rave. It was in that territory where it’s so far up your alley that if it’s bad you might feel secretly pleased and if it’s good you'll be secretly jealous. “Jewish Boxers” was so good that it just made me happy it existed."

Happy Birthdizzle
Quite a motley crew of birthdays to celebrate on the 6th of March, from Cyrano to Shaq, from Lou Costello to Sleepy Floyd.

3/7
Deep Tennis with Steve Tignor
The debut of a new column on No Mas from Steve Tignor, the executive editor of Tennis Magazine and author of a regular column on their site called The Wrap. For us, though, he's taking it deep, you feel me? This week he explains the dearth of good tennis movies. "In other words, tennis in the popular imagination is stuck in two places: the preppy, cardiganed 50s, and the Borg-headband-longhair 70s. There hasn’t been a way to make tennis relevant or cool onscreen since, because it hasn’t had a defining style in 30 years."

For the heavyweight title
The anniversary of two heavyweight title fights - Ezzard Charles beating Jersey Joe in a unanimous decision to retain the title in 1951, and Iron Mike beating a decidedly non-bonecrushing Bonecrusher Smith to take his WBA belt in 1987.

3/8
The No Mas Top 23 Wrestlemania Moments
Franchise continues his countdown, this week taking us from #18 to #14. Brock Lesnar's fabulous flop, Hulk v. Sarge, and Shane McMahon's attempt at legalized patricide all make the cut.

The Kid Gets Another Picture
At a reading by Ron Ross, Large and CI learn that Ross's book Bummy Davis vs. Murder Inc. has been optioned for the screen by none other than The Kid himself, Robert Evans.

March 8, 1971
A fight took place on this date. It was at the Garden. I'll give you a clue - it was the biggest fight in mankind's history since Achilles and Hector mixed it up outside the ramparts of Troy. "The tectonic plates of the earth are still reverberating with the impact of the mighty blow struck in the 15th round. Some might even say it was a blow for justice."

3/9
You cannot be serious
Yo check out some of our new gear, like the Johnny Mac jammy on the left. The shit is so ill, your guts may spill.

Two of a Very Rare Kind
Large reviews David Maraniss' Clemente and Mark Kriegel's Pistol. "It wasn't long before I was struck by the similarities between Clemente and Maravich - Pittsburgh connections (Maravich through his father, Press), flashy styles that earned them as many detractors as fans, nervous constitutions and careers littered with injuries, a dissatisfied, visionary streak that led them each to fringe, cultish pursuits, and finally, of course, early, tragic deaths that immediately transformed their complicated legacies into legends befitting those who die young."