I saw in the TV listings in the paper which are generally accurate that the ESPN classic fight tonight at 9 PM mountain time will be the 1951 lightheavyweight bout between Harry Matthews and Danny Nardico. ESPN has been running some interesting and unusual fights lately, and certainly this one I want to see. I have only seen Matthews against Marciano and a couple of brief clips of Nardico. I have the Ring Magazine report on the fight and they describe an action-packed fight with the "classy" Matthews winning by a fairly wide margin, his wide decision victory perhaps a more impressive showing against Nardico than LaMotta, whom Nardico stopped in 8 in 1952, in the process handing Jake his only career knockdown, or Maxim, who survived a knockdown by Nardico to peck out a close but unanimous decision in 1953, could muster. Nardico won a Silver Star at Okinawa in 1945 and later described boxing as a "cakewalk" next to what he had gone through. I saw Jake LaMotta in an interview list Nardico along with Bob Satterfield as the strongest punchers he had ever met. A few months after this bout, Matthews was picked in the Feb, 1952 issue of the Ring as the best p4p fighter in the world, replacing the allegedly slipping Sugar Ray Robinson.
You beat me too it! i was gonna post the same thing! haha. I have it taped on DVR and will be watching it. Pretty exciting. For those that dont know, Danny Nardico was a lightheavyweight contender in the early 1950s, he was known as a big puncher at 175lb, and he was the only man ever to floor jake lamotta, and floored Granite Chinned hall of famer Joey Maxim. After he TKO'd Lamotta, there were talks of Nardico fighting marciano for the HW title in 1953 but Weill blew it off because Nardico wasnt a big enough draw.
I too saw this listed for tonight, midnight here. I'll be using the dvr for this one. I've only seen Matthews with Marciano and I've never seen Nardico, not even in clips so I'm looking foward to seeing this fight.
I don't know if ESPN is a live broadcast, so I wouldn't want to guess--but most cable systems have daily broadcast logs that you can look up.
**** I just checked ESPN classic and its not listed anymore, but I originally saw it last week and TVOd it ahead of time but its not there anymore! however checking the log at 12 pm theres a 2 hour log that says "to be announced" so that gap could be it . I pray!!
Gud Dang, I dont think there showing it anymore. I checked the Viewing guide and instead of Mathews-Nardico, its some college basketball thing on Majic Johnson
