Review: 30 for 30 “No Mas”
Sometimes things get so good we do not even know how to appreciate what’s awesome. Sometimes awesomeness enters the mundane. ESPN’s “30 for 30” has become a bastion of Netflix watching since my last year of college (which isn’t to long ago). It’s been great seeing ESPN under the aid of Bill Simmons do something different and doing it exceptionally well. Where most struggles at sports documentaries arise is in their attempts at recreating HBO’s early magic, something HBO has failed with in its last couple of sports documentaries. “30 for 30” did its own thing… it forged forward opting to focus on stories in the periphery of the sports landscape.
Instead of stories about Ali, Jordan, Babe Ruth, and other mythic figures that have been the focal point of COUNTLESS documentaries “30 for 30” reminded us of Benji Wilson, Andres Escobar, Len Bias, and the Miami Hurricanes. Now here’s the bad news.
I love boxing, so when I heard there was a 30 for 30 about the infamous “No Mas” fight between Roberto HANDS OF STONE Duran and SUGAR Ray Leonard I was all ears. So here I was a hour in to the movie and it hit me that I felt empty. Then without even knowing it I quickly began to feel that this documentary was eerily similar to “Assault in the Ring”, a documentary that ran on HBO a couple years ago. Excellent documentary about the much-maligned boxer Louis Resto who was mired in controversy after it was discovered his gloves were hallowed out in his bout against Billy Collins.
“Assault in the Ring” transformed into an epic ride that paid off when Louis Resto ends up in a place where he admits that he did indeed know that he cheated that night in the ring. Such a startling realization leaving viewers in a position of disgust and pity that had been decades in the making. The pitfall of “No mas” is its parallels to “Assault in the Ring”.
“No Mas” culminates in a face off between Ray Leonard and Roberto Duran, now 57 and 62 years old respectively. This is where the movie falls crashing to earth from the Sun. Duran sticks to his story and continues to unleash a barrage of excuses that boiled down to one thing, his ego is simply to big to admit that Sugar Ray Leonard was better then him that night in the ring. Still an awesome look back at an awesome moment but horrible ending that had to be discussed at some point. Louis Resto admission in “Assault in the Ring” was driven by guilt, something Duran did not have driving him.
“No Mas” flaw was it tried to recreate “Assault in the Ring” and that simply is not what the “30 For 30 ‘’series is about. Moving forward it will be interesting to see if “30 for 30” can maintain its originality and unique way of telling us stories we kind of forgot about. That’s what the series is about. Still I am pretty sure we have a lot of great “30 for 30s left before we get an ALI Frazier doc.
