Angelo Dundee

Michael Nunn has swept away 32 consecutive opponents, won a piece of the middleweight championship, become a million-dollar fighter and shown that he's a gifted athlete. But is he a great middleweight? There are many skeptics, and tonight they'll get their best chance--and maybe their last--to sneer at this mobile, quick-handed boxer who could step up to much bigger paydays. Nunn will fight his toughest opponent yet, at the Las Vegas Hilton.

Will Smith--"Jim Rome," today, 9-noon, KXTA (1150); 1-4 p.m., XTRA (690) Luke and Murphy Jensen--"Unscripted With Chris Connelly," today, 2 p.m., ESPN, 11:30 p.m., ESPN2 "Blind Date" host Roger Lodge, James "Lights Out" Toney--"Chris Myers and Bob Golic," today, 3-7 p.m., KMPC (1540) Chris Simms--"College SportsCentury," today, 4:30 p.m.

Forum Boxing Inc. has moved its Aug. 19 show at the Pond of Anaheim to Aug. 26 partly because of a Jet Ski event near the Pond that weekend. The card will be headlined by a 12-round bout between Los Angeles' Maikito Martinez (34-10-1, 27 knockouts) and St. Louis' Arthur Johnson (12-3, seven knockouts) for Martinez's North American Boxing Federation flyweight title. Johnson, trained by Angelo Dundee, has fought twice for the world flyweight title.

Were boxer Antonio Margarito's fists of steel actually aided by concrete? Did Ultimate Fighting Champion Georges St-Pierre defend his title bout with enough Vaseline so that he was as slippery as a greased pig? Fighting lore is sprinkled with colorful tales of questionable gamesmanship, yet even in this age of high-definition cameras and intense state testing, athletes are still swayed to sometimes bend the rules.

Carmen Basilio, 85, a genial onion farmer's son who wrested the world middleweight boxing crown from Sugar Ray Robinson in 1957 and lost an equally epic, razor-edge rematch six months later, died Wednesday at a Rochester, N.Y., hospital following treatment for pneumonia, said Edward Brophy, executive director of the Boxing Hall of Fame. The boxer was among the Hall of Fame's first class of inductees, in 1990. With his crouching style, Basilio bored relentlessly into opponents, wearing them down with body blows.

What: "The 12 Greatest Rounds of the 20th Century" Where: Showtime, Sunday, 4:30 p.m. In June, the "Fight Doctor," Ferdie Pacheco, announced during the Showtime telecast of the Andrew Golota-Orlin Norris fight that he was stepping down as a boxing analyst. "My life is getting complicated by upcoming projects that demand my time," Pacheco said, ending a career that began in 1977 with NBC after a 15-year stint as Muhammad Ali's doctor. This 90-minute special, which first aired on Showtime on Sept.

Having put to rest the notion he doesn't hit very hard, Michael Nunn has a new goal. He'd like to fill up the Forum, something no boxer has done since Reuben Olivares in the late 1960s when the Mexican bantamweight once drew over 18,000 to the Forum for a title fight. It's a worthwhile challenge, since Nunn has some time to kill.

In the aftermath of the richest fight in history, columnist Jim Murray summed up best the relentless style of the undefeated heavyweight champion, Joe Frazier. Frazier had just won a unanimous 15-round decision over Muhammad Ali in the first of their three classic meetings, before 20,455 at Madison Square Garden. Murray wrote late that night about previous Ali opponents, none of whom could remotely be compared to Frazier. "Joe Frazier was not a confused, fearful, spooked pug," he wrote.

Angelo Dundee has been asking for some time which Johnson is the better fighter in the flyweight division, "Flash" or "Too Sharp." Now it appears Dundee's curiosity will be satisfied. Dundee and a lively crowd of 3,021 at the Pond watched Monday night as Arthur "Flash" Johnson set up a world title fight against champion Mark "Too Sharp" Johnson with an 11th-round knockout of previously undefeated Ilido Julio of Turbo, Colombia.