Sports Beat

Thirty-six years after their famous heavyweight title bout,
Muhammad Ali and George Chuvalo shared the stage at Toronto's
SkyDome on Sunday night at a Parkinson's Society of Canada
fund-raiser in conjunction with a CFL game between the Toronto
Argonauts and the Ottawa Renegades. The attendees--who included
Lennox Lewis, Evander Holyfield and Larry Holmes--caught a first
glimpse of the fight documentary The Last Round. The film
reexamines the March 29, 1966, bout at Maple Leaf Gardens in
which Ali beat Chuvalo, Canada's homegrown heavyweight contender,
in a 15-round decision. Ali has called it his toughest fight.
"People thought Chuvalo would go only three, maybe four rounds
with Ali," says The Last Round director Joseph Blasioli. "Those
15 rounds extended Chuvalo's career another 15 years."

--While in Toronto, Lewis addressed rumors that he had signed on
to face pro wrestling champ Brock Lesnar in a WWE pay-per-view
event. At a press conference Lewis denied that he'll be tangling
with Lesnar, but said he had talked to WWE boss Vince McMahon
"about a relationship, whether it be guest refereeing or
something of that nature."

--One of NASCAR's most ardent groupies is no stranger to groupies
himself: Kid Rock. During the rain-delayed Winston Cup race in
Concord, N.C., on Oct. 13, NBC pit reporter Matt Yocum found Rock
hanging out in driver Tony Stewart's trailer and asked if he'd
play a song to kill some airtime. "Let me go grab a guitar," Rock
replied. He wound up performing an acoustic rendition of Lynyrd
Skynyrd's melodic Dixie paean, All I Can Do Is Write about It,
with harmonica help from Jimmie Bones (the keyboardist from the
Twisted Brown Trucker Band). Rock and his fiancee, Pam Anderson,
were also Stewart's guests at a race in Bristol, Tenn., last
March.

--Maybe you caught Giants defensive end Frank Ferrara's
performance on Oct. 13, when in his first career start he roughed
up the Falcons with a forced fumble, nine tackles and 11/2 sacks.
The hard-hitting style that won him a spot on New York's roster
as an undrafted free agent out of Rhode Island also serves him
well in his other career--as a stuntman. The 6'3", 280-pound
Ferrara, 26, has done stunt work in about a dozen movies
including Die Hard with a Vengeance and Meet Joe Black, and he'll
play a security guard in the upcoming Anger Management with Adam
Sandler. "It's tough work," Ferrara says. "Guys get broken bones,
concussions, burns." Ferrara, who made his movie debut as a
10-year-old in 1986 when he dodged a truck in F/X, got into the
biz through his father, Frank Sr., a stunt coordinator who is
James Gandolfini's double in The Sopranos.

--Lions rookie quarterback Joey Harrington is taking abuse from
teammates for getting cheeky with Cosmopolitan. In the November
issue, Harrington appears as one of the "50 Hottest Hunks in the
U.S." and reveals that "touching a woman's face and putting my
face against hers excite me. Soft cheeks are so appealing." That
prompted reactions from Detroit guard Tony Semple ("I'm just
going to pretend I didn't see this") to quarterbacks Ty Detmer
("So he's really in touch with his feminine side") and Mike
McMahon ("The cheek is definitely not the favorite part of the
female body for me"). Harrington says he just wanted to help the
organization. "What I was trying to do was reach out to a
demographic that wouldn't usually watch football."

COLOR PHOTO: JEFF MOORE/ZUMA PRESS, INC. (ROCK) Kid Rock

COLOR PHOTO: ALEXANDER NATRUSKIN/REUTERS (PICTURE THIS) PICTURE THIS Imagine being Anna Kournikova's personal leg waxer. Oleg Kulik can, but what he is, really, is an artist who spent much of last Saturday installing this piece at Moscow's XL Gallery of Contemporary Art. Kulik, like a lot of guys, found inspiration in the shapely Anna, but says the figure's face--which to some looks like Russian tennis star Elena Dementieva's--represents no one in particular.

COLOR PHOTO: HENNY RAY ABRAMS/AFP (CARTER AND MOSS)

THIS WEEK'S SIGN OF THE APOCALYPSE

A woman, seeking to be artificially inseminated, took out a
classified ad on a San Francisco website offering to trade World
Series tickets for healthy sperm.

THEY SAID IT

RANDY MOSS
Vikings receiver, on former teammate Cris Carter (80), who left
HBO's Inside the NFL to sign with the Dolphins: "I love it. And I
think a lot of football teams he's been making comments about
will love it too."