And He’s Perfect for the Sequel: ‘Goon Air’

Marty McSorley has won more than his share of fights on the ice during a 14-year NHL career, but in the movie “Con Air,” the veteran enforcer loses a tussle with John Malkovich.

McSorley plays a co-pilot on the plane commandeered by Malkovich and a group of ticked-off maximum-security prisoners. McSorley gets a hand in Malkovich’s face, but Malkovich ends the skirmish quickly by pumping a bullet into the co-pilot’s stomach.

“That was a surprise to me,” McSorley recently told the San Francisco Examiner. “Originally I was just going to be taken off the plane when it landed, but one day the writer and I were having lunch and he said to me, ‘I’ve got this idea.’ ”

Add McSorley: How did McSorley land the role?

Connections.

Longtime buddy Wayne Gretzky introduced McSorley to the movie’s producer, Jerry Bruckheimer, who happens to be a hockey fan--and may or may not have noticed McSorley’s bit-role work in “Bad Boys” and “Forget Paris.”

“It’s a hard business to get into,” McSorley said. “There are a lot of people who want to get into it. I’m not going to tell anyone I’m an actor.”

Trivia time: What are the only six countries to have won soccer’s World Cup?

U.S. Marines would agree: Total Sport magazine includes boxer Riddick Bowe on its list of “Seven Sporting Sissies.”

The rationale:

“The former heavyweight champion of the world, and still a formidable physical specimen, gets in a fight with his sister a few weeks ago. She flies at him. He reports her to the police for attacking him. No other language will suffice: He’s a cream puff.”

Mas sissies: Roberto Duran also made the Total Sport list, the magazine reasoning:

“Hands Of Stone they called him, and for years he did seem the toughest hombre on the block, the epitome of the machismo-soaked Central American. Then he turned his back on Sugar Ray Leonard, who was giving him a pugilistic master class, and muttered, “no mas . . . no mas” (“no more . . . . no more”) and the myth was shattered. Hands Of Stone . . . Heart of Jelly.”

Zorba the Lobbyist: Anthony Quinn is lending his support to Athens’ bid to play host to the 2004 Summer Olympics.

“Since they were born here, they should have the Olympics here,” Quinn said while in Athens to receive an award for his contribution to promoting Greece’s image to the world.

“I think it’s a wonderful thing for the whole world to have the Olympics here and to understand what the Olympics were about. . . . I think the Greeks can explain it better than anybody else in the world, absolutely.”

Quinn, noted for his roles as Zorba the Greek and an Aristotle Onassis-type character in “The Greek Tycoon,” is actually of Mexican-Irish descent.

Trivia answer: Brazil (four times); Italy and West Germany (three times each); Uruguay and Argentina (twice each); England (once).

And finally: From the Good Doctor in Inside Sports:

“Q: The St. Louis Rams say they drafted Orlando Pace to ‘open some holes’ for their running backs. Where should he start?”

“A: By digging a tunnel under their running back’s jail yard.”