Promoter: Valor Fighting
Date: June 9, 2006
Location: Cache Creek Casino (Brooks, California - near Sacramento)
Card line-up:
Dan Severn vs. Paul O’Keefe
Angelo Catsouras vs. Chin Seng
Sam Liara vs. Raven Seymon
Aric Nelson vs. Jason Bress
Carlos Garcia vs. Richard Blake Heavy
Craig Wilkerson vs. Adam Macrae
Joel Crawford vs. Chris Clifton
David Robles vs. Clint Blake
John Dale vs. TBD
If you look at the fight card on UFC.com, you’ll see that Leonard Garcia’s picture has been replaced with the token black silhouette. That’s because Garcia broke his fibula in training only a few days ago. So who could they find to sub in on less than…
No, this isn’t us in the little video - we just like the music, which is guaranteed to make us tear up a little every time. We really just need somewhere for you to leave some comments while we formulate a way to do this without alienating everyone from Detroit.
It ain’t over yet, but we’ll take a moment to enjoy it. Dude is fucking rewiring an entire city’s mindset.
According to Franklin himself, he’s rehabbing from his injuries nicely. The current middleweight champ recently posted this on his website,
RichFranklin.com:
“The surgery on my hand seems to have taken well, and it is healing rather quickly. We have …
Well, for those of you who are just now waking up from that Clippers-Suns epic last night, there’s no time to rest, people. Two more games tonight, with the Mavericks trying to finish off the defending champions and, most compellingly, LeBron James and the Cavaliers continuing their unlikely quest to topple the Pistons. The Cavs took a detour between Cleveland and Detroit, stopping to accompany teammate Larry Hughes to his brother’s funeral.
We, as much as anyone, have been hesitant to fire ourselves up too much for this LeBron playoff run, but if somehow he and the crew were to sneak out a win in Auburn Hills tonight, well, we’ll be pretty close to converted right there.
Plus, Kobe will be in the TNT studio. So, you know, should be fun. Might be worth watching. Plus, you won’t have to stay up until 2:30 in the morning.
I found this post over at Teodoro Defensive Arts, called “Why Do We Get Hit?“.
Basically the title says it all, but the article categorizes and shows pictures of why people get nailed with a punch or kick, and some advice on what to do.
From Teodoro Defensive Arts:
Besides the obvious answer of, “there was nothing in […]
“You just try to relax. There are a lot of things going through your mind. I try to sing sometimes to kind of take the pressure off.” Smiling wide and laughing loud, he said the song was David Hasselhoff’s “Looking For Freedom,” a big hit when he was a kid in Germany.
If the Dallas Mavericks end up winning the NBA championship, we could be looking at David Stern handing the trophy to Mark Cuban’s billion-dollar penis and Dirk Nowitzki shouting out his thanks to David Hasselhoff.
As far as celebrity-athlete pairings go, it’s not quite as crazy as this one, but it’s awfully damned close.
Check out the comments section of this post on Detroit Bad Boys to see the growing rivalry happening here. Ian says it best - he’s developing a healthy dislike of LeBron, and it’s the rivalry kind, not what we would call the “Tim Thomas” kind.
Anyway, as we did before the series started, this morning we sent Detroit Bad Boys our bullet points for the Cavaliers to win. It’s three instead of five this time, since this is a fresh, new three game series. There’s actual basketball knowledge there, so be careful.
From here, we turn it over to DBB - everything in italics is them guys.
Rasheed Wallace has never been shy to speak his opinion. And why not? Unlike some players in this league, he’s just a man, not an entire brand. For Detroit fans, it’s fun to pick up the newspaper to see what he just said about LeBron James ® (Presented by Nike) and the Bronettes.
Unfortunately, his candor is lost upon Cavaliers fans. Most Cavs fans seem to be a little on edge right now, which is somewhat understandable considering that fans born during the team’s last foray into the second round 13 years ago are now going through puberty.
All I can say is, take a deep breath and enjoy yourself. This is supposed to be fun. I know it must be confusing, one week playing a team like the Wizards who was so excited to make the playoffs they printed up commemorative t-shirts, and the next week playing the Pistons, who calmly act like they’ve been there before.
But, no matter how much all those commercials and TV announcers want to fool you, the Cavs are still underdogs, and underdogs are supposed to be taken for granted. Revel in this, because it
very well may be the last time a team with LeBron James is ever considered an underdog again.
The Boys in Blue took care of business in Games 1 and 2, but they stumbled a bit over the next two games, allowing the Boys in… Wine(?) to return to the Palace with the series all tied up. This is what the Pistons need to do to get back on track and advance to their rematch with the Heat. It’s not going to be easy, especially with the referees well aware how much Godfather Stern would appreciate a LeBron-Wade-Shaq matchup the next round, but if they get their act together this series should only go six games.
1. Get Antonio McDyess back on track. Especially with Rasheed Wallace hobbling, McDyess needs to quit being so tentative shooting the ball. In the first six games of the playoffs, he
attempted 7.5 shots per game. Over the last three contests, just 3.3. His turnaround jumper from the high post is automatic when he’s on, and quite honestly he’s the best rebounder on this team not wearing a big Afro. He needs to step up and provide a solid 20 minutes per game, perhaps much more if Rasheed is forced to miss any action. McDyess is by far the most productive reserve the Pistons have, and so far the bench has been practically non-existent, which is one reason the starting five appeared to run out of gas the last three fourth
quarters.
2. Protect the ball. The Pistons were the stingiest team in the league turning the ball over this year, coughing up the rock just 11.35 times per game. They averaged just nine turnovers in Games 1 and 2, but a whopping 15 per game over the last two. Had they been just a little bit more careful on Monday, this series would
easily be 3-1 in Detroit’s favor.
As much as it sometimes annoys their fans, Detroit is primarily a jumpshooting team, and there will always be games like the last two when the shots just aren’t falling. Aside from being more careful with shot selection, there’s nothing the Pistons can do about that… but they can control how crisp their passes are and cut down silly mental
errors.
3. Don’t let LeBron James facilitate. Normally a blueprint for success against the Cavs would include some mention of stopping LeBron James from scoring, but quite honestly, the Pistons have already proven to have a handle on that. He gets his points sooner or later, but it’s no longer rare for him to go an entire
quarter (or two) without finding the bucket once. It’s his passing Detroit can do without out. After dishing out 11 assists in the first two games, he’s had 19 the last two.
The Cavs don’t have a single player after James who can give Detroit headaches — their second-leading scorers so far this series have been Zydrunas Ilgauskas with 14 points in Game 1; Drew Gooden with 17 in Game 2; Anderson Varejao with 16 in Game 3; and Eric Snow with 12 in Game 4. Since those guys don’t normally make plays on their own, Detroit can’t allow James to help them become a factor, especially in the fourth quarter with long across-the-court passes the result in three-pointers.
Very nice job, and we appreciate the nod toward the Cavaliers’ future dominance over your team. We’ll take the last word before this evening’s festivites -
For those of you Detroitees calling Cleveland fans classless for cheering Sheed’s ankle sprain…didn’t you people try to fight an entire Indiana Pacer team once?
Well, for those of you who are just now waking up from that 
We suppose, had we put two and two together, we could have seen this coming. In a way, it has a certain spectacular cosmic inevitability. 
Check out the 