Archive for July 25th, 2006
Continue Reading July 25th, 2006
Two of Shooto’s finest may be set to square off at the August 5th K-1 HERO’S card.
Originally it was thought that “Pequeno” would take on former Shooto rookie champion Hiroyuki Takaya. However, when the absences of Norifumi “KID” Yamamoto and Genki Sudo from HERO’S 70 kilogram tournament were announced, Takaya was slotted in the tournament to fill one of the vacancies in the bracket. Now, the 28 year old former Shooto champion has revealed to close members of the Brazilian fight media that he will take on KILLER BEE fighter Koutetsu Boku in a superfight on August 5th.
Both fighters are coming off of knee injuries. Nogueira had postponed Shooto 65 kilogram title defenses in December and March against Gilbert Melendez, before announcing that he would vacate the title in May due to a lingering knee injury. Boku also was forced to vacate a Shooto championship due to a knee injury, as on December 17th, he vacated the Shooto Pacific Rim Welterweight Championship, which he had won in January of 2005, defeating Ryan Bow.
However, both men have had different fortunes under the HERO’S banner. The second HERO’S card in July of 2005 saw Nogueira be knocked out by Hideo Tokoro in what may have been the year’s biggest upset. Conversely, Boku was able to notch a solid win for himself in September at the third HERO’S event, using his technical striking to nab a majority decision win over UFC veteran Hermes Franca.
Continue Reading July 25th, 2006
If you want to know why we love doing this site more than we’ve loved doing just about anything else in our lives, here’s a good reason: We get to treat the addition of a new racing sausage in Milwaukee has one of the biggest stories of the day. Because IT IS!
The Milwaukee Brewers, host of the world-famous, deadly serious Sausage Race, are adding a Chorizo as the fifth racing sausage in the nightly race at Miller Park. The Chorizo “will be adorned with a sombrero and decked out in red, green and white and will be formally introduced on Thursday at a press conference at Miller Park.” You see, a sentence like that just makes a man happy.
The Chorizo joins Hot Dog, Bratwurst, Polish and Italian in the race and is seen as a way for the Brewers to boost their standing among the Latino community, though it’s definitely going to hurt them with Lou Dobbs.
Chorizo Is The New Racing Sausage [Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel]
Continue Reading July 25th, 2006
Dream Stage Entertainment boss Nobuyuki Sakakibara has offered a bit of clarity to PRIDE’s lightweight picture.
Sakakibara had previously stated, following June 4th’s Bushido 11 card, that he may organize a lightweight contendership match at August 26th’s Bushido 12 card, with the winner facing PRIDE Lightweight Champion Takanori Gomi in November for the championship. Sakakibara has now stated that in August, Gomi will meet a tough foreign fighter, “no different than usual”, and that he will indeed defend his title in November.
Sakakibara also stated that the leading candidate for the title shot in November is still Marcus Aurelio, who defeated Gomi in April, even though Aurelio was defeated by Shooto Pacific Rim Welterweight Champion Mitsuhiro Ishida at Bushido 11 on June 4th. However, Sakakibara said that Aurelio’s leading candidacy was tentative, and that the results of Bushido 12 would factor prominently into choosing Gomi’s title contender for November 5th.
Continue Reading July 25th, 2006
No stranger to unique rules, Kazushi Sakuraba has requested special rules for his upcoming HERO’S bout.
The 38 year old Sakuraba, who recently returned from training with the Chute Boxe Academy in Curitiba, Brazil, held his open workout for the media yesterday, in preparations for his August 5th debut in K-1 HERO’S. The longtime PRIDE fan favorite stated that for his upcoming bout with Lithuanian Kestutis Smirnovas, that he wanted unlimited ten minutes rounds for the bout, until one man was finished. “This way, it is black or white,” said Sakuraba.
K-1 producer Sadaharu Tanigawa previously stated that HERO’S may use a ten minute round followed by a second five minute round for the bouts in the 85 kilogram tournament. In response to Sakuraba’s request, Tanigawa stated that while it would be extremely hard to do such a thing, given HERO’S format for television broadcast, but that Sakuraba’s past with unique rules, such as his time limitless bout with Royce Gracie, may force him to consider some rule alteration of that nature.
Continue Reading July 25th, 2006
Earlier today, new NBC broadcaster — it feels weird to type that; we haven’t quite adjusted to the NFL being back on NBC — John Madden went to visit Oakland Raiders camp and hang out with his former player Art Shell, the new coach (again) of the Raiders. Since it’s a slow, non-sexual-harassing day here at Deadspin, seeing Madden — who also looks so strange in photos, like they shoot him full of pancake batter and adrenaline right before he goes on air — got us thinking about that NBC team.
The roster is impressive. The studio show, “Football Night In America,” is packed, with Bob Costas, Cris Collinsworth, Sterling Sharpe and Jerome Bettis, who is from Detroit. The game crew is the same as last year: Madden and the wascally Al Michaels. Andrea Kramer is the sideline reporter, and if we know anything about this sports media world, we know that position will require her to endure upwards of four million “which athlete/coach/fellow broadcaster is she sleeping with?” rumors in the first two months. (Most of which started by bored print beat guys.)
All in all: A pretty good team, we think. Thoughts?
NBC Sunday Nights Is All Right For Football [Boston Globe]
(UPDATE: Oh, and Peter King’s going to be on the show too.)
Continue Reading July 25th, 2006
We can’t say for sure why Harold Reynolds was fired from ESPN yesterday, because ESPN hasn’t put out a statement or anything (and they don’t have to), but we can tell you what the chatter in Bristol is: Everyone is hearing sexual harassment. Every single email we’ve received from the inside about this today has used those very two words.
Again, nothing concrete on this. But that is definitely what they’re whispering in Bristol. Some highlights:
• Thirdhand info, but I’m told it’s sexual harassment. There were allegations of inappropriate actions between him and female PAs on a couple different occasions, so I’m not entirely shocked.
• It’s apparently sexual harassment, but no one knows who the victim was. It went down over the course of the weekend.
• I have on good authority that HR was fired for all things, hitting on girls. Allegedly, this has been going on for a while. The last straw was when a new PA was having none of what Harold had to offer and turned him in.
• Harold Reynolds was fired more or less for copious amounts of sexual harassment. Apparently, he brazenly hits on female employees constantly, despite the fact that his wife just had a kid six months ago. He was warned by the big-wigs on numerous occasions to cool it with the ladies, but someone finally lodged a complaint, and he was canned immediately.
• It’s very difficult to get fired from ESPN. It takes multiple offenses … they’re usually so worried about getting sued for unlawful termination that people are suspended multiple times for the same repeated behavior before it finally comes to getting fired. Within the walls of the campus, there are only a few on-air talent guys that had an honest reputation as being overly friendly with the ladies, and HR was one of them.
So anyway, that’s what they’re saying on the Bristol campus. But since ESPN doesn’t have to say anything — in-house or otherwise — and neither does Reynolds, we might never know for sure. (No announcement, we’re told, has been made to the staff.) That’s what they’re saying, though; we didn’t receive a single email suggesting anything but that.
But that’s not what we’re saying, because we don’t know. To be clear.
Say Goodnight, Harold [Deadspin]
Continue Reading July 25th, 2006
It’s the sentence we never thought we’d live to hear. But there it was, just sitting there in the notes column of the Kansas City Star’s Royals gamer on Sunday. It is at once awesome in its randomness, and frightening for the images it conjures. Even more terrifying: we know that someone, somewhere, has pictures. Well, here it is.
The last living munchkin from “The Wizard of Oz” threw a surprisingly good first pitch before Sunday’s game — and won a backpack during the fifth inning dance-off.
And there you have it; the Royals have officially become a minor league team. Next we expect to see kids chasing a greased pig around Kauffman Stadium duing the seventh-inning stretch.
Berroa’s Hit Gets Complicated [Kansas City Star]
Continue Reading July 25th, 2006
For all the talk about how baseball’s All-Star Game has become boring and irrelevant, it appears the Japanese All-Star game has figured out how to liven up matters: Aliens in the dugout.
Seriously: They have a little more fun with their All-Star game there than we do. Heck, you should see how Shinjo dressed up.
Weirder than Shinjo, and Fasa-NOOOOOOO [Marinerds]
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