Author: clay

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All Other Sports

Chris Benoit: the ultimate professional


In an unbelievably surreal moment, Vince McMahon stood in the middle of the ring at the beginning of Monday Night RAW and announced that Chris Benoit had died. What was scheduled to be a tribute to the “presumed dead” McMahon instead turned into a numbing tribute to the fallen former champion.

Benoit, 40, was found dead along with his wife and seven-year-old son in their Fayetteville, GA, home on Monday around 2:30 p.m. No details are being released, but the Fayette County sheriff’s office reported that the deaths are being investigated as homicides. However, a detective allegedly told an Atlanta television station that the events are being investigated as a murder-suicide with Benoit murdering his son and wife sometime during the weekend before ending his own life on Monday.

On Sunday, Benoit was scheduled to take on CM Punk for the ECW Championship but was replaced by Johnny Nitro for what Jim Ross called “personal reasons.” Before arriving in the ECW via the draft a few weeks back, Benoit had already carved out his legacy in championship gold as he is one of the few wrestlers to hold titles in the original ECW, WWE, and WCW. But The Rabid Wolverine’s crowning moment came at WrestleMania XX when his crippler crossface forced Triple H to tap out, giving Benoit his first and only World Heavyweight Championship title reign in the WWE.

There was no flair in Benoit’s style; he was a strategic, methodical, no-nonsense, in your face, beat down machine. Benoit was one of the few guys who didn’t need a gimmick; he walked to the ring and his reputation did all the talking that was needed. Whether it was from the fans or the wrestlers, Benoit earned respect from each and every person who saw him perform inside the ring. His passion and intensity were palatable and the WWE and its fans will sorely miss his old school skills in a business obsessed with the next big thing.

Links:

[King5.com]: WWE wrestler Benoit & family found dead in home
[WISTV.com]: Wrestler Chris Benoit, wife and child found dead

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San Antonio Spurs

Someone should tell the Spurs trainer to start reading the expiration dates

This year marked the first time in Tim Duncan’s stellar career that he didn’t win the NBA Finals MVP after guiding the Spurs to a championship; instead, it was Tony Parker who stole the show and the trophy. Now, we thought something stunk about the lil’ Frenchman snatching up the award and now we have the video evidence to back up what we suspected all along: Parker was poisoning Duncan’s Gatorade in order to become the best player on the floor!

Sacre bleu!!

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All Other Sports

Sports anchor wannabe watches his dreams crash and burn

Sometimes you wake up and you can just tell that it is going to be one hell of a day. Those are the mornings that we usually just crawl back in bed and unplug the alarm clock. Unfortunately, the chump in this clip we stumbled across wasn’t so smart and he got completely bulldozed by life.

“And boom goes the dynamite” might be totally lame, but it’s still on par with the SportsCenter crew. And at least he didn’t do this.

Of course, for every sucker that clams up on camera, you have one who just loves to talk and talk and talk…

Links:

[Basketbawful]: Not that there’s anything wrong with that…

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Indianapolis Colts

Odds and Ends: The ESPYs are coming! The ESPYs are coming!


The ESPY awards are just about three weeks away and the voting has begun for all 38 categories on ESPN.com. And surprise, surprise, surprise; everybody’s favorite group of good guys, the Colts, lead the field with six nominations; including Best Team and Best Male Athlete (Peyton Manning). We’d like to see the Super Bowl champs go 0-for-6 on the evening, but that’s like asking Tony Dungy to give an acceptance speech without mentioning the Lord. It just isn’t going to happen.

In other news…

[MSNBC.com]: Marion Jones is flat broke.

[USA Today]: Steve Spurrier is already starting the year on the wrong foot.

[Our Book of Scrap]: A cliff and a swinging wire with Dennis Rodman attached. Let the hilarity ensue.

[Dallas News. com]: Bad news Bear gets cut.

[DetNews.com]: Chauncey Billups is officially a free agent, and a popular one at that.

[OrlandoSentinel.com]: Could a K.G. trade to L.A. keep Kobe in town?

And finally, Kobayashi’s streak of five consecutive July 4 Nathan’s Famous Hot Dog Eating contest could be unexpectedly ending after the master of raw dogging it came down with a nasty case of jaw arthritis. Apparently, Kobayashi attempted to train through the pain and ended up doing more harm than good. With the champ out of the picture, it’s time for America to put their greasy little mark back on the map of competitive eating. C’mon, “Jaws” Chestnut, we’re counting on you.

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Boston Red Sox

The Full Count: Beckett wins again


1. Winning 11: In one of the more intriguing pitching matchups of the season, Josh Beckett defeated Jake Peavy to retake the major league wins lead. Beckett improved to 11-1 as he went eight innings with two earned runs and eight strikeouts. Peavy had one of his worst starts of the year, with 5 innings and 3 runs allowed. It was his shortest outing of the season, and Peavy’s ERA rose above 2.00 for the first time since April. Beckett, however, became the league’s first 11-game winner, passing John Lackey and CC Sabathia. He’s on pace for a ridiculous 23-2 record this season, aided by the major league’s fifth-best run support for any pitcher. The Red Sox won 4-2, giving them a series win at San Diego as their division lead remains in double-digits (11 games over Toronto).

2. Five games, one run: The Atlanta Braves are on a five-game losing streak thanks to one of the coldest offensive stretches by any team in history. They’ve been shutout four of their last five games, with only a Chipper Jones solo homerun on Saturday saving them from the record books. They got swept by the Tigers at home over the weekend, including a 5-0 loss on Sunday Night Baseball. Tigers rookie starter Andrew Miller dominated the Braves with six shutout innings as Atlanta fell to 38-38. Andruw Jones ended an 0-24 stretch with a base hit, but his average is still the lowest in the NL at .199. For the Tigers, the sweep was their second in a row as they’ve now won seven straight games. This has given them a two-game lead over Cleveland in the NL Central division, thanks mainly to their incredible offense. Detroit has 451 runs this season, 53 more than any other team in the majors. They’ve scored more than 7 runs per game in June, most in the majors, while Atlanta has scored the fewest runs this month. Thankfully for the Braves though, they get to face the Nationals next after a brutal interleague schedule.

3. The Mets are Back: It took the Mets more than three weeks to finally win their first series in June, as the team finally ended a lengthy slump with a sweep of the A’s. The Mets outscored Oakland 20-3 on the series, including a 10-2 win on Sunday. They were back to form on offense and pitching, as John Maine threw seven solid innings and the lineup pounded out 14 hits. They still only lead the Phillies by three games in the division, but they have a chance to increase that lead as they travel to Philly next weekend.

Player of the Day: Dustin McGowan, Blue Jays: 9 innings, one hit, no runs, 7 strikeouts in a win over the Rockies. McGowan took a no-hitter into the ninth inning, but allowed a hit with no outs to Jeff Baker.

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All Other Sports

No NFL, no NBA, no NHL…no problem

There’s only one thing we love more than sports and that’s crazy ass extreme sports. And with the long days of summer upon us, there is no better time to turn our attention to the fringe sports of the world. So, while you’re waiting for football to kick off in the fall, you might want to start working on your backjumping techniques. Oh, you haven’t heard of backjumping? Well, we’ll allow the innovators to explain:

When we first heard the term “freebacking” we thought that it was going to be something totally different, but we’re still down. And if skateboarding has a chance to make it in the Olympics, then we can totally see backjumping going global as well.

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All Other Sports

John Cena holds onto the title at Vengeance; no, you don’t say



Unfortunately, the champ is still
him!

Okay, so we’re going to admit that we didn’t buy the latest PPV from the WWE, but that doesn’t mean we can’t feel screwed by the results. Not only did the rappers delight and WWE king John Cena hold onto his belt, AGAIN, by F.U.ing Mick Foley and getting the one, two, three, but Johnny Nitro became the ECW World Champion. No, folks, that’s no typo; Johnny freaking Nitro is holding significant gold. This loser with a 12-pack wasn’t even scheduled to compete in the match but he grabbed the slot after Chris Benoit had to pull out. Now, we know that Nitro has some seriously talent and potential (he didn’t pull down Melina by being a loser), but we never thought that the WWE would give him this kind of push this early. After all, he’s only been in ECW for a week now. But this will definitely spice things up on ECW where Nitro can build on his rivalry with CM Punk and start new battles with guys like Elijah Burke, Marcus Cor Von, Benoit and the Boogie Man. Okay, forget the Boogie Man; the WWE would really have to be desperate for spice to give him a title.

In the other big title match of the evening, Edge defeated Batista by count out and, therefore, the Animal will not receive another title shot as long as the World Heavyweight Championship belt is around the Rated R Superstar’s waist. With Batista out of the way, it looks like JBL could be right and Edge just might end up going down as the greatest of all time. We really can’t find anyone on the SmackDown roster who can handle the Ultimate Opportunist right now. Oh, wait, we didn’t realize that King Leonidas was kicking ass in the squared circle.

Here are the rest of the results from Vengeance: Night of Champions:

World Tag Team Champions Lance Cade & Trevor Murdoch defeated The Hardys

Cruiserweight Champion Chavo Guerrero defeated Jimmy Wang Yang

Johnny Nitro defeated CM Punk to win the vacant ECW World Title

Intercontinental Champion Santino Marella defeated Umaga (DQ)

United States Champion MVP defeated Ric Flair

WWE Tag Team Champions Deuce & Domino defeated Sgt. Slaughter & “Superfly” Jimmy Snuka

World Heavyweight Champion Edge defeated Batista (Count out; Last Chance Match)

Candice Michelle defeated Women’s Champion Melina

WWE Champion John Cena defeated King Booker, Randy Orton, Bobby Lashley & Mick Foley (Challenge Match)

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Miami Dolphins

Roger Goodell is licking his chops over some new blood


Now that Pacman Jones is looking at spending some serious time in jail and will probably never play in the NFL again, you’re probably wondering who’s going to give you your dose of pro football foolishness. Well look no further than the Miami Dolphins’ Frederick Davis to carry the torch.

Early Saturday morning, Miami Beach police arrested Davis outside of a nightclub after he forced his way into a taxi and then refused to get out. Eventually, Davis was tasered twice by the cops, but not without a fight. One cop got bit by Davis and another received scraps on her knee during the encounter.

Davis got nailed with a whole laundry list of charges that not only pissed off his coach, but are sure to arouse the anger of the mighty Roger Goodell. And that is the last thing any young player wants. But this again begs the question, when are these idiots going to learn? Despite the incredible physical strain being placed on your body, the NFL is one of the single greatest jobs on the face of the planet. All you have to do is act like an adult and mind your Ps and Qs and the money will continue to come rolling in. There shouldn’t be anything, including a night of drinking, that’s worth losing the fame, fortune and free time. Obviously, the commissioner is not going to tolerate this type of law breaking, image smearing behavior from anyone in the league and he’s willing to make examples out of as many as it takes. You might as well chalk up Davis to the list of Pacman, Michael Vick, the entire Bengals team, and Tank Johnson as the early big losers of the Goodell era.

Links:

[CBS4.com]: Miami Dolphins Player Arrested on South Beach

Categories
Golf

Nissan turns Rich Beem’s automobile dry hump into an ad

Earlier in the year, when you saw Rich Beem sink a hole-in-one at the Nissan Open and jump on top of his shiny new car, the first thing you thought was: “This is gonna be a commercial.” Well, actually, you probably thought: “You idiot! Get off your new ride! You’re f’n it up!” Either way you would have been right because we just stumbled across this Nissan ad featuring Beem and the man/car lovefest that ensued immediately following his big shot.

Wouldn’t you love to see that kind of enthusiasm out of Tiger every once in a while? We know that the fist pump is his trademark and all, but it’s okay to let loose every now and then. After all, he’s got a lot to be happy about; is slobbering all over an inanimate object really too much to ask?

Links:

[The Golf Blog]: Nice shot, nice car

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All Other Sports

The Ultimate Fighter 5 finale recap

The Ultimate Fighter 5 finally came to a head on Saturday night and the free event on Spike did a lot to put the excitement back in the UFC. After a disappointing Chuck Liddell/Quinton Jackson main event, followed up by a pair of decisions in the co-main events at UFC 72: Victory; The Ultimate Fighter finale was a night of much needed wild and unexpected endings.

In the main event, B.J. Penn finally got his revenge on Jens Pulver by slipping a deep choke on Lil’ Evil at the 3:12 mark of the second round. The smart money was on Penn coming into the fight and the Prodigy showed why he’s considered one of the best in the game as he dominated Pulver on the ground. And it doesn’t look like there’s going to be a heated third contest in this rivalry as the fellas seemed to have squashed their beef once and for all with hugs and kind words. Well, actually, Penn didn’t say anything to the crowd immediately after the fight other than directing everyone to his website, but Pulver couldn’t have been more humble in defeat.

In the championship match of TUF5, Nathan Diaz and Manvel Gamburyan had a great fight going, but when Gamburyan went for a takedown 20 seconds into the second round, he dislocated his shoulder and had to tap out. While it’s an unfortunate turn of events for Gamburyan and nobody wants to win by injury, the tap out crowed Diaz as the winner of the season and the six figure contract. But as anyone who follows The Ultimate Fighter fallout knows, it’s often the losers of the season who end up becoming UFC PPV fixtures (see Chris Leben).

But the fight of the night was between Rob Emerson and Gray Maynard. After a physical first round, Maynard picked up Emerson and delivered a wicked slam that caused Emerson to tap because of an injury to his ribs. And it’s a good thing for Maynard that Emerson tapped because during his throw of Emerson, he ended up falling on his own head and knocking himself out. You can enjoy it for the brutality, or you can enjoy it for the hilarity, but at least this card had something to enjoy. Maybe the UFC should consider limiting all their fighters to 155 pounds, because this has definitely been the most entertaining division of late.