The Heat and the Shine

Stone Cold Steve Austin had a lot of memorable moments during his WWF/WWE run, but my favorite happened fifteen years ago today.  May 31, 1998 was the WWF Over The Edge pay-per-view featuring Austin vs. Dude Love (a.k.a. Mick Foley/Cactus Jack) for the WWF Championship with Mr. McMahon as referee, Pat Patterson as ring announcer and Gerald Brisco as timekeeper.  Richard Hattersly has a long writeup on the match at Collar and Elbow  detailing the events leading to the match and how the match went down. I found the match memorable for several reasons.  It was in Milwaukee (where I grew up), and even though I was living in Los Angeles at the time (I was working a summer internship between my junior and senior years at U.S.C.) I still always go out of my way to watch wrestling from Milwaukee.  May 31, 1998 was also the date of an epic NBA Eastern Conference Finals Game 7.  The Chicago Bulls had won five of the last seven NBA championships while the Indiana Pacers had flirted with an NBA

Chael Sonnen vs. Jon Jones is shaping up as the biggest fight in UFC history.  Not in the octagon and not at the box office, but in the political arena. The Wall Street Journal published an editorial on Friday illuminating the games that Zuffa and the culinary union have been playing as New York state has considered legalizing MMA.  The Journal's editorial board -- a group that looks with jaundice at almost every union -- takes Sheldon Silver to task for ostensibly allowing the Las Vegas culinary union stop New York city and Buffalo from holding events that would supposedly generate economic activity for the state of New York. There is reason to doubt that UFC events in New York would boost the economy at the $16 million dollar level claimed by Zuffa, but that's not the point.  It is unclear if the $16 million number considers the possibility that the two hundred bucks spent on a UFC ticket that supports Dana White and Jon Jones might have been spent at a local bar or res

WHEN WORLDS COLLIDE By Ben Miller Email: benjamiller@icloud.com Twitter: @benjamiller UFC 155 is in the books and it showed once again that Raven was right.  About a decade ago the former ECW champion appeared on an audio show with Dave Meltzer and Bryan Alvarez saying that all that matters is the finish.  On a night where three of the five pay-per-view fights were one-sided and uninspiring, nobody is talking about anything except the final fight because it was that damn good. The second Cain Velasquez vs. Junior Dos Santos fight was fantastic to a neutral observer and dramatic as hell to anyone with a rooting interest.  Yours truly was rooting for the Brazillian (blame an overreaching pre-show essay for that) and from the opening bell it was a riveting tale of survival.  Cain was a monster in a perpetual state of attack and Junior kept fighting and fighting to survive the beast.  For supporters of Velasquez some of the drama may have been lacking (drama fund

The Cost of Abandoning Fair Play: Why UFC 155 Won’t Draw By Ben Miller Email: benjamiller@icloud.com Twitter:  @benjamiller   The temptation is to blame the mismatch.  A year ago, the striker knocked out the wrestler in a minute.  What has changed?  The wrestler still wants everyone on the ground.  The striker still seems to always be able to stay off the ground.  The striker isn’t getting any shorter and the wrestler isn’t getting any younger. And so maybe the mismatch is the reason that Junior Dos Santos vs. Cain Velasquez for the heavyweight championship at UFC 155 has tepid interest.  No front page headline on ESPN.com a day out.  The sports section of the Los Angeles Times (the newspaper from the nearest major media market to Las Vegas, the site of the fight) has nary a mention.  Deadspin.com has a feature, but even that is a feature about the  bumbled promotion of the challenger . The problem with blaming the mismatch is that the sporting public seems fine with

"The problem with steroids," Roddy Piper once told yours truly, "was the warning label.  The bottle had a warning label saying all of this stuff about it having no benefit, and then you worked out on it and you saw the benefit." Steroids are bad.  But try telling a young athlete that.  Then try telling a young athlete that after he's been lied to.  Won't work.  Can't work.  Has no chance to work. Why bring up a ten year old conversation about a thirty year old problem the day after Chael Sonnen is rewarded for his 1-1 record in 2012 with the biggest money match of 2013?  Because it's the same dang thing, only different. Booking championship fights for guys who are below the championship level is bad.  But try telling a struggling promoter that.  Then try telling a struggling promoter that after he just saw that sub-championship level fighter talk his way into a million buys.  No.  Chance.  In Hell. Chael Sonnen vs. Jon Jones for the light h

Note: I wrote this up for the iMPACT Wrestling web site. In his first fight for Strikeforce, he knocked out an Ultimate Fighter favorite in three minutes. In his second, he became a world champion. Things have often come fast for King Mo, but not easy. He toiled for three years in division II collegiate wrestling before becoming an All-American in his first year in division I. He overcame four high-quality MMA opponents fighting in Japan before getting his chance to fight in America. And now, after making his name as the wildebeest wrestler with the cinder block right hand, King Mo enters the wrestling ring on iMPACT Wrestling. Many wrestling fans and MMA fans already know King Mo, the athlete. But what do we know about King Mo, the person? To solve this conundrum we look to that favorite of Vanity Fair magazine, the Proust Questionnaire. Made famous by early twentieth-century French novelist Marcel Proust, the questionnaire is designed to help the reader understand the p