The Heat and the Shine

Welcome to my lawsuit.   For years I played your game.  I made a lot of money.  I had a lot of fun.  It was my choice.   But you told me that you were keeping your game safer than you really were.  Other players used drugs.  They used drugs that made them stronger.  More aggressive.  Gave them better vision and focus to hit me.  You put my health at risk.  I knew the game was dangerous.  But that was something different.  That was like handing my opponent a crowbar before he walked into the cage.   Now I’m screwed.  I get angrier than I used to.  I forget things that I’ve known for years.  People have to tell me their names three or four times.  It’s hard to keep a job that way.  Or a wife or a family.  And you’re still fine.  You dissed the rank and file fighters.  Now my fight is going to court.   You see there are two keys to my lawsuit.  You knew; that’s the first key.  You knew that my opponents were using these Superman drugs.  You knew that your testing was in

Michigan State's head coach is saying that the Big Ten champion deserves a shot at the National Championship.  ( http://espn.go.com/college-football/story/_/id/10073294/mark-dantonio-stumps-big-ten-champ-title-game )  He's right.  The Big Ten champ does deserve a shot.  And so does the SEC champ and the Pac 12 champ (and maybe even the Big 12 and ACC champs).   College football's season is so short that it is difficult to know which conference is best.  It seems like it's the SEC this year.  South Carolina beat Central Florida (the likely AAC champ).  Ole Miss beat Texas (the possible Big 12 champ).  That's pretty good.  But better than the Pac 12 with Oregon (who killed everyone and only lost within conference) and Stanford (who did the same, only with a win over Notre Dame as well)?   The uncertainty in conference quality frustrates a lot of people.  Under the BCS system only two teams can be chosen for the national championship.  Right now the major con

Far be it from Milwaukee's second Ben (yours truly) to give advice to Milwaukee's first, but if Ben Askren is not in the MGM Grand Garden Arena for UFC 167 on Saturday night, then DeWayne Zinkin should be brought up on charges of managerial malpractice. UFC is in a down period.  Talk about oversaturation or Fox Sports 1 or concussions all you want, but the reality is that the sport is cold because the big fights aren't as big.  The stars are less shiny.  The fights are less interesting.  Fans can get excited when Nick Diaz goes crazy, but crazy only goes so far.  UFC needs a matchup that is compelling. What is so compelling about Georges St. Pierre vs. Johny Hendricks?  That Hendricks might land a big punch?  That GSP might pound the tar out of him for twenty-five minutes?  Big whoop.  UFC has sold us that fight a hundred times.  Maybe it would matter if GSP was the heel we wanted to see vanquished.  But he isn't and it doesn't. What does matter is Ben Askren

In some circles Ryback will get blamed for the flat Hell in a Cell match last night, but not here.  He played his role.  The flaws in the match were out of his control. Ryback & Paul Heyman vs. CM Punk was an unsatisfying culmination to what, at times, had been a captivating feud.  Paul's entrance took too long, the match lacked heat and the denouement failed to generate the pop WWE hoped for. Perhaps all parties could have done something different to improve the ultimate result, but the bulk of the blame rests with two parties: CM Punk and WWE Creative. CM Punk deserves blame because every big star deserves blame when his angles go bad.  In wrestling -- as in movies and TV and radio and you get the point -- stars have ultimate control.  The promoter or the booker may get mad at the star or threaten the star, but ultimately it's the star's responsibility to make sure he is part of matches and angles that are good rather than bad. At this point wrestling people

Let us stand back and appreciate Carlos Condit.  For he is a great fighter.  He deserves a world title shot.  He is a psychopath. It takes at least a smidgen of mental illness to compete at the top levels of sport.  A wise man once said, "you have to be smart enough to do it, and dumb enough to think it matters".  That is Carlos Condit.  It matters to him.  You can see it in the skinny Mexican frame that's been built into a lithe sculpture of muscle and sinew.  You can see it in the scraggly beard and the lack of bunny-bait tattoos.  Carlos don't care. In part the fascination is because he's not the typical fighter/dunce.  This ain't some redass rassler or hard life thug.  He's almost a scion.  The son of a white Democratic Party operative and a Latino mother.  He fights because he wants to.  He loves the sport.  He loves competition.  He loves to whip your ass. Condit's destruction of Marvin Kampmann was in total.  And it wasn't just provi

The  Triple H interview  on Grantland is well worth a read.  Of course a long interview with a powerful WWE executive is going to be interesting.  Of course a publication like Grantland will make sure the interview stays a shoot, which makes it even more interesting. Most interesting (at least, to yours truly), is what Triple H reveals about himself through subtext.  Namely that he is a wrestler in full: wise, savvy and paranoid. Triple H is wise in that he gets what a lot of hardcore wrestling fans choose to ignore: the fact that WWE offers opportunity.  Bray Wyatt is the example he cites in the interview, but there are dozens of others.  WWE wants wrestlers to get over because over wrestlers draw money. There are exceptions to any rule, and that applies to WWE's promotion of wrestlers.  They screwed up Goldberg.  They probably could have handled Scott Steiner better.  It always felt like Shelton Benjamin could have been something more.  But by and large Vince has good tas

It's done, and just in the nick of time.  With about 72 hours to go until an embarrassment of Crystal Pepsian proportions, the deal got done for Fox Sports 1. On Saturday, that means fights.  But what does it mean today?  One thing it means is that Fox took a heck of a hit in opportunity cost. Fox Sports 1 has attractive programming scheduled beyond UFC.  On Saturday night, Fox imports Dan O'Toole and Jay Onrait, witty ex-anchors of TSN SportsCentre, for the nightly highlight show, "Fox Sports Live".  On Monday afternoon, Regis Philbin begins a studio show, "Crowd Goes Wild".  And one week from next Thursday, Fox Sports 1's marquee property (sorry, UFC), college football, kicks off. The problem is that they're all too late.  Today, O'Toole and Onrait don't mean squat. (sorry) And Regis means even less. (not sorry) College football means something, but that is two weeks away.  And the sum total of all of it is too close to nil in the ga