Viva De La Hoya!

Since that night in Las Vegas, I’ve been hopelessly drawn to the most brutal of sports. Foolishly, many believe that boxing isn’t an athletic competition but a showcase of barbaric corruption that brings the masses to that primitive place in their souls and feeds their lust for bloodsport.

But boxing is the closest any athletic contest comes to purity. It is a nasty reflection of life, rife with pain and failure, greed and hate, dishonesty and corruption. For the worthy, it offers pride and grace, honor and nobility, but the worthy are few and far between.

All my love for soccer, football, baseball, and basketball does not change the fact that boxing has always been my favorite. The sport has declined in recent years but it remains a beautiful display of determination, durability, and power that demands constant training of both the body and the mind. Miss a workout, skip some roadwork, waste some time partying and chasing wool, and you’ll be exposed in the ring.

Unlike team sports, where ineffectiveness and laziness are rewarded by a teammate picking up the slack, all a fighter has is himself, and no matter how badly he’s losing, he’s still in the game. If a team is down by three touchdowns with 3 minutes to go, they need four, Peyton Manning, and some help from God. But in boxing, a fighter can lose 9 straight rounds but only needs one punch, that knockout blow, to shift the tide.

How can you not love that? The footwork, the dips, slips, bumps, and pushes… The sweet science is poetry in motion and there’s nothing better in sport than watching two professionals with a true understanding of their trade putting on a show. Tonight’s bout between Oscar de la Hoya and Floyd Mayweather, Jr. may be the sweetest of them all.

Since the date was announced months ago, I’ve begged and begged my father to get tickets and about a month and a half ago, he came through – just like he always does. Since then, the wait for May 5 has been almost too much to bear but now that the day is finally here and we’re in Vegas yet again, things feel a bit, I don’t know, bittersweet. Less than six hours remain before my dad and I are thirteen rows away from watching the greatest fight twenty years. But less than six hours also remain before the last great fight of a dying sport is under way. As excited as I am for things to get started, I can’t help but feel a twinge of sadness in knowing that by the time midnight rolls around, the sport of boxing that I have grown to know and love – a sport that has provided some of the great memories of my life – will be gone.

Heart Prediction: de la Hoya by TKO
Head Prediction: Mayweather in a decision 

Well, Steinbrenner Had to Fire Somebody, Right?

I didn’t get the Yankee game on Tuesday night (MLB tv is becoming more appealing by the day), so I watched a few episodes of "Rome" instead. It’s a little early in the post for me to go off on a tangent but let’s get it out of the way. I don’t know how many of you have seen Rome but it is absolutely amazing.

I’m in the middle of season one and am completely captivated by it. Since I’m too much of a tightwad to buy the actual dvds, I have to rely on Blockbuster Online to provide my fix… this means I can only watch a three or four episodes a week. But when I’m not watching Rome, I sit around fantasizing about what life would be like in Rome. I’ve come to the conclusion that if I was ever whisked away to ancient Rome in some fantastic sci-fi event, I’d be happiest in the role of Atia of the Julii – I am not only willful and cunning but I also have no problem with being sexually voracious and totally amoral.

My other option, as I see it through seven episodes, is being a madam whose brothel caters to high-society clientele. Big money, relaxed lifestyle. Anyway, let’s move on. 

So sometime Tuesday evening I got a text from my buddy Coz: "Yanks are snakebit…I’m sick to my stomach." Didn’t make much sense. As far as the mlb.com gamecast was concerned, Philip Hughes was blistering through a no-hitter. What’s so tragic about that? Crazy, melodramatic Coz, right? No, stupid slow gamecast.

Fully intending on writing back to mock him, I checked the Yanks website just to cover my arse. That’s when I saw this headline in 24 pt. bold font: "Hughes Leaves Game In Seventh With Injury." I went back to the gamecast and it had finally updated — the Yankees only hurler not using Just for Men had left the game in the middle of an at-bat. I looked at the headline and then at my phone and then the gamecast. Headline, gamecast, headline, phone, headline, headline, headline. The next thing I knew, my phone had the misfortune of encountering a nearby wall.

But while my phone snapped back together in less than 4-6 minutes, the Yankees rookie pitcher will be out with a severe hamstring for 4-6 weeks. Hughes is the third Yankee hurler to suffer a hamstring and the fourth player overall, with Hideki Matsui also turning in a hamstrung DL stint earlier this season.

Two players succumbing to the same strain is bad luck but when it happens to a third, you begin to wonder. When four players are taken down by the same issue in less than a month, there is a serious problem – or – as Brian Cashman put it, "It got to the point where the perception is there’s a problem here." 

No Brian, that is not the perception. That is the reality. In five weeks, five key Yankees have suffered from muscle-related injuries and even more are struggling. It’s bad enough that 3/4 of our roster qualifies for MLB’s AARP package. Now our youngsters are going down for the count, too?

Chien-Ming Wang is 27 and Phil Hughes is 20. There is no reason for their muscles to be a hot mess. Somebody has to swing for that and since Steinbrenner already vowed not to fire Joe Torre and Brian Cashman (this week), happy trails to Marty Miller. Miller is, er, was a strength & conditioning coach. Our genius staff plucked him out of del Boca Vista Ballen Isles Country Club in Palm Beach Gardens, where he was posing as a fitness instructor (read: water aerobics instructor for my Bubbe and her friends)…

Ya know, sometimes I get the feeling that Steinbrenner & Co. are just trying to see how far and ridiculous they can take things before it all goes to pot. I wish they’d stop; it’s just not funny anymore.

Mourinho Joins RAW Fan Nation

I know this makes for two Bank of Chel$ki posts in an evening, and, even more shameful, yet another with a youtube video but you know how I like to make myself feel better about Arsenal’s issues by poking fun at those higher in the table. Actually, it wouldn’t matter where Chel$ki sat on the table; if The Special One was leading that brigade of cunts, I would be nearby trying to have a laugh.

So a few nights back, I dozed off in the middle of USA Network’s 14-hour stretch of Law & Order programming and when I awoke, RAW was on. It was horrifying but I had a great groove in my pillow and searching for the remote was not an option. Instead, I laid there and wondered if things would be more entertaining if I lived in a double wide or a house with a toilet sitting in the front yard. It wasn’t a long debate. I was starting to doze off again when someone said, "That’s Ho-zay Mo-rin-ee-oh!" Naturally, boos immediately rained down from the crowd. I sat up and focused just in time to see The Special One, in all of his smug effeminate glory, get faux-pwned by some random WWF (or is it WWE?) guy that likely arrived to the event in an 1987 IROC-Z.  Luckily, someone else saw it too:

I can’t help but think that if this whinging arse spent a little more time coaching his subs in the art of penalty kicking instead of joining Snoop Dogg in the RAW Fan Nation, Chel$ki wouldn’t have looked like Wimbledon c.1989 and screwed the pooch during penalty kicks against Liverpool today. Fancy lashing out £500M to watch that tat.

Chumps.

Reaching for Reasons to Bash Chelsea

Someone asked the twats from Chelsea who the best looking man was on the squad, which translated to who they’d fancy if, you know, they swung “that way.” Most of the men hemmed and hawed, wanting nothing to do with the the question. But leave it to the usual suspects – Cashley Cole and Frank Lumpalard – to have actual opinions on the matter. Lumpalard, caught sipping some type of frappy latte mocha with foam and sprinkles while wrapped tight in a stylish muffler, fancied backup goalie Carlo Cudicini. The answer was given with a great deal of conviction. Meanwhile, Cashley Cole, who John Terry referred to as a “sweet boy… pretty boy with all his creams,” chose himself. Who could’ve seen that one coming?

HT: Vin, Sportscolumn Blog