- The pirates of Somalia are under attack and dammit, they’re fighting back! Arrrrgghhh! Shiver me timbers, these guys are showing some truly pirate-y spirit even as the U.S. Navy and others are feverishly working to shut them down. Want evidence? Look no further than the area around Mogadishu, where there have been four failed pirate attacks in the last 24 hours. The attacks have taken place off the lawless Somali coast despite the presence of six American warships which are on the scene, guarding a hijacked ship full of weapons. Three attacks by pirates have reportedly been repelled, leading to high-speed escapes by the attacking pirates. Another attack was short-circuited because the pirates brought a ladder to climb on to the ship that was too short. Say what you will about pirates, but they have always been bad with the details, the little things. Of the four attacks, three were in the heavily patrolled corridor within the Gulf of Aden, while the exact location of the fourth was not immediately available. All of this comes after an incident last week in which a Ukrainian ship loaded with 33 Soviet-designed tanks and weapons was seized by pirates. It has spurred eight European countries to offer help in forming an anti-piracy force. You go ahead and do that, Euros, because I think we all know who will prevail: the pirates. They’re hearty, they love rum and wenches and they’ve been plying their trade for centuries. Ye may try to stamp them out, mateys, but I says ye cannot….
- So there goes Kimbo Slice’s career as a legit MMA draw. Already under fire from MMA purists who have maintained that he is nothing more than a glorified hack, a circus sideshow who has built a cult following knocking out fools and suckers while sporting a set of subpar in-ring skills. Heading into tonight’s bout on CBS with MMA legend Ken Shamrock, Slice appeared on the verge of beating on an over-the-hill, has-been fighter who would only give his doubters more evidence to use against him in claiming that he hasn’t fought anyone of note. Leading up to the fight, there was a lot of bad blood between Slice and Shamrock, including at their weigh-in at AtlanticBank Center in Sunrise, Fla., although pre-fight tensions are notoriously fake and phony. However, all of that bluster and bravado went for naught after Shamrock suffered a cut over his left eye during a practice session Friday afternoon. Because of the cut, the Florida State Athletic Commission determined that Shamrock was unfit to fight. “It appears that he was warming up as he stated, rolling over and received a head butt, which resulted in a laceration over his eye,” said Dr. Allan Fields of the Florida State Athletic Commission. “He received six sutures in the eyebrow. He explained that he wanted to fight; however for his safety, we have rules. Anyone with a recent laceration cannot go participate in a fight.”
So what happened? Pink-haired, marginal MMAer Seth Petruzelli, scheduled to face Aaron Rosa in an untelevised undercard bout, stepped in and dropped Kimbo with an average right hand to the head 14 seconds into the bout. One punch, 14 seconds, goodbye career. Kimbo has ridden this gravy train all the way from blowing up idiots he paid $100 to take a hit on camera to one of MMA’s biggest draws and made a lot of money in the process, but he’s now on his way down, in swift fashion. He’s been exposed as the fraud so many MMA fans and observers said he was, at the worst possible time for EliteXC, the company he fights for, and CBS, which bet a lot on him and EliteXC to bring MMA to its airwaves and win over fans…..
- Even the world’s fattest man can find love. Mexican Manuel Uribe of Monterrey, recognized as the world's fattest man in the 2007 Guinness Book of Records, announced the he will wed this month after losing nearly half his original weight. I’ve written about Uribe before and watched two one-hour specials on him on the TLC network, and you definitely had to feel for the big fella as he tried to shed the pounds through the Atkins diet and debated gastric bypass surgery. “It will be a hefty wedding, on a large scale, but with a low-calorie banquet,” the 43-year-old Uribe said. Uribe, who still lives in his bed because of his excessive girth, in February said he had dropped 570 pounds from his highest weight of 1,300 pounds). He plans to marry a widow named Claudia, a local hairdresser who he met when she came to his apartment as one of his caretakers, to whom he has been engaged for two years. They will exchange vows on October 26 at home in Monterrey. Uribe, who has created his own foundation to encourage and assist other fat people worldwide, expanded his wedding plans after offers of sponsorship came from international magazines, television stations and local mayors who offered all kinds of perks, including a cake for 400 guests. To liven up the festivities, Uribe has also asked a Mexican band called “Pesado,” or “Heavy,” to provide the music. On one hand, it’s great to see Uribe find love and get back another piece of his life, but it’s also discouraging for anyone out there who isn't married because if a bed-ridden, 700-pound man can find love, what’s the excuse for the rest of us?......
- It was an uneventful college football Saturday, with nearly all of the top teams in the nation either on a bye week or winning without too much drama. Top-ranked Oklahoma prepared for next Saturday’s Red River Shootout against archrival Texas by traveling to Waco and throttling poor Baylor 49-17. Second-ranked Alabama won 17-14 over a game Kentucky squad, but the final score is deceiving because Kentucky scored a touchdown with 40 seconds left to make it seem closer. The nation’s No. 3 team, LSU, was off on a bye week and the only top 10 team to lose did so on Thursday night, with South Florida falling to a very mediocre Pittsburgh team by a 26-21 count. The best game of the weekend was Vanderbilt, a school renowned for its academics but not usually for its football team, coming back from a 13-0 first-quarter deficit to stun 13th-ranked Auburn 14-13. The win should vault the Commodores up from their #19 ranking and put them near the top 10 for a truly amazing feat. It continues a trend of smart schools coming up with big wins, a trend Duke and Northwestern did much to facilitate last weekend. Another exciting contest came courtesy of the Mid-American Conference, where bitter rivals Akron and Kent State squared off in the annual Wagon Wheel game. Akron won thanks in large part to a circus catch on a fourth and 11 from the Kent 24 near the end of regulation when receiver Deryn Bowser made a circus catch in the end zone, reaching around a defender who was busy committing an uncalled pass interference penalty to snag the go-ahead score, a TD awarded only after Akron demanded a replay review to overturn a bad call of no catch by the officials. In the end, the Zips won 30-27 in double overtime when Kent kicked Nate Reed shanked his second makeable field goal of the day. An interesting subplot coming out of this weekend is that you’re going to have two conferences with eight of the top 10 or 11 teams in the polls, the SEC (LSU, Alabama, Florida and Georgia) and Big 12 (Oklahoma, Missouri, Texas and Texas Tech). It won't last because sooner rather than later, these schools will get into the meat of their conference schedule and begin knocking each other off, but interesting to see while it lasts…..
- See what happens to losers who go on dancing with the stars? They end up facing federal indictments and prison time, that’s what. Okay, so maybe being on some lame reality dancing show isn't the reason Helio Castroneves was in a Miami, Fla. courtroom Friday, but it should be. With tears in his eyes, the well-known race car driver and Dancing with the (D-List) Stars contestant not guilty Friday to a seven-count tax evasion indictment. Quite a sight to see Castroneves appear in court in handcuffs and leg chains and ordered released on $10 million bail. Imagine how much more bizarre it would have been were he an athlete who played a real sport…..but I digress. “I am not guilty,” the Brazilian-born Castroneves said. “I know right from wrong and I did nothing wrong.” That’s for the judge and jury to decide, H. For now, Castroneves, his sister, Katiucia Castroneves, and his attorney, Alan R. Miller, are accused of conspiring to conceal $5.5 million in offshore accounts between 1999 and 2004. That doesn’t seem like an issue where there can be a big grey area; either you have the money and put it in the accounts or not, but we’ll see. If convicted, Helio Castroneves and his co-defendants face a maximum five-year prison sentence on each charge. Again, I come back to the knowledge that there are a lot of crimes you can commit and get away with in this country, but buddy, if you try to cheat on your taxes and screw over the IRS, you will go down. The feds also don’t tend to indict unless they are very, very sure they have a very, very strong case, so things aren't looking good for Castroneves and Co. Well, that’s not entirely fair; his attorney did call the government's case "weak, thin and it's not worth the paper it's printed on.” Added the attorney, Mike Tein, “If the case did not involve a celebrity, there would be no case.” Well never mind, then, let’s dismiss the case, since a defendant’s attorney says it’s bogus. Either that or we can buckle in and hear about the government’s allegations that income Helio Castroneves received from Coimex Internacional and Penske Racing was placed in an offshore Panamanian shell corporation, and that he then lied about his income on his tax returns. The defense is trying to make this out to be some sort of pension plan, which I don’t buy. Well, it may be a pension plan, just one made a lot more profitable by funneling money into offshore accounts designed to get around paying tax on the money…….
No comments:
Post a Comment