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Wide World of Balls

Boxing Is Sooooooo Fixed

Here’s everything important that happened in every sport last week, even the boring ones. If it’s not in here, it’s unathletic.

Boxing
Hoooooo-leeeeeeeeeeeee shit is boxing fixed. Manny Pacquiao—the King of the Philippines—and Timothy Bradley fought Saturday in one of those big-deal fights, and the refs say Bradley won, which surprised everyone. It was Manny’s first loss since 2005 and there’ll almost fucking undoubtedly be a rematch. People say boxing is dead—mostly people who are paid American money to cover boxing as reporters—but the fight was a pretty big deal, and people shit themselves when the terrible decision was handed down. Still, those big fights are outliers: Of course people give a shit about the big HBO pay-per views. But will people care when two off-duty firemen fight each other outside my apartment, like they did yesterday?

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Horse racing
Was it the biggest sports story of the week? Certainly not, though it could have been. I’ll Have Another, which is a horse, was scratched from its Saturday race at Belmont and didn’t get the chance to run for the Triple Crown, which is winning three big races. It would have been the first Triple Crown in over 30 years. The air was sucked out of Belmont when the news broke, and bad vibes don’t usually reach Belmont until Sunday morning.

NBA
- The Thunder bounced San Antonio, which lost four straight after winning 20. Rough! Stephen Jackson, maybe the most interesting athlete in the NBA—shit, maybe sports—said it’s because “those motherfuckers were just better than us.” Clearly, a TNT studio analyst in the making.

- The Heat turned it around and beat an impressive Celtics team. Impressive in the sense that, “Shit, Boston has been old since Bush was president and is still kicking. Wow.” The Celtics had it going until about eight minutes left in the fourth game. Hard way to go out, and Boston’s Big Three may be done. LeBron fixed his shit.

- The Raptors might be shopping their No. 8 pick… actually, who gives a shit? Here’s Metta World Peace reading the weather in Vancouver, which is way more interesting than anything the Raptors do.

Soccer
- It’s actually called Futbol. Just kidding. Anyways, Euro 2012 is underway, and it’s the highest-quality international competition around, even better than the World Cup, which has cool South hemisphere teams but also lame-O’s like Canada. One group has four of the top ten world teams! And the good one lost Saturday!

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- Argentina and Brazil played in Giants Stadium on Saturday, and Leo Messi scored three goals. He probably figured the more he’d score, the sooner he’d get out of New Jersey.

- Corinthians, Brazil’s champs last year, dropped to last in Brazil. We should have seen this coming, lo as it was written in last year’s media guide, Corinthians 20:12. “Take a good look, friends, at who you were when you got called into this life. You should be able to fucking pass the ball you morons.”

NHL
- The Devils have come back from a 3-0 deficit and now head to LA with the chance to tie up the series. New Jersey got a lot of help from its role players in its last two games, though I’d like to think anyone playing pro hockey in New Jersey is somewhat of a role player. (See above New Jersey joke for more New Jersey jokes.)

Baseball
 - This isn’t professional baseball, but Stony Brook has advanced to the College World Series in Omaha (where Warren and Jimmy Buffet live), beating LSU, which is a really good school at college baseball. Stony Brook also had a bunch of players picked during MLB’s draft last week, which means they’re a good team with some players who may theoretically play in the bigs. Still, no one saw it coming. Well, no one except this guy.

- Six dudes on the Mariners combined to throw a no-hitter Friday night, and the coolest part was when one pitcher sat on the other guy’s shoulders and together they threw a gyroball. OK, that didn’t happen, but Jesus Montero caught all six pitchers, and the baseball consensus has been he sucks at catcher. Maybe he doesn’t?

- The Pirates are tied for first place in the NL Central and have the best record since May 25 and swept an Interleague series for the first time since 2001. Their pitching is awesome, and A.J. Burnett, who is usually rougher to look at than the Elephant Man, has been throwing incredibly well. They may yet fall completely apart, but if they do not—there’s a chance they don’t—this is the best baseball story of the year. That is, besides this kid.

NFL
 - Wade Davis, a former NFL cornerback, has come out of the closet, and there are very positive signs that current players would be OK with a gay teammate. There’s a good video piece on Davis here.

Previously - The Clippers Are So Dumb

@samreiss_