If you didn’t catch THIS all over the internets yesterday you should’ve. One thing’s for sure, that shade45 interview was probably the most effective promo R.A’s ever done in his life. Though I disagree with a lot of the Rugged Man’s statements(gtfoh with Margarito and Mosley), he’s obviously a big fan of the sport. What made this shit properly hilarious  though, was how heated Floyd gets.

Let’s be real here, R.A’s opinion should be meaningless to someone like Floyd.. but in true Kanye fashion Floyd is simply not having it. The fact that he went and rung up a hip hop radio station to get in an argument with some rapper he’s never heard of over the dudes opinion is just comedy.

Mayweather 4 prez

Oh yeah, and if anyones got links for the Pacman Cotto 24/7 episodes – holla in the comments.

Here’s a link to the full Mayweather vs R.A debate.

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How could I not blog about Stacey Jones and the Warriors’ thrilling come-from-behind (twice) win yesterday. That was probably the most exciting game I’ve seen since the World Cup final or the Warriors’ last-minute win against the Storm in the playoffs last year. Yesterday’s game wasn’t really for the purists – there was a shitload of errors and penalties – but there’s no denying it was exciting. Even the usually critical Phil Gould, writing in the Sydney Morning Herald, was full of praise for this game.

The best part about this win from the Warriors’ standpoint will be Stacey Jones’ performance. It’s pretty remarkable that he’s been out of top-flight football for 18 months (and the NRL for even longer) and can just waltz back onto the field and play a starring role. Besides setting up two crucial tries, he almost set up Nathan Fien for another one near the line and  provided a crucial kick in the dying stages that got us another set of six. I can’t lie – I was skeptical about Jones’ return, but if he can hang back like he did yesterday and just play his hand when it’s needed, then we got ourselves a premiership team on our hands. Shot Jonesy – a living legend of Kiwi sport.

Sidebar: How useless are the Blues… fuuuck. And how much stinker is the standard of the Super 14 compared with the NRL? Not even comparable.

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The new NRL season is nearly upon us, so being a rugby league Stan I just joined up to the NRL website’s fantasy league. Got my team all sussed and feeling good about the upcoming ‘season’ haha.

For the unitiated, fantasy leagues are common amongst most major sports (Super 14, NFL, NBA, MLB etc). Basically, the deal is you’ve gotta put together a team of players from within the comp, in this case the NRL, making sure they all fit underneath the salary cap. As the season progresses, the players you choose then earn points for your team after each round. The points are accumulated based on a range of stats — metres gained, tackles made, tries scored, try assists, line breaks etc.

If you’re an armchair coach and this sounds like you, sign up for the fantasy league here. Remember though, it’s not about who your favourite players are, it’s about who’s gonna earn you the most points. Once you’ve registered, come verse me and some mates in league number 294165 – The T-Knux Cup. My team’s The Cousin Harolds.

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If you’re a league fan and wanna relive last year’s Kiwi World Cup glory then head down to the Viaduct tomorrow at 12 noon. The world champs and their world champion female counterparts, the Kiwi Ferns, will be the guests of honour at a public reception at the Louis Vuitton race village. I’m finna head down if I can weasle my way outta work early.

Oh, and one more thing – fuck the NZRL (New Zealand Rugby League if you didn’t know). Those useless assholes have been so slack in their response to their flagship team, the Kiwis, winning the World Cup. Can you imagine if the All Blacks won the last World Cup? There’d probably be a public holiday declared and at the very least a fucken ticker tape parade down Queen St – and not 2 months later. I can’t help but feel the NZRL (primarily) has let a lot of fans down, and the game of rugby league, through their failure first of all to celebrate and commemorate the win in an appropriate way, and their incompetence at capitalising financially from the win. And aside from those immediate spin-offs, they’ve missed the boat on raising the profile and standing of league in this country long-term. Considering how huge the Kiwis’ win over Aussie was, the response from the NZRL has been uuuuseless. Fuck the administration though, if you’re free tomorrow, get down to the Viaduct and support the team.

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David Tua v Shane Cameron; The Terminator v The Mountain Warrior (haha wtf)… Damn, I haven’t been this interested in a boxing match probably since Tua fought Lennox Lewis and got jabbed up for 12 rounds. This match-up has been 2-3 years in the making, but finally a date was confirmed yesterday – June 6th, 2009.

I realise this is boxing and shit can change at any minute – I mean the venue is still being decided and the fight’s dependant on both boxers completing warm-up bouts first – but let’s just assume it’s 100% gonna go down. Who would win? At 37, Tua is arguably past his prime, particularly since he hasn’t fought much in recent years, but he’s got a pretty impressive resume. He fought several current or future champions in his career – Hasim Rahman, John Ruiz, Michael Moorer and of course Lewis – and has knocked out a whole bunch of people in the process – 44 of his 49 wins. Cameron hasn’t fought any illustrious fighters to date, but has lost only once and has been convincing against the opponents he’s beat. While it’s hard to compare 2 fighters’ feats from 2 different eras, one thing that’s apparent is Tua at his peak v Cameron at his is a no-contest. Personally, I’m with Tua – he might have aged, but I bet that left-hook and hard head are still there… plus he was one of my childhood heroes so he’s also the sentimental favourite (aww). So sports fans, who’s your money on?

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Kiwis = World Champs.

MEAN !

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Holy damn, what a 24 hours of sport! First of all, props to the All Blacks for their Bledisloe/Tri-Nations win last night. It was a pretty tight game and a well deserved win. Our loosies were killing it, and man it’s good to see Weepu back – shot boys. Then today I managed to shake a slight hangover in time to see the Warriors under-20 side win their quarterfinal against St George convincingly. Heapsa talented dudes in that team man, Kevin Locke and Russell Packer especially… Kiwi league’s future looks pretty promising. Then there was the big one, the Warriors vs the Storm. Understandably we weren’t really expected to win, but somehow we did. Un-fucken-believable. I’m still a bit lost for words, but this is pretty much the greatest day in my life hahaha. I was fist pumping and all that shit during that last play from Ropati and Vatuvei which saw Witt (eventually) put the ball down and score in the last minute. The even better news is that we get a home game next Friday now to decide who makes the semi-finals. As soon as those tickets go on sale I’m in there. Man, getting up Monday morning for work is gonna be all that much easier after this weekend of sport, yessss.

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There’s just nothing better really. For the athletes, the Olympics drives them to surpass previous physical limits imposed on the human race by the gods – all for the glory of a medal. For people like myself, the Olympics simply drives you to watch more TV in a 2 week stretch than you’ve watched in the 4 years since the last Olympics – that’s what’s up. In all honesty I haven’t felt like doing SHIT since the Olympics started, and I don’t see that trend discontinuing, at least until the good track and field events are over. However during my viewing of this XXIX Olympiad I’ve been getting increasingly pissed at TV One’s coverage, or more specifically the events they choose to cover.

I hadn’t intended to watch the womens cycling road race cause I thought it would suck, but after 15 minutes viewing I found I was quite engrossed by it. This Russian chick had made a break and was a minute ahead of the Peleton with like half an hour to go, the race was reaching an exciting climax. Then TVNZ, true to their name come through with a deft show of nationalism and cross over to the kick off of NZ vs Brazil…. in Soccer. WTF ? Are you serious ? I wanna watch individuals surpass human limits and win medals, I want the excitement of competition, I don’t want to see our fifth tier soccer nation getting their ass kicked by the best in the world in fucking pool play. That’s a foregone conclusion, that ain’t exciting. I know there’s people that DO want to see the game (families of the players etc), but fuck, we don’t need to see this shit from minute ONE ! Let’s catch them up in the second half TVNZ ! don’t leave me hanging when there’s actual victories to be seen.

This brought me to a realisation, for the most part I don’t really like seeing any sports which are “games” at the Olympics. Soccer, Hockey, even things I like watching like Tennis and Basketball. I wouldn’t really bat an eyelid if these were all canned. The wack ones take up hours of coverage time, and the good ones we see all year anyway (Grand Slams, NBA, Premier League etc). When an Olympic medal ain’t really the pinnacle of achievement for your sport, which it isn’t for a lot of these.. it just makes it wack. Back to “games” though, I’d make the exception for Indoor Volleyball, cause it’s bad ass and I never see it normally. Anyway here’s my viewing wishlist for the rest of the Olympics, someone word up TVNZ

No more Equestrian – I know NZ is in this, I don’t care. It’s boring as fuck.
No more Board Sailing – Same as above.
Rowing – Coverage has been all good, it’s good to watch, and NZ has been goin hard. Win/win
Swimming – They’re covering this all good, keep it up. How was the Mens 4×100 relay ? Ho-ly
More Weight Lifting – They’ve showed fuck all, this is some real Olympic shit.
More Boxing – Only seen 1 fight.
More Wrestling – Gladitorial activities is what the Olympics is all about.
No more Beach Volleyball – Fuck this, too much court and too few players = boring spectacle.
No more Shooting – Guns aint sport, I’ll let Archery ride.
More Gymnastics – Seen hardly any gymnastics, which is a shame cause people doing flips is all good.
Diving – Diving’s all good.
Cycling – Will be mean once the indoor shit starts, Pursuit is ill.
Heaps of Track and Field – Bar maybe the 15000 meters which i only wanna see the end of, any Track and Field is all good.

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Yesterday’s match between the Warriors and Wests Tigers marked Ruben Wiki‘s 300th game in the NRL and I just wanna give props to one of league’s greatest ever players and to quote Tofiga on Off Work, “a role models in the gommunity”. The game yesterday was a fitting way to mark the occasion because the venue, Leichardt Oval, was where Wiki made his debut for Canberra (with their U-23s) and the coach of Wests, Tim Sheens, was Wiki’s coach at the Raiders when he first started. Since his early days with the Green Machine, Wiki has gone on to achieve a lot. He has the record for the world’s most capped test player (55), is the most capped NZer in the NRL (300*), is only the 10th player ever to play 300 NRL games and 1st Kiwi, was part of the 24-0 tri-series hiding of Australia, won a premiership with the Raiders in ’94, has captained his country and club, was named in the all-time Kiwi team, and was made an Officer of the NZ Order of Merit for his services to rugby league. As well as his achievements on the field, Wiki has been a role model off it, renowned as an all-round good guy and inspiration to young Polynesian players in the NRL, and has been involved in anti-violence and healthy eating campaigns to name just a few. Personally I’ve always looked up to Ruben Wiki, and along with Tana Umaga, he’s made me proud to be Samoan, even if I am only 1/4. So yeah, shot Ruben, congratulations on the feat and I hope your teammates can get you into the playoffs in your final NRL season because you deserve better than a 12th place finish!

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