championship Page 26 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

Johnny Wrestling's triumphant return
Of course, he’s back under Paul “Triple H” Levesque’s leadership. Any doubt about the future career path of longtime NXT MVP Johnny Gargano turned to hope in the aftermath of Vince McMahon’s resignation from WWE. “Johnny Wrestling” left the company on good terms. He did it to spend time with his the...

UFC has its moments
I feel like if I ever write about the UFC it’ll be treated like Walter Slobchak dressing down Donnie about walking into the middle of a movie. So when I walked into a friend’s house with a semi serious interest in the Kamaru Usman-Leon Edwards fight, I only knew as much as I gleaned from proofing th...

Dana White upset because people paid attention to something he said
Typical Dana White. He gets asked a question, or is reminded of something that he doesn’t like, and he throws an adult temper tantrum. He yells, curses a mile a minute, and defiantly points his finger like Rafael Palmeiro in front of Congress. All to convince you that he is right because he is the U...

CM Punk played himself
The honeymoon period with CM Punk in All Elite Wrestling has been over for a long time. It easily ceased before this week’s drama unfolded. He’s had to sink or swim based on what his current ability is for several months. If Punk was just a nostalgia act, he’d leave AEW head-honcho Tony Khan with no...

Skip Bayless tries to dunk on Bronny James
Here we go again, one more time, Skip Bayless getting under people’s skin....

Predicting college football’s New Year’s Six teams
College football starts in a little more than two weeks. And for 135 days, the jostling to become a national champion will be ongoing. Obviously, only four teams will compete in the College Football Playoff but a dozen teams will be selected to the most lucrative bowls, otherwise known as the New Ye...

Retiring Russell’s jersey number should have happened a long time ago
Shame on the NBA....

Please don’t let WWE get its greedy paws on The Rock’s new VICE TV series ‘Tales from the Territories’
Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson has taken Hollywood by storm since he left the WWE, producing hit after hit on the big screen. Even with Johnson’s mainstream success, he’s never forgotten his pro wrestling roots. Now The Rock is teaming up with VICE TV on a series called “Tales From The Territories.”...

And, voila, Cameron Smith’s charisma is gone
We’ve reached a point where a golfer has to take a blood oath on their mother’s grave while stabbing a voodoo doll of Greg Norman for me to believe that any of these amoral sociopaths are staying with the PGA Tour. My hopes weren’t high for Cameron Smith, the young Australian who just won the Open C...

I’d wreck my Subaru to be on the Patriots, too
In the barren wasteland that is sports in August, there are only baseball and speculative NFL stories to write about. And since we just wrote about Aaron Judge and he didn’t hit a dinger Friday night, we’ve got football chatter for you. Today’s anecdote comes from former New England Patriot offensiv...

Amanda Nunes made it clear that she is still as good as it gets in UFC
Julianna Peña is tough as nails. She took a beating for five rounds against Amanda Nunes last night. A brutal, bloody beating. Yet through the knockdowns and the elbows, Peña never took her foot off the gas pedal and was able to get Nunes in trouble (at times) on the ground later in the fight. Peña ...

Bill Russell, all-time NBA great and cultural icon, dead at 88
According to a statement released on social media, NBA legend Bill Russell died “peacefully” Sunday at the age of 88....

Mariners make splash in hopes of ending lengthy postseason drought
The Seattle Mariners are looking to make the playoffs for the first time in over 20 years. Ichiro’s rookie season was the last time they played past 162 games. Heading into Saturday’s games, Seattle is only a half-game ahead of Tampa Bay in the Wild Card standings, and it’s far from a guarantee the ...

The best sports calls of the 21st century
Is there anything that defines a moment in sports history quite like the announcers’ call over the sounds of a raucous crowd and a celebrating team (and your own sobs)? Do you believe in miracles, the band is on the field, the Giants win the pennant, pretty much anything Jack Buck ever said — they’r...

Moving to a 16-team College Football Playoff isn’t easy — but may very well happen
“Sixteen just seems to be out there,” Gene Smith, Ohio State’s athletic director, said at the Big Ten media days. “You can’t ignore it.”...

The Dodgers will be buyers at the deadline — here’s who they should target
The Dodgers have a few glaring holes on their roster....

Does Tony Khan have a second gear for Ring Of Honor?
It’s pretty standard now, bordering on canon, that Tony Khan will spit out a great pay-per-view whenever he needs to. And now it’s with multiple companies. Last Saturday, it was Ring of Honor’s turn, with “Death Before Dishonor.” And by any measure, it was a banger. Not perfect — rarely is a show ev...

BIG Conference needs to ask itself some BIG questions before proceeding
College football is changing faster than it can handle. There are no playbooks or 100-level courses for what’s next in the sport. It feels like when I took a journalism business class after the Recession, and the professor was asking the students for suggestions. ...

You’re never going to guess who’s pushing the Yankees for AL supremacy
Hopefully, you’ve been watching enough baseball to know the answer to that headline isn’t the Red Sox. At 61-32, and now only 2.5 games behind New York for the best record in baseball — courtesy of a doubleheader sweep — the Houston Astros are in a position to make the second half interesting....
