mad Page 41 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

Borna Coric, Lucky Loser, Puts Slumping No. 1 Andy Murray To Bed
It’s been an extremely Andy Murray series of events. The ornery Scot played blisteringly good, 28-wins-straight tennis to finally claim the No. 1 spot for the first time in his career, but has since looked much easier to topple, taking losses to names you wouldn’t immediately recognize: older broth...

Real Madrid Finally Overcame The World's Best Player By Building The World's Best Team
For close to a decade now, Real Madrid have been tasked with solving the most difficult problem facing any club in the whole sport: What do we do about Lionel Messi?...

Karim Benzema's Houdini Act All But Destroys Atlético Madrid's Comeback Dreams
Atlético Madrid had a mountain to climb in order to get back into their Champions League semifinal tie against Real Madrid after losing the first leg 3-0, and it looked for a minute that they just might do it. Atleti jumped out to a 2-0 lead just 16 minutes into the match, needing just one more goal...

The Day The War Came For Muhammad Ali
The following is excerpted from Leigh Montville’s new book, Sting Like a Bee: Muhammad Ali vs. The United States of America, 1966-71....

Novak Djokovic Is Flying Solo And Looks No Steadier
Playing his first match after firing his whole coaching staff, Novak Djokovic struggled. Today, in the second round of the Madrid Open, he squared up against world No. 76 Nicolas Almagro—a player he had defeated in all four previous matches, losing only one set in a tiebreak—and teetered on the brin...

Cristiano Ronaldo Gutted Atlético Madrid
Cristiano Ronaldo has a penchant for doing only two or three things in any given game, but those two or three things usually end up being the most important things. That’s exactly what happened today, when Ronaldo scored a hat trick today against Atlético Madrid. His second was the prettiest, when ...

May The Soccer Gods Bless Atlético Madrid, Who Deserve To Win The Champions League
O ye mighty Soccer Gods, how blessed are we, the fans of the sport you so nobly watch over! You’ve given us over a decade of The One, your favorite son, the one and only Lionel Messi, and we have praised you for it! In recent times, you saw fit to grant us arguably the greatest team feat of all time...

Report: Text Messages Show Cristiano Ronaldo Knew About Settlement For Rape Allegation
A couple weeks ago, German paper Der Spiegel released a report that claimed Cristiano Ronaldo had settled out of court with an American woman who alleged he raped her in 2009. Ronaldo’s camp issued a strong denunciation of the report, calling it “journalistic fiction” and denying any ties between th...
![Rockets Owner Leslie Alexander Looked Really Quite Mad At This Referee [Update]](https://images.deadspin.com/tr:w-900/fxjbgfsfldsdyukytzcy.jpg)
Rockets Owner Leslie Alexander Looked Really Quite Mad At This Referee [Update]
The first-round series between the Rockets and Thunder is already plenty spicy on the court, and it’s only getting more contentious thanks to the involvement of both teams’ ownership groups. This weekend, the NBA said it was looking into a postgame incident between Patrick Beverley and the son of Th...

Lionel Messi Turned A Meaningless <i>Clásico</i> Into One For The Ages<em></em>
Barcelona probably won’t win anything significant this season. They remain underdogs for the league title, were ousted from the Champions League by Juventus after surviving the Paris Saint-Germain tie by the skin of their teeth, and can only really count on a Copa del Rey consolation prize to cap of...

Messi Scores 500th Goal For Barcelona With Gorgeous Game-Winner In Stoppage Time
Lionel Messi scored his 500th goal for Barcelona in style today—notching a game-winner in stoppage time for the club to take El Clasico by a score of 3-2....

Madison Bumgarner Placed On The DL After Presumably Bitchin' Dirt Bike Accident
The Giants placed Madison Bumgarner on the disabled list with a sprained left shoulder and bruised ribs. According to Ken Rosenthal, ...

Madrid Derby Is The Highlight Of The Champions League Semifinal Draw
Another Madrid Derby in the Champions League had to happen sooner or later. And after two UCL finals in three years between Atlético Madrid and Real Madrid, it’s a nice change of pace to see the city rivals clash in the semifinal this time. Here’s the semifinal draw in it’s entirety:...

Polish Sausage Vs. Italian Sausage … WHO YA GOT?!
This week’s Deadcast focuses on a number of topics, including the Mike and the Mad Dog 9/11 transcripts, the Aaron Hernandez suicide, and other instances where the sports-take machinery fully breaks down in the wake of real-world tragedy. But that’s not what you came here for now, is it? No, no ... ...

Madison Bumgarner Is In Hell
In four starts so far this season, Madison Bumgarner is 0-3. The Giants have scored five runs with him on the mound and two of those were provided by MadBum himself in the form of a pair of opening day solo shots. That game, which the bullpen blew in the bottom of the ninth, at least went down as a ...

We Listened To One Of The "Lost" <i>Mike And The Mad Dog </i>9/11 Tapes
On Sept. 12, 2001, Mike and the Mad Dog host Mike Francesa drove to his local gas station to fill up the tank before coming into work. The station was owned by an “Arabic family,” and he said he could tell that the man working was understandably nervous given the previous day’s events, so he “gave h...

Referee Blunders Spur On Real Madrid's Murdalization Of Bayern Munich
Real Madrid scored three goals in about 10 rampaging minutes of extra time against 10-man Bayern Munich in the Champions League quarterfinals to win 4-2, and advance to the semifinals, 6-3 on aggregate. And while Bayern blew it and Real made the plays they needed to win it, it’s hard not to come awa...

Report: Cristiano Ronaldo Paid $375K To Woman Who Claimed He Raped Her
German news magazine Der Spiegel released a report yesterday saying that Real Madrid star Cristiano Ronaldo reached a $375,000 settlement in 2010 with a woman who alleged he raped her in a Las Vegas hotel. Gestifute, the sports agency that represents Ronaldo, later released a statement calling the r...

Sergio Ramos Orchestrates Nearly Perfect Set Piece With Just A Few Nods Of His Head<em></em>
We’ve previously extolled the virtues of Real Madrid’s header-scoring genius, Sergio Ramos, and our appreciation for this set piece savant has only grown after seeing the following video. Watching Ramos’s mind work in realtime—as he interprets the situation, visualizes the best outcome, then effectu...

Cristiano Ronaldo Is Old And Slow And Still The Best
Because of the enduring nature of athletic greatness, it’s often difficult to notice in real time the inevitable fall as the best players slip from amazing to very good to eventually old and bad. The greatest players are great for so long, then begin to peter off so subtlety before the inexorable ef...