mma Page 20 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

ONE Championship wants United States expansion to start off with a bang
Chatri Sityodtong wants you to know there’s an alternative in the combat sports world. With the American fighting scene dominated by mixed martial arts, boxing, and professional wrestling, a new show in town needs to disrupt the market in order to plant its flag in the ground. Sityodtong, the founde...

Finding the NBA playoff X factors
The NBA playoffs are where superstars can add to — or subtract from — their legacies. They may come up clutch, or absolutely choke under the spotlight. The same goes for coaches. But there are always subplots around certain youngsters, role players, and unknowns who can make a name for themselves. T...

These NFL players have the best nicknames
Sweetness. The Refrigerator. Broadway Joe. Over the years, the NFL has seen some great players step onto the field, and some of them have garnered nicknames that fit them to a tee. A good or great nickname should explain something about the person it’s attached to. Something about their personality,...

Like 'thug' and 'woke' — 'classless' is the new way to call Black people the N-word
All season long, Angel Reese and Caitlin Clark dominated women’s college basketball. It was a prayer answered when the basketball gods gave us Iowa and LSU in the national championship game during a record-breaking Final Four. But instead of the focus being on LSU’s hot shooting or Iowa’s second-hal...

The Women’s NCAA Tournament has reached a new golden era
It’s only been a few short weeks since Outkick’s David Hookstead blamed some non-existent woke-ism manifesto for the placement of women’s college basketball dominating ESPN.com’s front page. A few weeks before that, Jason Whitlock was frothing at the mouth over women’s basketball highlights leading ...

The Sports Nihilist takes on the Sweet 16
Welcome to Deadspin’s The Sports Nihilist, where all is for naught and we are but accidental jolts of electrified meat stuck to the surface of a rock in an indifferent universe. Fuck you....

It's always sunny in the Motor City?
The early returns of NFL free agency are here, and the clear winner is the Detroit Lions — at least according to the media’s reaction. Everybody’s favorite dysfunctional franchise finished 2022 strong after an abominable start and barely missed the playoffs. Some would say they were the best team t...

The Great Debates tournament: Sweet 16
It’s Sweet 16 time. The primaries are over and it is time for the general election. In real-life debates, this is about the time when candidates would be making disingenuous retorts about each other’s bad-faith arguments....

Cam Newton needs to accept that there isn’t a place for him in the NFL anymore
Cam Newton has been a household name for over a decade. It comes with the territory when you’ve had the type of career he’s had. National championship, check. Alleged pay-for-play scandal, check. Heisman Trophy, check. No. 1 pick, check. Record-setting quarterback, check. Influential player on the c...

Penn State wrestler insults Muslims; NCAA tweets it out
Penn State wrestler Aaron Brooks could have been another heartwarming story. He’d just won his third consecutive national title in the 184-pound division, he’s a devoted Christian and is brolic enough to take down a small polar bear, or at least a panda. ...

The craziest storylines of the NBA season (so far)
The NBA is never drama-free, and there’s a reason the NBA playoffs are one of the few reasons to remain on the toxic hell site that is Twitter these days. But even for the NBA, this season has been a spectacle worth of Vanderpump Rules. As we inch ever closer to the post-season, here’s a look back a...

No upsets in Women’s College Basketball, huh?
For those still clinging by their fingertips to the argument that their lack of interest in Women’s College Basketball is due to a lack of competitive balance, just let go and fall into the sea of bad takes. You folks can join the crowds who believe that men’s college basketball is more fundamental...

South Carolina women’s basketball team is the best in the NCAA Tournament — regardless of gender
Whether you call it irony or coincidence, the best team playing during college basketball’s biggest moment during a month that’s dedicated to the history of women makes too much sense. Yes, we all think of the men’s game when we think of March Madness. And yes, the men’s game brings in all the money...

Fred VanVleet’s expletive-laden remarks cost him $30,000 and put him in a special group
Fred VanVleet is now immortal. Hitting nearly every 3-pointer you attempt for two playoff rounds and winning a championship is great. However, only Toronto Raptors’ fans and non-causal NBA watchers remember that. The narrative in the 2019 NBA Finals was Kevin Durant’s injury and Kawhi Leonard playin...

Bryan Danielson is on the run of his life
This is what I came for, just eight years later. ...

Tom Brady's not the only star who couldn't quit the spotlight
For the second straight Feb. 1, Tom Brady retired from the National Football League. His first retirement lasted all of 40 days, coming back to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers minutes after the NCAA Tournament field was chosen on Selection Sunday. He’s now retired “for good” and the entire sports world kno...

IDIOT OF THE MONTH: New year, same jabronis
Welcome, once again, to Deadspin’s IDIOT OF THE MONTH, where we mock the monthly bottom-of-the-barrel in the sports world. Special shoutout to the very dead Bobby Hull!...

The New York Knicks are stuck in a Thibs time loop
The phrase “Knicks for clicks” is relatively unknown outside of New York Knickerbocker fan circles. It’s a pejorative term to describe mainstream media’s calculated dissemination of anti-Knicks content for the sake of traffic and views. When the Knicks are mentioned in any segment on ESPN or FS1, it...

The NFC Championship Game’s weakest links
The Philadelphia Eagles and San Francisco 49ers have been the NFC’s two-headed monsters all season. For the majority of this season, they’ve been the kaijus of the conference. However, the bigger they are, the harder the fall — and one of these behemoths has to end the weekend with a gaping hole in ...

Every team in the NFL playoffs, ranked
Aaron Rodgers couldn’t beat the Detroit Lions. Who’d have thought I’d be uttering that statement at the beginning of the season? And with that loss, the NFL playoffs are set. Throughout the regular season, we laughed, cried, held our heads in shock, and Tom Brady endured his first losing season as a...