professional Page 29 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

However you feel about pro wrestling, Bianca Belair’s Royal Rumble win matters on many levels
People who watch wrestling often argue over the legitimacy of the art form with friends who don’t watch. The skeptic will often point to the staged punches and kicks, ignoring the very real table bumps, glass spots, and other physical demands that most human beings aren’t cut out for. The wrestling ...

Deadspin’s surprises, wishlist & predictions for a WWE Royal Rumble rife with possibilities
Wrestlemania season kicks off for real this Sunday, in the strangest Royal Rumble WWE has ever had. At least it will be, with only manufactured crowd noise, no live audience, and the possibility of any kind of theatrical goofiness they can think of possible. The rumors of a prerecorded finish or fin...

Peacock conscripts WWE in ongoing battle for your soul
Last week, it was the announcement that NBC would be shutting down NBCSN by the end of 2021. That meant that the network’s NHL and Premier League coverage, as well as various other sports, would be spread between NBC Universal’s other entities, like USA Network. But the real goal seemed to be to get...

Tom Brady has been to more Super Bowls than every franchise in the NFL except…the Patriots
Ten has always been a number of completion....

It's been a while since we've talked about Buffalo in the context of a Super Bowl run
In one week, the Bills will be in the AFC title game for the first time in 27 years, when, perhaps in a bit of foreshadowing — depending on the outcome of Sunday’s divisional playoff — Buffalo hammered Kansas City, 30-13, to advance to Super Bowl XXVIII....

The sports figures we've lost in 2021
Here’s a look at the athletes and sports figures we’ve lost in 2021....

Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest: Your Guide to the Most Important Sporting Event of July 4
I am pleased to inform you that the Nathan’s Famous Hot Dog eating contest has not been canceled. The freakshow will go on as scheduled on July 4, as usual. It is one of the few live American sporting events currently slated to play on the nation’s birthday....

Japanese Baseball Is Back and You Know a Bunch of These Guys
As Major League Baseball and its players continue to collectively unholster a giant middle finger at all of us, another country has uncorked action on the diamond....

Pitcher Tries A Very Sneaky Hidden-Ball Trick In CPBL All-Star Game
Journeyman pitcher Mitch Lively started and earned a win in the Chinese Professional Baseball League’s all-star game over the weekend, pitching two innings against the Taiwanese national team. More importantly, he started his second inning of work off with a rather impressive hidden-ball trick....

Taiwanese Baseball Player Graciously Accepts Getting Tagged Out At Home With A Warm Hug
Fubon Guardians infielder Lin Yi-Chuan believed that a two-run lead in the bottom of the first was not going to be enough in his team’s Chinese Professional Baseball League game against the Uni-President Lions. So, when his teammate clonked a base hit into left field, he started running hard from se...

Pro Bull Rider Mason Lowe Dies In Competition
Professional bull rider Mason Lowe died last night in Denver after a bull he was riding stepped on his chest. Lowe was competing for PBR at the National Western Stock Show, riding a bull named Hard Times, when he sustained his injuries. He was 25 years old....

Luke Heimlich Signs With Taiwanese Baseball Team, League Kicks Him Out
On Monday, the defending champion Lamigo Monkeys of the Chinese Professional Baseball League announced that they had signed former Oregon State pitcher Luke Heimlich, who pleaded guilty to molesting his 6-year-old niece in 2012. Heimlich was probably a first-round talent, but he was not drafted by a...

Bull Rider Ryan Dirteater Still Loves The Sport That Breaks Him
Professional bull riding is a sport built on survival. In the short term, that means riding a bull for eight seconds and then figuring out a way to dismount it without getting your head caved in. In the long term, that means knowing when to leave it behind, before it can finish destroying you....

How An NFL Contract Negotiation Goes Down
NEW ORLEANS — Back and forth they went, both sides snapping off data points and counterpoints in a careful effort to leverage whatever they had. They were so into the task at hand that neither the thunderclaps from outside nor the 10-minute warning could interrupt their banter. They were teams of la...

SummerSlam Ends With Brock Lesnar Tearing A New Hole In Randy Orton's Skull
A Brock Lesnar main event once again ended strangely and with blood, as the on-again, off-again MMA star delivered a very real elbow to Randy Orton’s head—one that opened up a massive gash....

Here's The Very Last Virgilbag Ever
The Virgilbag is dead and is never coming back. Here are some wrestler run-in stories you sent us anyway....

What The Hell, Japan?
All sorts of people throw out first pitches before baseball games. Old guys, dinosaurs, washed rappers—you name it, they’ve done it. But this week, Nippon Professional Baseball—ever the innovators—went and put every quirky MLB first pitch into the toilet with this bizarre, unsettling play-within-a-p...

Brandon Laird Won Free Beer For A Year With This Dinger
Brandon Laird is a 28-year-old infielder who scuffled his way to a .197 average in 53 games for three teams in three years of Major League ball. He’s currently plying his craft in Japan for the Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters, who are now my favorite NPB team because that name rules (the nickname is, s...

Nick Symmonds Is Auctioning Ad Space On His Body To Stick It To USA Track And Field
Entrepreneur and current American 800-meter record-holder Nick Symmonds is auctioning off some ad space on his right shoulder on eBay. The space is available for the remainder of the 2016 outdoor season, including through the Olympics, should he qualify....

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