Conor McGregor won’t get a fight with Floyd Mayweather unless Mayweather believes the fight will make him very, very rich. Therein lies the impasseIf there is ever a fight between Floyd Mayweather and Conor McGregor, it won’t be nearly as much fun as Floyd Mayweather and Conor McGregor talking about a fight.Who knows if the two biggest names in MMA and boxing will actually step into a ring? They talk and talk about money and talk and talk about a deal but they never sign a contract. This is how Mayweather works, stretching the conversation, turning up the rhetoric and adding zeros to the guaranteed purses for a fight that he might not even want. It took more than five...
Are the Islanders long for Brooklyn? Will the Hurricanes blow into Canada? Could Hartford be the Whalers’ port of call once more? We sort through the scuttlebuttDid you hear the one about the NHL team that might be moving?Sorry, weary hockey fans will reply, you’re going to need to be more specific. Continue reading...
Battling New England for NFL supremacy means dealing with coach Bill Belichick’s impossible-to-imitate advantagesHere we are again with the New England Patriots as reigning Super Bowl champions and the rest of the league trying to catch up. Rob Gronkowski and the rest of his beer-swilling team-mates have completed their duck boat parade of downtown Boston to officially cap the 2016 season, and so that means it’s time for the NFL to officially turn the page to draft season. Seven rounds, 223 draft spots, 31 teams trying desperately to find players who will help them become the new Patriots. The NFL – and all sports leagues, as the cliche goes – is a “copycat league”, and all the Patriots wannabes will...
UFC should be doing everything to get the Brazilian destroyer into the octagon if it wants its latest ‘world title’ to be anything more than a shiny beltNo matter how hard promoters attempt to convince the public otherwise, there is no such thing as a world champion in mixed martial arts.The sport is structured in such a way that it produces promotional titleholders who are often labeled world champions regardless of how provincial they are because, of course, it sells better on a poster and sounds far more prestigious. But that’s created a strange situation in which there are multiples upon multiples of “world” champions across a multitude of weight classes. Related: Ronda Rousey is 'probably done', UFC president Dana...
A moment of impossible fortune sparked a stunning Super Bowl revival, and reminded us why fightback wins are the most cherished of allIn Fever Pitch, his peerless football fan’s memoir, Nick Hornby describes a cathartic moment in his life. He is watching Arsenal – naturally – and they’re playing in the semi-final of the 1987 Littlewoods Cup. It was hardly the Champions League, but it was an intense affair that mattered a lot at that time, not least because Arsenal’s opponents were their hated neighbours Tottenham Hotspur.It was the third match of the tie, the first two legs ending in a draw, and Spurs were winning with the game drawing to a close. At that time Arsenal were going through...