This week’s roundup also features a monumental high school football comeback and vintage Australian motorsport mayhem1) It’s England against the All Blacks at Twickenham this weekend, which is a rivalry of sorts … albeit deeply one-sided as New Zealand have won 16 of the 23 contests there since 1925. The Red Rose’s last victory was in 2012, featuring three tries in eight minutes and a show-stopping performance from Manu Tuilagi; for balance, witness Joe Rokocoko in his pomp in 2006 as the hosts were thrashed 41-20, the highlight being Carl Hayman scoring one of his two international tries, and what a try it was. Perhaps the greatest ever contest between the two teams, at least on English shores, was this...
A lack of broadcast coverage has left female fighters underexposed and underpaid. But the Olympics and talented athletes have changed the status quoWhen Heather Hardy and Shelly Vincent met in the ring in New York City’s Madison Square Garden last month for the WBO featherweight title, there weren’t any measured jabs to start off the fight. They came out swinging. After all, they had no time to lose. Hardy and Vincent had 10 two-minute rounds to prove that women’s boxing deserved to be on center stage, that it deserved to be televised.The rematch between the featherweights was the first fight of a prime-time triple-header on HBO, kicking off the night before the main event between Daniel Jacobs and Sergiy Derevyanchenko....
Expect economic sanctions and expelled diplomats once the American public wise up to what Wayne Rooney’s one-night-only appearance against USA really meansWhat a fascinating entry to international politics for the Football Association, who clearly anticipated the failure of a “red wave” to materialise in the US midterms and had their condemnatory response already prepared. In a move widely seen as the first salvo in a transatlantic cold war that will destroy the imaginary “special relationship”, Wayne Rooney (retired) has been called up for England’s friendly against the USA.The decision to play Rooney can only – only! – be read as a fantastically pointed insult to the Americans, who may not have qualified for the last World Cup but against whom...
Five-weight former world champion has agreed to take on a 20-year-old Japanese kickboxer in what is the latest of the bored American’s money-making stuntsEvaluating the absurd in boxing is like trying to break open a coconut with a feather: intriguing but pointless – yet Floyd Mayweather manages to take us to that place time and again.After coming out of retirement to entertain and hugely enrich Conor McGregor (and himself) with gloves in August 2017, the 41-year-old enigma says he has agreed to swap blows of a variety yet to be determined in Japan on New Year’s Eve with Tenshin Nasukawa, an acclaimed kickboxer who is 5ft 4in, 8st 6lb and 21 years younger than a hall-of-fame boxer who won world...
The Olympic hero overcame a kidney stone and rare blunders at the world championships and still won a medal in every event. Her only competition is herselfWe observers have long since exhausted the well of superlatives when it comes to Simone Biles. The 4ft 8in, 105lb sprite from suburban Houston had emerged as a once-in-a-lifetime talent even before her star-making coronation at the Rio Olympics, where she fulfilled her long-held promise with four gold medals in seven unforgettable days. Turns of phrase, margins of victory, records broken: these languages are entirely ill-suited for translating her unique physical genius, which, truly, must be seen to be believed. That Biles is the best athlete in America today, which she is, feels like...