I used to be a big boxing fan. I paid for closed circuit fights in theaters and on television; at least I did before I married the Indignant Wife. She hates boxing and for that and a lack of compelling fighters as in the “good old days” of Ali, Foreman, Hagler, Hearns, Leaonard, et.al. The rest of the world lost interest in boxing also, but instead of giving up on blood sport, the interest moved to “ultimate fighting,” which is like boxing mixed with martial arts, overlaid with an old fashioned street fight – knocking people down and pummeling them. It’s very popular, but I never got into it.
However, even a non-fan like me couldn’t not notice Ronda Rousey. The 28-year-old Bantamweight had been knocking out women in the speed of a young Mike Tyson. And she has gotten publicity too, maybe as the baddest woman around. She even exchanged trash talk with Floyd Mayweather, appeared on late night television, and had become a big celebrity. She’s even was moving to the big screen, starring in a remake of “Roadhouse” in the bouncer role that had been played by the late Patrick Swayze.
However, like my grandfather told me that when someone told me he was going to kick my ass, “you’ve got to bring ass to get ass.” Ms. Rousey took on also undefeated Holly Holm in UFC 193 last weekend. Any fight involving Ms. Rousey was a big draw and this one was no different. Unlike her previous fights, Ms. Rousey was battered in the first round and then knocked out by a kick to the side of the head in the second round. She was unconscious for a few moments, and reportedly won’t be allowed to fight again for two months.
Despite the 34-year-old Ms. Holm having never been defeated up to now, this was considered a tremendous upset, like Buster Douglas over Tyson or Ali over George Foreman. As I said, I haven’t watched Ms. Rousey fight, so I don’t know if she’s any good or if she can just hit hard. I did see a replay of Ms. Holm knocking Rousey out and she was beaten up pretty good.
Of course, this makes a rematch an inevitable event, the money and interest for a rematch will be gargantuan. Dana White, the Ultimate Fighting Championship president, told reporters that he’ll pursue a rematch between former champion Rousey and Holm. “A rematch is what a lot of people want to see,” White said. At least, unlike many men’s fights I’ve seen, Holm-Rousey I wasn’t a sleepwalk, a boring fight designed to get much more money in a rematch (a comment leveled most recently at the Mayweather – Manny Pacquiao fight which was short on action and huge on hype).
What is always interesting to me is how a fighter who has been unstoppable, knocking out everyone they face handle the shock of being knocked out themselves. Tyson was never the same after Douglas beat him. The same can be said of Foreman after Ali in Zaire, or Tommy Hearns after getting knocked out by Marvelous Marvin Hagler (still be greatest three round, nine minute fight in history – both men threw bombs at each other, no quarter given and none taken). Will Ms. Rousey be able to be as ferocious as she was up to now? It hasn’t bode well for male fighters – how will a woman handle it? I’m not disparaging women at all, but I do have to wonder if that has some impact on the former champion.
Finally, it also has to be asked if, like other previously “invincible” fighters if she took Ms. Holm lightly? Tyson barely trained for Douglas, spending most of his time high and having sex. Again, I’m not making judgment on Ms. Rousey – I don’t know her at all and don’t really follow her at all, but there is a tradition in the fight game to believe your own press clippings, especially when you are regularly beating all comers.
The upset does make for an interesting possible rematch. I still won’t pay for it or probably watch it live, but I will be curious about the outcome.

I have said that the daily fantasy sports game giants DraftKings and FanDuel are a pipe dream of the “20-something, baseball cap backwards wearing, ‘I know more about sports than anybody crowd.’” However, I have never thought that there any way to make them go away other than to get people to understand that their odds of winning are only a couple of orders of magnitude less than winning the lottery. Only staying away from them will they disappear, and the likelihood of that happening is as small as me being Republican nominee for president. However, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman is giving it a try, and the lawsuits have followed.
Schneiderman sent cease-and-desist letters to the organizations that bans daily fantasy games from New York state. The letter said that the two sites should stop dealing with residents of New York State because daily fantasy was a game of chance and therefore illegal. Under that argument, Schneiderman’s position is that the sites are, as defined by New York law, illegal sports books.
Less than three days after Schneiderman sent the letters to DraftKings and FanDuel, the two companies each filed a lawsuit Friday in New York State Supreme Court in Manhattan to try to stop any action by the AG. The two companies asked the court to provide it with the means to conduct their business in the state as the legal battle proceeds. The suit argues that the AG’s action is in fact, illegal interference with their business operations and actions that would cause irreparable harm. In its petition, DraftKings called Schneiderman’s order to cease taking business from customers in New York a “shocking overreach. He has unleashed an irresponsible, irrational and illegal campaign to destroy a legitimate industry,” the filing said.
The DraftKings petition says that Schneiderman’s letter to them strangely mentions the fact that a small percentage of people win most of the money, which proves that it’s a game of skill. The company’s petition references a study by McKinsey & Company that suggested that 1.3 percent of the players who played daily fantasy baseball games up until the All-Star break won 91 percent of the money, which suggests that winning isn’t in fact random.
In its petitions, DraftKings and FanDuel also allege that Schneiderman didn’t just write the cease-and-desist letter to the two companies. Instead, his office contacted payment operators to encourage them to discontinue financial transactions to New York customers of the sites or face repercussions. DraftKings said that as a result, one payment processor, Vantiv, told them it would no longer work with New York customers.
“FanDuel’s business does not constitute ‘bookmaking’ under New York law because the underlying DFS contests are not gambling and because FanDuel does not stand to profit based on the results of those contests (or have any economic interest in one outcome over another, as a casino or bookmaker would.),” the lawsuit read.
I think that the DFS sites will win. Yes, they prey or the gullible, but so does Fox News and so many other things that are bad for you. But they aren’t gambling in the traditional sense; they have taken what millions of people already do among themselves and gave it steroids: instead of just getting the satisfaction of beating your coworker’s team and perhaps winning a few hundred bucks; the sites made each week its own contest, generating much more money and more winnings.
This whole thing might not have happened if the commercials for the sites weren’t omnipresent on all broadcast media. The airways are full of a constant bombardment of commercials for the sites, even more than the old standbys of beer and car commercials. They show people winning millions of dollars, and there’s nothing that people like more than get rich quick schemes.
But there’s no law against making it easy for people to lose all of their money, otherwise casinos would be illegal. Besides, with state lotteries raking in millions of dollars for governments everywhere, even if they were gambling, stopping the DFS sites would be like passing out speeding tickets at the Indianapolis 500. Plus, all it would do is drive the sites offshore.
Nice try, but it won’t work.

I have been fairly busy, but I have wanted to comment on Dallas Cowboys defensive end Greg Hardy. Hardy has been a troubled customer ever since he came to the NFL, but over the past few weeks, he has become Ground Zero for what’s wrong with every NFL player, if not professional athlete.
In 2014, while playing for the Carolina Panthers, he was arrested in May of that year for assaulting his then girlfriend Nicole Hardy. In July, 2014, Hardy was convicted of assaulting Ms. Holder but planned an appeal of the conviction. After playing in the first game of last season, he was deactivated and was placed on the commissioner’s exempt list, but with pay ($13.1 million). A lot of Hardy’s penalty stemmed not from what he did, but for coming at the same time as the Ray Rice abuse case was coming to light.
In February of this year, the charges are dismissed after Ms. Holder fails to appear in court, which occurs far too often either from being paid off, or ashamed of having been battered, or lack of support from law enforcement. On March 4, 2015, Hardy met with Commissioner Roger Goodell to be removed from the exempt list and be reinstated immediately. The same week, Hardy becomes a free agent, but isn’t free long – he signs a one-year, $11.3 million contract with the Cowboys.
In April, Hardy is suspended without pay for the first 10 games of the 2015 season, but the case goes into arbitration in May. The arbitrator reduces Hardy’s suspension from 10 games to 4. Once he got back into the lineup, Hardy got into an argument on the sidelines of a Cowboys game captured for all to see by the television networks. The Cowboys have been hobbled by injuries to quarterback Tony Romo and wide receiver Dez Bryant The Cowboys played poorly, and in one of the games, against their nemesis, the New York Giants, after a 100-yard kickoff return by the Giants to take the lead, Hardy and the still injured Bryart got physical on the sidelines. Hardy, already known as no choirboy, was called by Cowboy owner and GM Jerry Jones called Hardy “a leader of our team.”
Since that incident, pictures of Hardy’s assault have gone public and many people are calling for Hardy to suffer the same fate as Rice – not prohibited from playing but no team is willing to hire him. At first, Hardy tweeted “regret” on his Twitter site, but he made the situation worse a couple of days later, posting a statement that he was innocent until proven guilty and is a victim of discrimination on his Twitter profile for a brief time Wednesday morning. “Innocent until proven guilty-lack of knowledge & information is just ignorance-the unjust/prejudicial treatment of diff categories of people is discrimination,” he wrote in the account’s bio.
Hardy later took that profile down, changed the account name to “Machiavelli Kraken” and changed his profile to this: “Come with me Hail Mary Run quick see What do we have here now wana be my ride or die La la la la la la (SuperBlockParty).” Cowboys Head Coach Jason Garrett said the team “addressed” the Twitter change with Hardy on Wednesday morning.
Being an old and storied franchise, a few old Cowboy greats have made their opinions known. Former Cowboys great and Hall of Famer Roger Staubach has said he’s cheering for the team but not for Hardy and that he has mixed emotions about Hardy’s presence on the team. When asked about the situation, Cowboy Hall of Fame QB and Fox Sports analyst Troy Aikman said that Jerry Jones doesn’t care about people, he cares only about football, which explains his attachment to Hardy.
It has long been said that football owners and front offices will sign anyone, no matter what they’ve done, as long as they can help the team win. Greg Handy is exhibit 1 in proving that case. Personally, I think Hardy should find himself in the same unemployed limbo that Ray Rice is in, although Rice has been sentenced and served that sentence, unlike Hardy. As I’ve written before, rage is the prevalent emotion of the day, and adding the unbridled violence that is football and always the possibility of steroids (“’roid rage”), woman abuse is much more common than what is reported by the media. It’s sad.
And it shows again the attitude of the very rich, that money absolves them of any responsibility for any actions, even criminal ones. And if you are very rich, even your employees share in your “get out of jail” free card.
It’s simple – Greg Hardy shouldn’t have a job in the NFL, and Jerry Jones should get a lesson in humility. It’s not going to happen, of course.

Overall, all of the reviews of the latest James Bond film Spectre have been marginally positive. One thing everyone can agree upon is that it is not as good as its immediate predecessor – Skyfall. The third Daniel Craig film grossed the most money in its first U.S. weekend than any Bond film in history ($88 million) on the way to its biggest take in the series ($1.1 billion). Spectre grossed a respectable $77 million and I think the film has “legs” – it will be playing for a few weeks, but I’ve heard from a few younger people that complained about the film having too many old standard Bond story lines and bits than Skyfall and is the reason they don’t like it.
As a lifelong Bond fan (my mother suffered a sore bum in 1965 or so when the local theater showed Dr. No, From Russia With Love, and Goldfinger in order; afterward, a new Bond film was a family trip to the old Woods Theater in downtown Chicago to see the film until I was old enough to take myself), I loved the old ties to the Connery films (every film except Goldfinger had ties to SPECTRE) and there are so many, I figured it was time to list them. EXTREME SPOILER WARNING – I will be covering the new film in depth. I identified over 20:

• Before even going in, I was very happy to see Spectre return. The organization has not be shown since Connery’s farewell, Diamonds Are Forever apparently due to copyright issues.
• Gun barrel opening – the opening when Bond (or someone else) walked in front of a gun barrel then turned and shot with blood covering up the gun barrel has been a staple dating back to Dr. No. It had be relegated to the end of Skyfall and Quantum of Solace, but here, it returns to the very beginning.
• Day of the Dead costume – at the Mexico City celebration with us following a man in a skull mask and skeleton suit (eventually revealed as Bond). This is very reminiscent of the “Baron Samedi” character in Live and Let Die, the first Roger Moore. Samedi was played by the very flamboyant Geoffrey Holder.
• Villain in shadow – everyone knows that the head of Spectre is played by two time Academy Award winner Christoph Waltz, but for his first several scenes, we only see him in shadow. He is later revealed to be Ernst Stavro Blofeld, who was only seen in silhouette in From Russia With Love and Thunderball. He was not shown in full until You Only Live Twice.
• “Franz Oberhauser” – Waltz is first introduced in this name, who is a character in Ian Fleming’s short story “Octopussy.”
• Several rings to try to rule them all – reworked to be modern, still we have a return of the octopus marked rings which showed one’s membership in Spectre.
• Kitty, kitty – we can’t have Blofeld without a white cat, and one appears in one scene.
• The signature lines – Craig had only said “Bond, James Bond” once in his films, and it appears here, along with the first utterance of “shaken, not stirred.”
• Aston Martins – the new Bond car is a prototype made by Aston Martin, only 10 have been made as of now, and the old DB5 blown up in Skyfall reappears.
• Ejector seat – the new Aston Martin has an ejector seat like the one in Goldfinger. Except instead of ejecting a villain, this time, it saves Bond.
• Boat Chase – the nearly demolished MI6 headquarters has one thing left, the boat used by Pierce Brosnan in The World Is Not Enough. It plays an important role.
• Train fights – Spectre features a great fight on a train, reminiscent of the fight in From Russia with Love and, to a much lesser extent, The Spy Who Loves Me.
• Sardonic splendor – on the train, Craig’s Bond wears a tuxedo with a white jacket with a red carnation and pleated shirt like Connery in Goldfinger
• Sardonic splendor, part 2 – Craig appears in a black shirt and pants showing his gun and holster like Moore in Live and Let Die.
• Chess – when Bond is interrogating the villain from Quantum of Solace, he does so over a chess board, which figured prominently in From Russia with Love.
• Elaborate headquarters – Blofeld’s headquarters is in a hollowed out crater, much as the headquarters was in You Only Live Twice, which was inside a volcano.
• What’s in a name? On the run, M, Tanner and Q go to a safe house labeled “Hildebrand Prints,” which is close to the collection of Fleming short stories called the “Hildebrand Rarity.”
• Rolls Royces – when picked up in the middle of the desert in Spectre, the lackey is driving a Rolls Royce Phantom, which happens to be the same car driven by Odd Job in Goldfinger (that car was melted down to disguise gold smuggling).
• Clinic in the mountains – the clinic that features prominently in Spectre is reminiscent of Blofeld’s outpost in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.
• Snow chase – the car/airplane chase leaving the mountain clinic reminded me of the snow chase in Timothy Dalton’s The Living Daylights.
• Finally, in the Connery years, Spectre replaced SMERSH, the Russian anti-spy organization that was chief antagonist in the Fleming books to keep them from becoming too dated. But it became Bond’s chief nemesis in the films. So far, even though events from previous films did have some bearing on the current film in the Craig entries, this film explicitly said that all of the events of the previous movies were plots by the criminal organization and Blofeld.

That’s all I have – I’m interested to see if there are any others that you have noticed.
Now, a couple of complaints about the film,

MAJOR SPOILER WARNING – Spectre is being discussed, so don’t read this until you have seen it (or if you have interest in what I write but no interest in seeing the film, which is a little strange, but hey…) As I have said, I like Spectre a great deal. The action was good; the story was over the top, but what would you expect; and as listed above, has numerous touchstones from my favorite Bond films. Some people have complained that it is too much like the old Bonds – megalomaniacs, world domination plots, big sets that blow up, and while this is certainly true, it wasn’t played for laughs unlike the Moore years.
More problematic is that Bond is more of a cipher in this film, just an unthinking violence machine, and that has some fairness. However, we have seen more emotion from Craig’s Bond than any other. We have seen his love (Vesper) killed; M was killed and we saw Bond cry. The only time we saw tears from Bond before this was when his wife Tracy died in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. He can’t become emotional in every film.
My two drawbacks are these: first, I don’t believe that Bond would fall for Dr. Madeleina Swann. Yes, every Bond would have gone out of his way to save her – but, while she showed herself to be able to handle herself, there was no spark between her and Craig. Lea Seydoux who played Dr. Swann, I think tried, but she and Craig didn’t click with me.
More problematic was the back story of Blofeld. Blofeld was always just a megalomaniac in the Connery films, but here he was like a brother to Bond after his parents died, and the relationship between Bond and his father drove Blofeld to kill his father and become an evil mastermind. Do we really need a neat origin story for Blofeld and add needless junk hung on Craig’s Bond? It reminded me of the Michael Keaton Batman movie where a young “pre-Joker” was the one who killed Bruce Wayne’s parents. At the end of that movie with the Joker’s death in a fall, hasn’t Batman avenged his parents? What more motivation is needed to be Batman after that?
These are big points and in my mind why the new film is not as good as Skyfall was, but then, Skyfall was one of the best Bond films ever. It’s hard to maintain that level of quality. And it was a damn good movie!

For some reason, it is more obvious in hockey than in other sports when players get tired of a coach and lay down to get him fired. We’ve seen it many times (and it’s been suggested even more often). Seldom do you see a team band together around a coach and staff other than go on a winning streak to try and save a coach’s job, but we did in Michigan this week
The Ontario Hockey League’s Flint Firebirds had just won a game, but afterwards Head Coach John Gruden and Assistant Coach Dave Karpa were fired. The Firebirds are tied for last place in the league’s West division with a record of 7-9-1. Was this the reason why they were fired? Not really – Flint just moved from Plymouth, Michigan. They weren’t expected to do much in the standings, so there weren’t huge expectations.
So, if it wasn’t on the ice issues, was it off the ice behavior? A DUI or spouse abuse perhaps? Nope, none of that. The team’s owner Rolf Nilsen has done what many sports and business owners have done since time immemorial: hired his son, 17 year old Nakon Nilsen. The younger Nilsen has played only 5 of the team’s 17 games to date, and he has no goals or assists in that time for a -3 plus minus and 2 penalty minutes. The elder Nilsen wants his son to play more; the coach and staff disagreed and they were all fired.
Usually, that would be the end of it – coaches out, a new one coming in and the players, especially young kids in juniors don’t want to have a reputation of being troublemakers, so, most of the time, the owner, who is writing the paychecks, gets his way (usually a “him”). Not this time, the players all went into the owner’s office, quit and turned in their sweaters. Even Hakon Nilsen turned in his sweater.
Rolf Nilsen heard the stand taken by the team and restored the two men to their positions. In a statement, Nilsen called his actions an “irresponsible mistake.”
Having been in the working world for over 3 decades, there is very little that makes one disheartened and discouraged then nepotism. Seeing someone get an opportunity solely through luck of genetics, particularly when someone would be doing a better job is the worst. But the team stepped up and supported their coach. Even the son stood with his teammates. Good for them!

One of the funniest National Lampoon magazine covers had a female Soviet bloc woman athlete in her running clothes with a noticeable bulge in the crotch. Back in those days, we used to joke about ice skating scores coming in “9.5 from the German judge; 9.8 from the U.S. judge – Oh: 4.3 from the Russian judge.”
One would think that the ideological battle between communism and capitalism would be over after the Berlin Wall fell, but nationalism knows no statute of limitations. A report commissioned by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) run by the group’s ex-president Dick Pound, found that there is “deeply rooted culture of cheating at all levels” within Russian athletics. The report says over 1,400 samples had been “intentionally and maliciously” destroyed by a Moscow laboratory even after a WADA request to preserve them. Asked if it amounted to state-sponsored doping, Pound told a news conference: “In the sense of consenting to it, there’s no other conclusion.”
The report even suggests that the London 2012 Olympics, where Russia won 24 gold medals were “in a sense, sabotaged by the admission of athletes who should have not been competing.” The report details an “inexplicable laissez-fair policy” adopted by the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF), the sport’s governing body; and recommends five athletes and five coaches, all from Russia, be given lifetime bans.
If there is one standard that is paramount to sports, it’s integrity. It’s why issues surrounding NBA referees have been pooh poohed. Despite questionable and apparently favorable calls made by Big Ten football officials disguised in the form of base incompetence, Commissioner Jim Delany continues to stay in his bunker counting his millions ignoring comments by the media and fans and severely fining coaches who say anything bad about the officiating. But without integrity, you have professional wrestling.
I think that most people agree that it is better, safer and more satisfying to have nations’ athletes meet on sports fields/rinks/gymnasiums that have them battle in wars. But only if the playing field is level does it have any significance.