The Sports Review

Last week we talked about the Pacquiao vs Mayweather battle. It’s still not clear if it’s going to happen, but if it does, you should have Pacquiao vs Mayweather tickets and enjoy one of the biggest battles of the year. We have shown you that there are a lot of reasons to catch this thing. In fact, get your tickets now and then you’ll be assured of your spot; if the event doesn’t happen, you’ll be able to get a refund without trouble. Mayweather is one of the top boxers in the world right now, the American holding some championships. Possibly the only fighter that’s better than him in Manny Pacquiao, who has been boxing for most of his  years. He’s been able to take down almost all of the best fighters in the world. These two have never met before so it’ll be extra exciting to see what they are able to put together! Hopefully their current dispute will pass quickly and we can really see some fun!

The boxing battle between Manny Pacquiao vs Floyd Mayweather may be off. The Mayweather team has been talking about making sure that Pacquiao gets blood tested in a level like the Olympics. But so far the Filipino has refused to do that. The Pacquiao team says that the reason that the idea was raised is because Mayweather didn’t want to fight in the first place, rather than because they’re actually worried about him taking any performance enhancing drugs. It’s going to be interesting to see whether these two groups actually agree on anything in this department. But more likely, the battle is simply going to be cancelled, because that’s what the promoter seems to be saying today.

Mike Tomlin, what were you thinking? With about 4 minutes left and the Pittsburgh Steelers leading by 2 points last night, the Steelers coach decided to send an onside kick towards the Green Bay Packers. It’s not because the Packers are particularly bad. He just had a strange calculation in his head. He figured that, since Green Bay had been driving against them all day, he would surprise them and onside kick. If they didn’t happen to recover the ball (which they didn’t), they could either stop the Packers or they would have enough time on the clock after GB scored to drive back again. What about defense? What about denying them great field position from the get-go? This is a weird call and it was lucky for Tomlin that Roethlisberger made a great drive in the last two minutes of the game to win the game by a point. This keeps the Steelers’ playoff dreams alive and slightly hurts those of the Packers.

When you have Sony Ericsson tickets, you will be able to possibly see defending champion Andy Murray do his best to keep his crown. Last year, he defeated Fernando Verdasco, Juan Martin del Porto, and Novak Djokovic to win the tournament decisively. It doesn’t appear that Rafael Nadal was in the running and Roger Federer was defeated in the semifinals, probably still recovering from the back problems that had plagued the early part of his season. Del Porto, however had been gaining in the rankings and in his abilities over the last few tournaments and this was one of the big ones getting him on the radar screens of many analysts and fans. This year, you can bet that all these guys are going to try to win it all once again, so be sure to be there in person!

We knew the Tiger Woods story couldn’t leave the headlines. But at least this week’s update seems to get away from the sordid details of his affairs and into the very real consequences for his golf career. For starters, he’s going to take a sabbatical from the PGA tour and simply hide out for a little while. There are rumors that he might be in Sweden or on his yacht. Either way, he’s trying to avoid the public spotlight at the exact moment that it is the hottest. But now the circle of scrutiny has broadened to include some of the people he has worked with over the years. A doctor from Canada is now under suspicion of administering against-the-rules HGH and other performance enhancing drugs to athletes. Tiger Woods was one of his patients, though there is no evidence yet that such drugs were given to him. But the way the headlines read today, it makes him look like he was involved in that too, so let’s be careful what we assume!

Brian Kelly, the coach that led Cincy to a couple of bowl game appearances, including an upcoming Sugar Bowl appearance against Texas Tech, has left the team in the lurch by heading up to Notre Dame to take the recently opened job there. This wasn’t unexpected and it’s a good move for him. Obviously, the announcement had to be made today because the football recruiting is well underway. Meanwhile, the Cincy players, who were told that they would find out first if there were any changes, found out after a senior banquet the other day, long after it had been reported in various different media outlets. Many of the players came out afterwards and said that they were disappointed. Many of them understood, but they wanted to find out sooner. They’re left without a coach during a big bowl game. Some of them left the room before he was finished with his statement. Tough days for Cincy, but possibly very good ones for the Irish.

The big question today in the Tiger Woods scandal is about a man who was seen entering the house of Woods and his wife over the weekend. The man was wearing a suit. You can’t believe how much speculation there is going on right now about who that man might be. He’s an associate or aide of some kind but there are lots of different possibilities. The implication is that he’s probably a marriage counselor, as the couple seems to be going through an intensive round of counseling. Meanwhile, the list of women coming out as having had relationships with Tiger is getting longer by the hour, it seems. There seem to be about 10 currently being talked about. Most of them seem to be waitresses and servers of various kinds who are out in his world when he’s on the tour. This is a complicated story and I don’t intend to update it too frequently right now, because it’s stopped being a sports story and turned into entertainment gossip. So unless there’s something big, I’ll try not to write much more about it.

With the World Cup selection today, there are relatively few unknowns about the competition going into it. The groups seem relatively well matched, although there is one very tough grouping including Brazil, Ivory Coast and Portugal. That’s going to be the group that will be very tough to beat. This is going to be a good year for the competition. They have been waiting for the next World Cup for 4 years already, so it will be a lot of fun to see the rivalries which developed over the last time around as well as during the qualifying matches and the Euro Cup. The US will have to play Slovenia, England and Albania. Slovenia is a surprising team that shocked the Euro Cup last year, so we’ll have to watch out in different ways in 2010.