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Monday, August 8, 2011

8/8/2011- Yankees Stuck in Wild Card Hell?, Mets out of Wild Card contendership, UFC 133 results, more

Welcome everyone to the Monday edition of the NYCKNP Blog. A lot has happened this weekend in sports especially Yankees and Mets baseball so let's get to it. Also, I have reactions regarding American Football coming to India that I will also share.

MLB

After the New York Yankees swept the Chicago White Sox at the South Side, the Bombers went to Fenway to face their rival the Boston Red Sox. The only highlight of the weekend was Friday as they have defeated the Red Sox after a long time since April and had a brief taste to be in 1st place. However, that was short lived as they lost really bad to Red Sox and their spot in 1st place. Which bring to my question, will the Yankees be stuck in wild card hell for the remainder of the season?

The Mets didn't have a good weekend either as they not only lost to the Braves 2 out of 3, but have lost their spot in wild card contendership. Mets have lost on Friday, but did gain a victory on Saturday. However, they fell short by 1 run yesterday.

After a depressing weekend by both teams, the two has to step it up this week as the Mets will face the San Diego Padres in a 4 game series, while the Yankees will head home to host the Los Angeles Angels starting Tuesday.

UFC

UFC 133 has occurred this past Saturday and is now in the history books. Overall, there were 11 fights on the card. 4 were streamed on Facebook, 2 were televised on Spike, while the remainder aired on PPV. Here are the results and my reactions to the Spike portion of the event.

Facebook
  • Rafael Natal def. Paul Bradley via unanimous decision
  • Mike Brown def. Nam Phan via unanimous decision
  • Johny Hendricks def. Mike Pierce via split decision*
  • Ivan Menjivar def. Nick Pace via unanimous decision*
Spike
  • Chad Mendes def. Rani Yahya via unanimous decision. It was an okay bout to start the Spike preliminaries. Mendes definitely proved to be the better man in this fight.
  • Alexander Gustafsson def. Matt Hamill via TKO in Round 2. Hamill was definitely the crowd favorite in this fight while Gustafsson was jeered by the crowd in Philly. The crowd was so polarized in this fight that the fans chanted USA. Going back to the fight, both of those guys showed a lot of effort but Gustafsson found a way to clinch a victory.
PPV
  • Rory MacDonald def. Mike Pyle via TKO in Round 1
  • Constantinos Philippou def. Jorge Rivera via split decision
  • Brian Ebersole def. Dennis Hallman via TKO in Round 1
  • Vitor Belfort def. Yoshihiro Akiyama via KO in Round 1
  • Rashad Evans def. Tito Ortiz via TKO in Round 2
*- denotes that the fight also aired in the PPV broadcast

WWE

SmackDown was a little out of the ordinary this week as Christian finally pinned cleanly Randy Orton in a tag team match in the main event. Also a good match was between Daniel Bryan and Tyson Kidd. It appears that WWE is building up Bryan to be a credible threat to the main event guys. Also, Natalya turned heel once again and implied a reformation of her alliance with Beth Phoenix. The only problem on SmackDown is commentary. I'm sorry to say this but commentary is a complete mess on SmackDown as none of them are doing their job right. I wish there was Spanish audio for SmackDown in my area, but there isn't.

Also, this week is the last week before SummerSlam. WWE has advertised a contract signing between John Cena and CM Punk for the WWE Undisputed Championship on Raw. More info will come on the Friday edition of the blog.

Other

As you probably heard, American Football is expanding to India with a league called Elite Football League of India. I asked about if American Football will make an impact in India to people via poll on Facebook and WrestleZone message boards. On the Facebook poll, 6 voted Yes while 2 voted No. However, it was a different story on WrestleZone message boards:
25% Yes
75% No

Also, I asked WWE Hall of Famer Jim Ross on his blog called J.R.'s Family Bar B.Q. in the Q&A section. Ross has responded and gave his answer on his recent blog post. Here is what Ross has to say:

"Will American Football come to India in a new league? I've heard nothing of this seemingly wacky venture. I personally would not invest a nickel in American football to be played in India. I do know that India is a priority on the WWE international, growth map."


That is all for this Monday. Coming up on Friday is the WWE Raw review, Yankees, Mets, and the NFL Preseason hype for Giants and Jets.

Have a nice day,
NYCKNP

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