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Saturday, February 4, 2012

2/4/2012- Review of Raw and SmackDown, preview of UFC 143, Super Bowl XLVI thoughts, more

Hello everyone! Hope all of you had a great week thus far. As you all know, this weekend is going to be a huge weekend for the entire sports industry as the Super Bowl will be this Sunday. I will give my thoughts on this Super Bowl as well as my usual stuff. Here we go...

NFL
As many of you are aware, the Super Bowl matchup between the New York Giants and New England Patriots is a really big deal in the Northeast, but are you all aware that history is repeating itself? If not, let me give you guys a refresher....

Back in 1986, the New York Mets faced the Boston Red Sox for the World Series title on the line. Around that time, the media in NYC was favoring the Mets, while the Yankees were under a lot of scrutiny around the 1980s. Fans considered it the worst World Series for Yankees fans and even Newsday referred to this as "Steinbrenner's nightmare". The Mets eventually won the World Series and the "Curse of the Bambino" would still live until 2004.

Now what does baseball have to do with football? Fast forward to Super Bowl XLII when the NY Giants and New England Patriots faced off for the 1st time in history to conclude the 2007 season.

3 years prior to the Super Bowl, the Red Sox ended the Curse of the Bambino and swept the St. Louis Cardinals to win the 2004 World Series. Yankees fans were looking for revenge that weekend and were hoping for the Giants to beat the Patriots. Around the time of the 2007 NFL Season, the Patriots had an undefeated streak of 18-0, but it came with a lot of controversy as the "Spygate" incident occurred in the beginning of the Patriots season when the NY Jets accused the Patriots of videotaping defense coaching signals of the Jets. The Patriots were later found guilty and had to forfeit their 1st round draft pick in the 2008 NFL Draft. Meanwhile for the Giants, the team was under a lot of criticism, especially Eli Manning's ability to become a good quarterback in the NFL. During SB 42, the Patriots were the favorites to win the game and have the "perfect season". However, the Giants rallied towards a 4th quarter comeback and won the game. The Giants win was not only a much needed win for the team, but also the entire New York Metropolitan Area since it was 6 years after 9/11/01 occurred and the entire area had something to be happy about after a very long time.

Now in this current era, the Giants and Patriots face each other once again only this time the Giants team has changed and so has the fan base. The Patriots on the other hand, don't have a perfect season on the line, and no controversy surrounding it. What's similar from the 1986 World Series to the 2012 Super Bowl is the scrutiny, but this time it's against the New York Jets. After 2 back-to-back AFC Championship Game appearances, the Jets were favored to headline the Super Bowl (or the alternative scenario, enter the postseason for the 3rd time under Rex Ryan as head coach). However, the Jets failed to make the postseason and ended their season 8-8. The NY media is referring to this Super Bowl as the "worst Super Bowl for Jets fans" and also calling this "Rex Ryan's nightmare" (similar to Steinbrenner's nightmare).

To conclude, history is indeed repeating itself, but will the Giants defeated the Patriots one more time? Tune in tomorrow at 6:30 ET on NBC to find out.

UFC
Tonight is UFC 143 and the main event will feature Nick Diaz and Carlos Condit for the Interim Welterweight Championship (due to Georges St. Pierre unable to defend the title while injured)

WWE
This past Monday on Raw was the fallout of the Royal Rumble PPV. The main plot of the episode was whether John Laurinaitis was going to be fired by WWE COO Triple H. Overall, I think it was a good episode seeing quality wrestling after a long time, and for the 1st time in WWE the match between CM Punk and Daniel Bryan (which led ROH fans to mark out). The surprising thing was seeing the Undertaker return and confront Triple H.  Later in the week on SmackDown, the main event was a No DQ match between Randy Orton and Wade Barrett in which the former won the contest. Next week, Orton will face Daniel Bryan in a non-title match.

That's all I have to say for now! Enjoy the Super Bowl!!

- NYCKNP

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