The SBP Archives - Your less than frequent dose of SBP!

If anyone had doubts about former WWE star Brock Lesnar's ability to be a fighter in the Ultimate Fighting Championship, he put them to rest last night. Sure, he tapped out to an ankle lock submission in 90 seconds in the first round. But the above picture reflects what the quick fight mostly reflected: Lesnar dominating with brute force throwing flurries of punches to Frank Mir's head. At one point, I actually thought Lesnar had won when the referee stopped the fight because of a punch to the back of the head (illegal in UFC, but I thought the ref was ruling Mir wasn't defending himself properly as he took about 6 punches in the head in a row and was about to award the fight to Lesnar). Lesnar's inexperience showed when he submitted: he was impatient and was just looking to continue the thrashing instead of timing it better and Mir capitalized. I think Lesnar won the crowd over and he'll be better prepared for his next fight: Neil told me likely in June.

To hockey, mostly Sens:

No Heatley, no Alfie, no Philips = no win. The Senators simply aren't a depth team and need their big guns to get the victory. The reason is that guys like Antoine Vermette and Chris Kelly have been huge disappointments this season...Joe Corvo became linemates with Wade Redden and the only thing he has duplicated well is his turnovers...You gotta laugh when McCabe says he won't waive his no trade clause from the Leafs. Bottom line is no other team in the NHL will touch that horrendous, expensive contract with a 10 foot pole even if he wanted to be moved...Forget Hossa or Forberg, Ottawa needs defense. Brian Campbell and Danny Boyle out of Buffalo and Tampa are apparently available. DO IT...The Montreal crowd was lively yesterday, the only difference though with a middling game against the pathetic New York Islanders is that 90% of the crowd do what the jumbotron tells them to do: I'd peg Ottawa at about 40%...The Penguins play the Sens in the opening game next season in Sweden and I think it's a terrific idea. It'd make more sense for Detroit to go as they have a pot full of Swedish meatballs but Alfie playing back home makes sense (and playing a game in a country where they actually care about hockey also makes sense)...Playing 84 games instead of 82 does NOT make sense. It should be dropped to about 70...The NHLPA head had this crazy idea: NHL is a gate driven league where the majority of revenues come from ticket sales. The six Canadian teams comprise of about 1/3 of all revenues. So if the NHL considers moving a team, the NHLPA head thinks they should think of, drum roll please, COMING TO CANADA? Crazy thought, isn't it?