UFC 200 Brock Lesnar vs Mark Hunt Full show reaction Getty Images
The NFL, as Americas most popular sports league, doesnt need to piggyback off other sports to garner attention. But the biggest mixed martial arts event of the year is happening tonight during the slowest time on the NFL calendar, and so the NFL has decided to get in on the action.
Brock Lesnar, who will fight tonight at UFC 200, is best known as a professional wrestler and former UFC heavyweight champion, and before that he was an NCAA wrestling champion. But Lesnar also had a brief stint in the NFL, and highlights from that brief stint can now be seen on the NFLs YouTube channel.
Lesnar spent training camp and the preseason with the Vikings in 2004, trying to make the roster as a defensive lineman. He never really had much of a shot of making the team, given his lack of football experience beyond high school. But at 6-foot-2 and 285 pounds, he looked the part of a defensive lineman, and those who saw him in Vikings camp said he had the athletic talent to do it.
All the Vikings coaches and players talk about how impressed they have been with his attitude, FOX broadcaster Curt Menefee said during the game.
Longtime Patriots guard Stephen Neal, who took on Lesnar in the 1999 NCAA heavyweight wrestling championship, has said he believes Lesnar could have made it in the NFL if he had jumped straight into football after his college wrestling career, as Neal did. (Lesnar, in turn, has said Neal could have been a good UFC fighter.) Well never know what kind of NFL player Lesnar might have been, but on a day when millions of people will watch Lesnar fight in the Octagon, the NFL is reminding fans that Lesnar once played on an NFL field.
Roger Federer vs Marin Cilic Highlights 2016/07/06 QF | HD720p50 by ACE
WIMBLEDON, EnglandThe headline in the Times of London said exactly what many Brits are thinking: Finally its not Federer or Djokovic. Yes, at last Andy Murray, the homeboy, will play for the championship of a tennis Grand Slam and not be facing two of the men who the last few years have been the best in the sport, Roger Federer or Novak Djokovic.
In Sundays Wimbledon mens final, Murray the Scot the English papers too often refer to him just as a Brit plays Milos Raonic, 25, who not only is the first Canadian male to get this far but the first ever to make it to the final round in any of the four major tournaments.
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For the Murray, 29, it is his 11th Grand Slam final, the previous 10 against either Djokovic or Federer, and the third at Wimbledon where he lost to Federer in 2012 and beat Djokovic in 2013. Murray has been in the finals of all three Slams this year, losing to Djokovic in the Australian and the French. Hes comfortable.
Three weekends ago, Murray won Queens for a fifth time, one of the grass court preludes to Wimbledon, defeating Raonic in the final. But Murray said, Im aware Ill have to play a very good match if I want to win Wimbledon. I was down a set and a break at Queens. Hopefully Ill come out firing.
Raonic certainly will. The serve is his weapon. At 6-5, hes known as one of the fastest servers in the game, if not the fastest, recording speeds of more than 140 mph.
Ivan Lendl, the Czech who never won Wimbledon, is one of Murrays coaches, and John McEnroe, the American who won it three times, is one of Raonics. It gives actually a bit of extra confidence, said Murray, reuniting with Lendl, because I know last time we worked together, it was very successful. I trust in what he says.
What McEnroe did for Raonic was get him to be more emotional, which certainly McEnroe was when he played.
I think hes definitely put an emphasis on it, Raonic said. I try to calm myself down. He says. Theres no too calm for you. You tend to be too calm, try to get energy out of you, try to get it out of you on court and leave it all out there, try to get the most out of yourself.
That has worked so far. But will it for sixth-seeded Ranic against second-seeded Murray? Murray has all the shots, moves very and will have virtually all the 14,000 fans at Centre Court cheering for him.
Mexican drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman has achieved what police vowed would not happen - escaped from a maximum security prison for a second time.
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A manhunt began late on Saturday night after the disappearance of Guzman - head of the powerful Sinaloa cartel.
Authorities found a tunnel in Guzman"s cell. The 1.5km escape route led to a building under construction outside the prison.
Mexico"s National Security Commissioner Monte Alejandro Rubido said 18 people were being taken to Mexico City for questioning over Guzman"s escape.
The narcotics kingpin was last seen in the showers of the Altiplano prison, Mr Rubido said. Flights have been suspended at the nearby Toluca airport.
Guzman was arrested in February 2014 and faces multiple drugs trafficking indictments both in Mexico and the US.
His Sinaloa cartel, named after the area of Mexico in which it was founded, is an international drugs trafficking organisation believed to control most of the major crossing points for drugs at the US/Mexico border.
He was first arrested in 1993 and sentenced to more than 20 years in prison on drug trafficking charges. He escaped in 2001 by bribing guards to help smuggle him to freedom.
LAS VEGAS -- Miesha Tate has never appreciated questions about Ronda Rousey before. But this one was different.
Asked in an interview earlier this week with CBS Sports whether Rousey"s absence, and the fact women"s mixed martial arts is currently driven by narratives that have nothing to do with her, is good for the sport, Tate sounded eager and excited to give an answer.
This was her kind of Ronda Rousey question.
"We always got criticized for not having enough depth," she said. "And I think having the belt change a couple times is the best thing that could have happened. Instead of singling out one female that has to carry the entire sport, we have to disperse and make more stars, which helps legitimize the sport of women"s MMA."
And that was before happenstance put Tate on a course to be the top fight Saturday at UFC 200. She has an opportunity push women"s MMA markedly forward, all despite holding a belt without ever having defeated Rousey herself.
First, Holly Holm stunned the sport at UFC 193 with a win over Rousey. Then, in Holm"s first title defense at UFC 196, it was Tate who made sure the women"s bantamweight title again changed hands.
Now, it"s Jon Jones and his failed drug test who can be thanked for giving the women a shot at further establishing themselves in a sport that was male-dominated for far too long. Tate"s title defense against Amanda Nunes has been promoted to the top of UFC 200 by president Dana White. It is a seminal moment for women, a touchstone that shows how far they have come in being treated as equals in one of the world"s most violent sports.
"This really proves there is depth and that"s exactly why I"ve been saying Amanda is dangerous," Tate said. "Just as they underestimated me with Holly, and Holly with Ronda, the mistake I don"t want to make is follow suit in that."
Still, the fact that UFC 200"s top fight features two women -- neither named Ronda Rousey -- speaks to a sea change. Unseen depth is one thing. But now that depth is front and center being called upon to protect what -- for White and the UFC -- was turning into an epic disaster.
Let"s not pretend otherwise: Women"s sports have always played a distant second fiddle to their men"s counterparts. The WNBA does not remotely approach the NBA in terms of relevance. Women"s golf is, at best, an afterthought. Same for women"s college hoops. Even women"s tennis, with Serena Williams still active as one of the sport"s all-time players, has not broken through the way it should. Williams herself correctly pointed out at Wimbledon this year that she and other women are too often relegated to less glamorous courts while the top men routinely play on Centre Court.
The only time, outside UFC 200 this weekend, that women"s sports otherwise get top billing is the Olympics. And that"s mostly amateur sports, every two years, and due as much to nationalism as sporting fervor.
On the surface, UFC does not seem like the place for the women to make a major breakthrough. It is a b****y and violent combat sport, and as such, it leans heavily on notions of strength, masculinity and the celebration of violence. Women can compete in these spheres, of course, but fans embracing them doing so is a whole other thing. See: boxing.
But thanks largely to Rousey, the women"s end of MMA has become mainstream. She came onto the scene as glamorous, talented, unrelenting, charismatic, biting and above all else a brutal and gifted fighter -- all things that would power a man to stardom. UFC, with a fan base that recognized greatness and tactical skill, bought in. And a crossover star was born.
Then, after Holm proved Rousey was beatable, Tate helped turn the women"s end of the sport into a sensation even with Rousey out of the picture. I was at UFC 196, and her battle with and takedown of Holm was thrilling and wonderful to watch. Not for a woman"s sport, not with some sexist asterisk -- just as a spectacle of two competitors battling for greatness while fans like me reveled in the thrill of the battle.
"You feel more -- I guess that best way I can describe it is "primal,"" Tate said of being in the Octagon. "You think of the primal days when you had to fight for what was yours. There"s no law, no guardian, nothing protecting me and what I have except for my own skill and my own defense and my own will and determination. It"s so raw and pure that it"s just me and her. All the pressure falls on my shoulders to defend what"s mine."
Yes, that is at stake: Tate trying to prove she is no one-hit wonder, no one-time champ, no chump. At Friday"s weigh in, she and Nunes locked arms, tussled, ratcheted up the disrespect and anger. They are both fighting not just against each other but for their places in the sport.
But together, they are fighting for more. Now atop the UFC 200 card, a great fight -- another thrilling match, regardless of who actually wins -- will further cement women"s MMA as a crucial and captivating part of one of the country"s fastest growing sports.
CNN Student News - 06/03/16 The suspected Dallas sniper who killed five police officers has been identified as Micah Xavier Johnson, a 25-year-old from Mesquite, Texas. The Dallas shootings, like the one carried out last year by Dylann Roof on a black church in Charleston, South Carolina, that left nine people dead, were politically motivated.
Roof said he wanted to start a "race war," officials said, and he posted racist screeds on a white supremacist site.
Johnson "wanted to kill officers, and he expressed killing white people, he expressed killing white officers, he expressed anger for Black Lives Matter," Dallas police Chief David Brown said.
On his Facebook page, Johnson poses with a clenched fist as if delivering a Black Power salute.
Terrorism is generally understood to be acts of violence conducted against civilians for political purposes. Killing white police officers who are guarding a peaceful demonstration certainly qualifies as terrorism, in the same way that Roof"s attack on black churchgoers does.
The Dallas attack is the first instance of deadly terrorism seemingly motivated by extreme left-wing ideology in the post-9/11 era. Brown called it a "a well-planned, well-thought out, evil tragedy."There have been anti-police attacks in which the perpetrators linked their actions to jihadist ideology. In October 2014, Zale Thompson, 32, who, police said became radicalized by reading ISIS-related material, attacked officers in Queens, New York, with a hatchet, critically injuring one of them. He was shot to death by police. In January, Edward Archer, a 30-year-old, shot and wounded a police officer in Philadelphia, and authorities said he told them he did it for ISIS. There have also been deadly anti-police terrorist attacks by far-right militants. On June 8, 2014, Jerad Miller and Amanda Miller killed two police officers in an ambush at a pizza restaurant in Las Vegas before committing suicide. The couple left a note referencing revolution and Jerad Miller had a history of anti-government posts online and had traveled to Cliven Bundy"s ranch in Nevada during the early 2014 standoff between armed ranchers allied with anti-government militias and the police. But there hasn"t been a case of lethal terrorism emanating from the left for more than a decade and a half. In the post-9/11 era, left-wing plots have tended to target property. The FBI considers militant animal rights and eco-terrorism groups as a top domestic terrorism priority, though their violence has resulted in no deaths. During the 1970s, terrorist attacks by leftists were far more common. The Black Panthers and their splinter groups carried out a number of bombings and assaults. So too did the Weather Underground and its splinter groups.
These leftist militant groups largely disappeared in the 1980s, and since then lethal domestic terrorist attacks, such as the 1995 bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City, have either been carried out by far-right or by jihadist terrorists, as we saw last month in Orlando and in December in San Bernardino, California.
Now law enforcement must focus, once again, on the possibility that far-left militants may carry out lethal attacks.
Peter Bergen is CNN"s national security analyst, a vice president at New America and a professor of practice at Arizona State University. He is the author of "United States of Jihad: Investigating America"s Homegrown Terrorists." David Sterman is a senior program associate at New America"s International Security Program and holds a master"s degree from Georgetown University"s Center for Security Studies.
