The biggest sport event of the day is so nauseating that I'll stick it in at the end. To start, I'll go back to what happened on 1June2019 when undefeated Britisher Anthony Joshua, who held 3 of 4 world heavyweight championships from 2016 until that fateful night, got upset by substitute boxer Andy Ruiz Jr. by a technical knockout in the 7th round, the first heavyweight of Mexican descent to ever gain this title. Mexican-American Ruiz had warned Joshua:
Don’t underestimate this little fat boy.
29-year old Joshua won the London Olympics Gold Medal for super-heavyweights in 2012. He is 6'6" and 249 pounds. 29-year old Ruiz is 6'2" and 269 pounds, and had his first boxing match at the age of 7. Joshua had knocked out 21 out of 22 opponents, and if you bet $2500 on him, you would have won $100, odds of 25:1. Ring announcer Michael Buffer, when he said:
...should the fight go the distance...
the whole auditorium laughed. Watch that 7th round.
Perhaps, though, a bigger upset was Buster Douglas disposing of Mike Tyson in Tokyo in 1990. The odds were 42:1. Douglas' mother had died the month before, and Douglas was mentally anguished but felt he owed her something. Before the fight, Tyson was 37-0. He stood 5'10" and weighed 220 pounds to the 6'4" and 231 pounds Douglas.
Later in the year Douglas gained an additional 14 pounds and got easily knocked out by Evander Holyfield, who was a 9:5 favorite, only weighing 208 pounds. At that time, this was the richest fight in boxing history, and is said to have been the last great heavyweight title fight. Long after that loss, Douglas' weight ballooned to more than 400 pounds and he largely wore Hawaiian shirts. He is now working for the Parks & Recreation Department in Columbus, Ohio, and coaching young boxing prospects in the same gym where he got his start.
Story #2 has to do with Nate Lashley winning the PGA Rocket Mortgage Classic this past weekend by 6 strokes. Did you know, however, that Lashley only rose to make the PGA Tour in 2017 at the age of 34, had never won, and missed the cut for this tournament, being ranked #353 in the world. However, he was the first alternate.
The hero of this story is 50-year old David Berganio Jr., who made the cut, but his golf clubs missed the plane connection. As he could not practice on the Detroit Golf Club course, knowing that a nobody who could use some help would replace him, decided to give away his spot. So in comes Lashley.
Only later did Berganio find out that both of them got their start at the University of Arizona. When Lashley was a junior in 2004, his parents and girlfriend saw him play in an NCAA regional, and on their way home to Nebraska, died in a plane crash.
Story #3 has to do with Major League Baseball. Not to brag, but my four fantasy teams lead their leagues. Just the other day I added pitcher Tyler Skaggs to one of my teams. A day later he is found in his hotel room, dead, all too real.
Manager Brad Ausmus, who wiped away tears while speaking, said the team had all gotten together to talk about their memories of Skaggs.
"He's just a happy person," Ausmus said. "He's got the type of personality that draws others in. Like I said, he's goofy in a good, funny way. This road trip to Dallas, he came up to me four or five days before and, 'hey, we're going to Texas for two series, do you care if we all dress up in Western gear or cowboy gear?' So he kind of spearheaded that and that's one of the last pictures of Skaggys with his teammates, all dressed up in cowboy gear. And the last image I have of him is standing on a plane with this awful cowboy shirt on, playing cards."
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