NO HOLDS BARRED

We spoke with her by phone Sunday, March 28.

Our topics included:

*** Dillian Whyte scored a fourth-round stoppage over Alexander Povetkin in their heavyweight fight Saturday, March 27, in Gibraltar, to avenge a knockout loss to Povetkin last year. We examined what this means for the careers of both Whyte and Povetkin, Whyte's notable act of sportsmanship right after the fight was stopped, what may be holding up the signing of the Tyson Fury-Anthony Joshua fight to crown an undisputed heavyweight champion of the world, and what it all means for the heavyweight division in general.

*** At the 2021 NCAA Division I Wrestling Championships, held March 18-20 in St. Louis, history was made as five of the ten national champions were African-Americans, the most ever. But there are some in the American wrestling community who reacted negatively to pointing this out and celebrating this achievement. We discussed the ongoing saga of the battle against racism and white supremacy in wrestling. 

*** The 2021 Major League Baseball All-Star Game is scheduled to take place July 13 in Atlanta, Georgia. But the State of Georgia just passed new voting regulations which many are calling racist and a thinly-disguised revival of Jim Crow-era voter suppression of the Black vote. Now a discussion has started in baseball circles about moving the All-Star Game out of Atlanta. Among those raising this possibility are Dodgers' manager Dave Roberts, who will manage the National League team since the Dodgers won the 2020 World Series, along with former player Tony Clark, who is now the Executive Director of the Major League Baseball Players Association, and Giancarlo Stanton, the Yankees' slugger and designated hitter/outfielder, who was the National League's Most Valuable Player in 2017.

*** While most attention in the sport of sumo has been on the top division wrestlers who competed at the March Grand Sumo Tournament, which concluded Sunday, March 28, in Tokyo, one of the wrestlers in a lower division suffered a frightening injury. Known as Hibikiryū, when he lost his match by being thrown to the ground, he landed on his head and then lay there motionless. It took several minutes before anyone attended to him, even though many people were around the ring at the time. Eventually he was carried out on a stretcher. Reports on his condition have been sketchy, with some saying that he is paralyzed below the neck. We discussed health and safety in Japanese professional sumo, and what those involved in amateur sumo in the U.S. and elsewhere can learn from this situation.

(Photo of Dillian Whyte and Alexander Povetkin by Mark Robinson/Matchroom Boxing.)

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