NO HOLDS BARRED

On this edition of No Holds Barred, host Eddie Goldman discusses the increasing number of grave crises and scandals facing the International Olympic Committee (IOC), its sports federations, and the Olympic movement in general.

This week many of these were highlighted in a 192-page report issued by the World Cup and Olympics Popular Committee of Rio de Janeiro, also known as the Comité Popular. This was the fourth such report issued by this group since 2012 in their series known as the Mega-Events and Human Rights Dossier.

This year's report is called Rio 2016 Olympics: The Exclusion Games.

The report details the many ways in which the preparations for the Rio 2016 Olympics have led to mass evictions, virtual slave labor, "social cleansing", privatization of public resources, militarization of Rio, and even the deaths of many, and principally poor Black youth.

We also hear some brief comments by IOC president Thomas Bach at the conclusion of this week's IOC Executive Board meeting belittling the struggle against corruption and human rights abuses.

Also discussed is the corruption in numerous Olympic federations including FIFA and IAAF among many others; the rejection by the people of a growing number of cities of hosting the Olympic Games, including Hamburg and Boston; the continuing failure of the International Olympic Committee leadership to take any effective measures against corruption and human rights abuses; why aspiring sports groups should NOT plan to join this corrupt Olympic movement but must organize themselves independently and with the athletes at the fore; and much more.

You can play or download No Holds Barred here and here. If one link doesn't work, please try another.

Also, No Holds Barred is available through iTunes.

You can also listen to No Holds Barred via Stitcher through iOS or Android devices or on the web, at http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/no-holds-barred-with-eddie-goldman.

The PodOmatic Podcast Player for iOS is available for free on the App Store.

The No Holds Barred theme song is called "The Heist", which is also available on iTunes by composer Ian Snow.

No Holds Barred is free to listen to and is sponsored by:

MMA World Expo. The mixed martial arts community comes to New York City December 12 and 13, 2015, for the sixth annual MMA World Expo, featuring submission-only grappling and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu tournaments, MMA fighters, seminars with world-class trainers, vendors, panel discussions, catch wrestling competition, and much more. The MMA World Expo takes place Saturday, December 12, and Sunday, December 13, 2015, at the Jacob Javits Center in New York City.

Defense Soap, an effective, deep penetrating body soap with natural antifungal, antiviral, and antibacterial soap ingredients. Defense Soap is the best cleansing body soap for men and women athletes who are involved in contact sports such as MMA, wrestling, grappling, jiu-jitsu, and judo, to help their antifungal, anti-ringworm, anti-jock itch strategy. Check out their web site, at DefenseSoap.com.

Gracie Tournaments, featuring regional, national, and world competitions in submission-only Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. For more information, go to GracieWorlds.com.

The National Registry for Wrestling, whose mission is to increase wrestling's fanbase, to build a registry of all wrestling fans, to serve as a connecting point for all wrestling fans, and to provide TV and Internet listings for wrestling. For more information, go to NR4W.com.

Labels: Comité Popular, corruption, doping, Eddie Goldman, Exclusion Games, FIFA, human rights, IAAF, IOC, No Holds Barred, Olympics, Rio de Janeiro

On this edition of No Holds Barred, host Eddie Goldman once again spoke with Jens Sejer Andersen, the international director of Play the Game.

The 2015 Play the Game conference, which is held every two years, will take place October 25-29 at the Marselis Aarhus Hotel in Aarhus, Denmark.

This year's conference will be held amidst an ever-growing list of scandals in world sport, the arrest of numerous top figures in many popular sports, and mounting popular opposition in many countries to hosting the Olympics.

Thus, the theme of this year's conference is both provocative and timely: Global Sport: Reform or Revolution?

We spoke with Jens Sejer Andersen by Skype Wednesday.

While the International Olympic Committee and various sports bodies like FIFA claim to be reforming their ways, many people do not believe that they are capable of reforming themselves.

"Our question is, if these reforms fail, what's left?" he said.

"Yet we then have a revolution.

"And in many ways you can say this revolution is perhaps taking place in front of our eyes. We see ordinary citizens in democratic countries going to the polls and saying no to hosting Olympic Games in their town or in their region. We see large part of the population finding new ways of physical activity all organized outside the traditional sports framework, outside the clubs, outside the federations. They go to the private gym or they go running in the forest or they make parkour in the cities."

He noted, "All in all, the patterns of the way we practice sport and practice physical activity are changing, but the structures of sport remain the same. And if that goes on, it will automatically be a revolution."

We discussed why these major sports organizations need to be thoroughly reformed, how world sport reached a "tipping point" when the British press wrote about the controversy over the awarding of FIFA World Cups to Russia and Qatar, how the growth of the number of scandals in world sport are "still in the landslide process," the great role of organized crime in sport, how most sports organizations have "very, very bad governance" and bad structures, issues like match-fixing and doping, what can be done to improve these situations, and much, much more.

You can play or download No Holds Barred here and here. If one link doesn't work, please try another.

Also, No Holds Barred is available through iTunes.

You can also listen to No Holds Barred via Stitcher through iOS or Android devices or on the web, at http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/no-holds-barred-with-eddie-goldman.

The PodOmatic Podcast Player for iOS is available for free on the App Store.

The No Holds Barred theme song is called "The Heist", which is also available on iTunes by composer Ian Snow.

No Holds Barred is free to listen to and is sponsored by:

MMA World Expo. The mixed martial arts community comes to New York City December 12 and 13, 2015, for the sixth annual MMA World Expo, featuring two days of the Renzo Gracie Open 2015 no-gi and gi Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu tournaments, MMA fighters, seminars with world-class trainers, vendors, panel discussions, catch wrestling competition, and much more. The MMA World Expo takes place Saturday, December 12, and Sunday, December 13, 2015, at the Jacob Javits Center in New York City.

American Top Team. Whether you're a beginner or a champion, train with the champions in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, boxing, wrestling, grappling, and mixed martial arts at American Top Team. Check out their web site at AmericanTopTeam.com.

Defense Soap, an effective, deep penetrating body soap with natural antifungal, antiviral, and antibacterial soap ingredients. Defense Soap is the best cleansing body soap for men and women athletes who are involved in contact sports such as MMA, wrestling, grappling, jiu-jitsu, and judo, to help their antifungal, anti-ringworm, anti-jock itch strategy. Check out their web site, at DefenseSoap.com.

Gracie Tournaments, featuring regional, national, and world competitions in submission-only Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. For more information, go to GracieWorlds.com.

Labels: corruption, Eddie Goldman, FIFA, Global Sport, IOC, Jens Sejer Andersen, No Holds Barred, Olympics, Play the Game, Reform or Revolution

On this edition of No Holds Barred, host Eddie Goldman once again spoke with investigative journalist, academic, and expert on match-fixing in international football, Declan Hill.

We have just seen the arrests on corruption charges of numerous top officials of FIFA, the international governing of football, the world's most popular sport, which is known as soccer in North America and elsewhere. More arrests and indictments are expected, all of which has led to the resignation of FIFA president Sepp Blatter, just four days after having been re-elected for a fifth term.

The ongoing public exposures of FIFA's wrongdoing and the subsequent arrests have raised the questions of where else in sport is corruption so rampant, and what needs to be done to fight it.

To discuss all this, we spoke with Declan Hill by phone Thursday.

"We definitely need an international anti-corruption agency for sport," he stated.

A number of combat sports athletes in recent years have said they have been approached to fix fights and matches "for large sums of money" but have turned these attempted bribes down, he said.

"But they've almost inevitably never gone forward, because they don't trust the authorities in their own sport, not to either be behind it, or who would in some ways try to punish them for blowing the whistle," he noted.

"We need an agency where good, honest fighters can go and report what's happened, where an honest administrator working for a sports organization can go and blow the whistle on something. And also an agency that can set the standard, set the standards of transparency, say, 'This is what a good sports organization should do. Here are the basic protocols, just the basic business practices, here's the basic guidelines of what a true sporting organization should do.'

"It's not all that difficult. There have been a lot of studies on it. There have been a lot of reports and a lot of stuff. But this is what needs to happen."

We discussed more on the "surreal" story of FIFA's widespread corruption scandal and the arrests last week; the crucial role of freelance and independent journalists like Andrew Jennings and Jens Weinreich in relentlessly exposing FIFA's corruption, and the failure of the mainstream media in this regard; the "desperate" need for an international anti-corruption agency for sport; the crisis in SportAccord and the pressure from the IOC which led to the resignation of SportAccord president Marius Vizer, also shortly after being unanimously re-elected; the crisis in world sport, which is reaching a boiling point where open rebellions are taking place against sporting institutions which were once viewed as untouchable and revered; and much, much more.

You can play or download No Holds Barred here and here. If one link doesn't work, please try another.

Also, No Holds Barred is available through iTunes.

You can also listen to No Holds Barred via Stitcher through iOS or Android devices or on the web, at http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/no-holds-barred-with-eddie-goldman.

The PodOmatic Podcast Player for iOS is available for free on the App Store.

The No Holds Barred theme song is called "The Heist", which is also available on iTunes by composer Ian Snow.

No Holds Barred is free to listen to and is sponsored by:

American Top Team. Whether you're a beginner or a champion, train with the champions in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, boxing, wrestling, grappling, and mixed martial arts at American Top Team. Check out their web site at AmericanTopTeam.com.

Defense Soap, an effective, deep penetrating body soap with natural antifungal, antiviral, and antibacterial soap ingredients. Defense Soap is the best cleansing body soap for men and women athletes who are involved in contact sports such as MMA, wrestling, grappling, jiu-jitsu, and judo, to help their antifungal, anti-ringworm, anti-jock itch strategy. Check out their web site, at DefenseSoap.com.

Labels: Andrew Jennings, anti-corruption agency, arrests, Declan Hill, Eddie Goldman, FIFA, football, freelance, Jens Weinreich, journalists, Marius Vizer, No Holds Barred, scandal, Sepp Blatter, soccer, sport, SportAccord

On this edition of No Holds Barred, host Eddie Goldman once again spoke with Jens Sejer Andersen, the international director of Play the Game.

Based in Denmark, Play the Game is an international conference and communication initiative aiming to strengthen the ethical foundation of sport and promote democracy, transparency, and freedom of expression in sport.

The Play the Game 2013 conference was held October 28-31, 2013, in Aarhus, Denmark, with 148 speakers addressing many of the burning issues in world sport. All the conference presentations are now online.

We spoke with Jens Sejer Andersen by Skype on Tuesday.

Among the many key areas of interest and issues which he identified as being focused upon at this conference were: match-fixing, especially in international football (soccer); "mega-events: what are they good for?"; "the quality of sports governance, the quality of the sports leaders, their honesty"; "doping as a permanent item on the international agenda"; and the "whole concern about which interests is sport serving".

Describing this as "the best conference we've had so far," he also explained that there is more "public involvement" in the fight for good governance and against the various forms of corruption in sport than ever before. One of the many examples of this was the popular uprising in Brazil earlier this year against the corruption and massive government spending on the 2014 FIFA World Cup while the needs of the people were not being met.

We also discussed how the "sports-business complex" uses mega-events to their advantage and often against the interests of the majority of people; the issue of rights for LGBT people in Russia and the upcoming 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics; who are the new and current "superpowers" in world sport; the exposure in the media of horrific working conditions for those involved in the construction of facilities for the 2022 Qatar World Cup; the lack of democracy and good governance in many of the international federations which are affiliated with the International Olympic Committee; how it is "outrageous" that safety for athletes is not the number one issue in many sports; allegations of corruption in some of the lower-profile sports such as weightlifting and wrestling; the growing problem of many youths not being involved in sports at the grassroots level and having sedentary lifestyles; the role of the sports media; and much, much more.

You can play or download No Holds Barred here and here. If one link doesn't work, please try another.

No Holds Barred is also available on mobile phones and iPads through Stitcher.

Also, No Holds Barred is available through iTunes.

The No Holds Barred theme song is called "The Heist", which is also available on iTunes by composer Ian Snow.

No Holds Barred is free to listen to and is sponsored by:

LenneHardt.com, the web site of the world's greatest ring announcer, Lenne Hardt. Need a unique and cool combat sports-related gift? At LenneHardt.com, you can order personalized messages, wedding calls, ringtones, phone answering messages, and more, all recorded by Lenne herself, in the style of your choice. For more information, go to LenneHardt.com.

ONE Fighting Championship. ONE FC is Asia's largest and most prestigious mixed martial arts event. ONE FC features the best Asian fighters and has initiated the ONE Asia Partnership Network, which includes most of the major MMA promotions and MMA gyms in Asia. For more information, go to their web site, at ONEFC.com.

GrappleGnostic, sponsored by Defense Soap. Where the will to win meets the power of knowledge. Features, interviews, analysis, health tips, and information on wrestling, grappling, jiu-jitsu, and all the grappling arts, written by some of the best writers and experts in the world. Check out their web site, a http://defensesoap.com/grapplegnostic.

Defense Soap, an effective, deep penetrating body soap with natural antifungal, antiviral, and antibacterial soap ingredients. Defense Soap is the best cleansing body soap for men and women athletes who are involved in contact sports such as MMA, wrestling, grappling, jiu-jitsu, and judo, to help their antifungal, anti-ringworm, anti-jock itch strategy. Check out their web site, at http://defensesoap.com.

American Top Team. Whether you're a beginner or a champion, train with the champions in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, boxing, wrestling, grappling, and mixed martial arts at American Top Team. Check out their web site at http://americantopteam.com/.

Labels: conference, corruption, democracy, doping, Eddie Goldman, FIFA, football, IOC, Jens Sejer Andersen, LGBT, match-fixing, No Holds Barred, Olympics, Play Game, soccer, Sochi, sport