how i'm gonna make some predictions here

so it's a pretty damn good sports weekend. so who else can you expect but me to stand on a soapbox from the comfort of my couch and proclaim to the world what i think will happen.

let's start with the biggie.

FLOYD MAYWEATHER vs. OSCAR DE LA HOYA

boxing promoters tend to exaggerate just a tad. i know, shocker, considering that promoting is their job, they need to make money, they love cameras and microphones, they're selling themselves just as much as anything and they are habitual liars.

however, this is indeed the fight of the decade.

you have the best fighter in the world taking on a legendary fighter who's taken on everybody. you have the guy who seems unbeatable taking on the guy who's beaten guys who seemed unbeatable. you have the guy looking for his signature fight against the guy who has made a living off of them.

the only caveat: you have a young mayweather taking on an old de la hoya. a mayweather that's younger and quicker than a sugar shane mosley who beat de la hoya twice. and de la hoya is not as young as the version of him who lost.

mayweather's better. de la hoya's worse. in theory.

still, i think it's gonna be competitive, just because de la hoya always seems to find a way. he really does. he's never been outclassed - even against hopkins, he was losing, but in it.

but i can't see how mayweather loses this. although, like i said, de la hoya always seems to find a way. and it usually comes after a left hook.

mayweather's too quick. he decisions de la hoya.


THE KENTUCKY DERBY

first:


place:


show:



RANGERS v. SABRES

no way the blueshirts lose this game. king henrik won't let them. sean avery won't let them. jaromir won't let them. and the garden won't let them. someone call rick tocchet and book this game as a gimme.

see you all in buffalo.

how you can't call yourself a major sport without a major marketing machine

the two biggest stories out of the nhl this year have been the huge brawl between the sabres and the senators, and chris simon's guillotine job on the neck of ryan hollweg.

is it fair to hockey that those two stories have gotten the most press? the slashing by simon is a criminal act which, nowadays, are commonplace with sports. reportable? yes. but it happens.

but the fight is a part of the game. and, although hockey is really trying to distance themselves from it, they're just never gonna get there. to the casual fan, that's what hockey is: fighting. violence. hard hitting. and that's why hockey has so much trouble connecting to that market; they discourage what's attractive to them. not the smartest strategy, but understandable.

just not smart. the casual fan is who they need.

someone once said that there's 17,000 hockey fans in philadelphia, and they're all at the flyers game.

that pretty much goes for every market in the country.

but there's hope: they need to market sidney crosby as much as humanly possible. they need to put him in our faces like david stern does with the wnba. they need to make us sick of him. they need to make us marvel at him.

he's the one that's gonna lead them out.

and here's a start: in what surely will be promoted with a whimper by the nhl's craptastic marketing machine, crosby became the youngest player ever to score 100 points in two consecutive seasons. that's great, because here's the big catch: he turns 20 in august.

he's nineteen! best player in the league, and he's not even twenty. if there ever were a mule to perfectly hitch your futures to, this is him.

and yet, does anyone have any doubt that the nhl will continue their legacy of screwing up great stuff like this?

for their sake, they best not.