Ric Flair has remained in critical condition in the hospital in Atlanta for the last several days in what is very much a battle for his life.

Flair, 68, one of the most iconic enduring and influential wrestlers in history and arguably its all-time best all-around performer taking all aspects of character and in-ring into consideration, apparently had severe pains in his stomach and was rushed to the hospital on 8/12.

While at first the situation was said to not be that serious, although he was in the Intensive Care Unit from the start, his situation worsened by the next day to where the situation was life threatening and he was put in a medically induced coma.

The catalyst of his problems were apparently a significant blockage in his bowels which led to surgery to alleviate the blockage. This led to a series of medical problems including his kidneys shutting down.

He underwent surgery on 8/14. There was a chance, perhaps even a serious chance that he would not survive the surgery. Even after surgery, he is very much not out of danger. He is also on kidney dialysis with the hope of being able to get his kidneys functioning and there are other medical issues, including an infection that, at least as of 8/13,that had not been diagnosed, that he was dealing with.

There is really not a lot more information. His family was all called to the hospital and right now everything is just waiting to see if he can fight off the infection and his other issues can be taken care of. Flair had a heart issue dating back nearly 15 years ago, even though he was in remarkable condition as far as conditioning, due to the lifestyle he led. That lifestyle really didn’t change and he himself admitted his drinking really got out of control at one point after the death of his son, Reid, in 2013, at the age of 25. Ric never got over it and I don’t know how he possibly could have ever gotten over it.
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(excerpt from WWE Summerslam preview0
The main event remains Brock Lesnar defending the European title against Braun Strowman, Samoa Joe and Roman Reigns. Paul Heyman strongly emphasized that if Lesnar doesn’t retain his title, they are leaving WWE, using the rumors about UFC to help build the idea that Lesnar could lose and leave. However, Lesnar is scheduled for Raw the next night in Brooklyn, as well as for other Raw events in September, as well as for the main event on the 9/24 No Mercy PPV at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, as well as a 9/30 house show match against Samoa Joe in Winnipeg. The way Raw ended would lead one to believe Lesnar vs. Strowman is on the horizon and that could headline Los Angeles. Lesnar is booked for the Royal Rumble and WrestleMania, and UFC officials say he is not able to fight in 2017 due to having to sit out the remainder of his own year suspension that was frozen when he announced his retirement.
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UFC: Tony Zucca, who is best friends with Matt Hughes, wrote this on 8/13: “I can’t even describe the emotions I am feeling as I write this post. Less than two months ago I didn’t know if my best friend was going to make it, and tonight we made a jailbreak for sushi (in disguise). Talk about a roller coaster of emotions. His progress is nothing short of a miracle. He is working so hard and fights through the frustration. He is, as he’s always been, an inspiration. I can’t wait to hit the mits with him again, and he told me today that he has one more round left in him (he laughed, but definitely wasn’t joking). Thank you for all of your prayers. Please keep them up as he still has a long road ahead of him. I am witnessing the power of them firsthand. So thankful.

Former UFC fighter Tae Hyun Bang was indicted for allegedly taking a bribe in a fight that he, in fact, won, over Leo Kuntz on a UFC show in Seoul, South Korea on 11/28. This story had come out some time back, as Bang had agreed to throw the fight, then the odds changed big in the days before the fight and there was tremendous suspicion of it being fixed. UFC officials essentially scared Bang straight, as he went out to win the fight, and did. Several people were indicted besides Bang, as well as others alleged to be involved with the fix, including Date Won Kim, another MMA fighter. Bang received $87,000 to fix a fight, and then bet $43,000 of that on Kuntz. After being warned by UFC officials, he went out to win what ended up being a hell of a fight, costing himself the $43,000 he’d bet on his opponent. The allegation is that organized crime figures in South Korea had bet $1.7 million on Kuntz to win, which is why the odds shifted so greatly. But Bang won a close fight via split decision. The UFC told both fighters before the fight, that if it looks like either were not trying to win, they would be investigating the situation. At the time, Bang denied knowing anything about a fix

Regarding Mayweather-McGregor, the Nevada Athletic Commission voted 5-0 to allow the fight to be fought with eight ounce gloves rather than ten ounce gloves. This came one day after the Association of Ringside Physicians made a statement against allowing such a thing given the rules at that weight class of no gloves less than ten ounces that are in place. Nevada claimed this fight would be an experiment, a one-time only thing, where their existing rules would be negated. From a regulatory standpoint, this ruling was an embarrassment, although in reality, everything about this fight from a regulatory standpoint is something you have to hold your nose on, because there is no way a 49-0 best fighter of a generation vs. 0-0 fight would be sanctioned by anyone if it wasn’t generating this level of money. In theory, the glove size should favor McGregor, whose trainer and himself vowed he would knock Mayweather out with the smaller gloves. McGregor is said to be 160 pounds right now and Mayweather’s camp said he will fight at 150, even thought the weight is 154 that McGregor has to make. McGregor has also said he would get into the ring 20 pounds heavier, although that sounds like an exaggeration but it’ll be ten pounds or more. The smaller gloves in theory will hurt Mayweather’s defensive skills and help McGregor’s power. They will also help McGregor in the stamina department, and Mayweather is used to 36 minute fights, and while it’s different rules and MMA is tiring in a different way, McGregor, with smaller gloves got very tired by round three (with longer rounds) in both fights with Nate Diaz. However, King Mo, who is an expert in both boxing, wrestling and MMA, and has experience with Mayweather said it will benefit him because Mayweather’s body punches will be more effective with smaller gloves. With all the betting on McGregor, with 95 percent of bets taken being for McGregor, but the biggest money bettors are strongly behind Mayweather, the odds have fallen from -2250 to -450 with Mayweather as the favorite. But McGregor’s odds are actually lower than ten of Mayweather’s last 18 opponents

Gavin and Joe Malooff, the billionaire brothers, have bet $880,000 on Mayweather

Dana White said that Tony Ferguson vs. Kevin Lee for the interim lightweight title will take place on the 10/7 PPV show from Las Vegas. As of last word, the fight wasn’t actually signed but that is the plan. While a good fight, this title situation has gotten even more ridiculous. We’re doing an interim title for McGregor’s belt? And Khabib Nurmagomedov isn’t even in the match? I hate to use this term, but it is appropriate, but this is like Vince Russo was put in charge of booking for UFC the way they water down titles so much they may as well throw the belts into the Pacific. Luckily, there’s still guys who can do promos and grudge matches

Georges St-Pierre was on the MMA Hour on 8/14 and said that he is contractually obligated to defend the middleweight title if he beats Michael Bisping on 11/4 in Madison Square Garden and expects to face Robert Whittaker. He also said that he expects to fight for about three more years, until he’s 39

The Cody Garbrandt vs. T.J. Dillashaw bantamweight title match is also signed for Madison Square Garden. There are seven matches set up so far for the show, with the others being Paulo Borrachinha vs. Johny Hendricks, Curtis Blaydes vs. Aleksei Olenik, Corey Anderson vs. Patrick Cummins, Gadzhimurad Antigulov vs. Ion Cutelaba and Ricardo Ramos vs. Alemann Zahabi

Kelvin Gastelum vs. Anderson Silva looks to be the main event for the 11/25 show in Shanghai, China

Anthony Pettis vs. Dustin Poirier is in the very serious negotiations standpoint for an 11/11 show in Norfolk. It looks to be the main event. Two more bouts on that show are Diego Sanchez, moving up to 170 (he had fought as low as 145 for some time) to face Matt Brown, and Dennis Stewart vs. Karl Roberson

The undercard of Mayweather-McGregor was announced. It’ll open with two prelim boxing matches with Savannah Marshall (0-0) vs. Amy Coleman (0-0) and Kevin Newman (7-0-1) vs. Antonio Hernandez (9-1). There will be two fights on FOX TV, which will be Juan Heraldez (12-0, 8 knockouts) vs. Jose Borrego (12-0, 11 knockouts) and Shawn Porter (27-2-1, 17 knockouts) vs. Thomas Dulorme (24-2, 16 knockouts. The PPV fights will be Andrew Tabiti (15-0, 13 knockouts) vs. Steve Cunningham (29-8-1, 13 knockouts) for the NABF cruiserweight title, Nathan Cleverly (30-3, 16 knockouts) defends the WBA light heavyweight title against Badou Jack (21-1-2, 12 knockouts) and Gervonta Davis (18-0, 17 knockouts) defends the IBF junior lightweight title against Francesco Fonseca (19-0-1, 13 knockouts)

They have lowered ticket prices as the $3,500 seats that haven’t sold were dropped to $2,500

Mark Hunt vs. Marcin Tybura will headline an 11/19 morning/afternoon show in Sydney, Australia at the Qudos Bank Arena. It will air in prime time on 11/18 on FS 1. Tybura is coming off a win over Andrei Arlovski, and this will be his biggest fight of his career. Other fights announced this week for that show are Ryan Benoit vs. Ashkan Mokhtarian and Rashad Coulter vs. Tai Tuivasa

Joseph Carr, the former Senior Vice President and Head of Content and International Business, one of the company’s key executives, who just quit last week, was announced on 8/15 as the new Chief Strategy Officer and head of International for the World Surf League. Carr was credited in the press release by the WFL as managing UFC Fight Pass and being part of the largest sports buyout in history with the UFC sale to WME IMG

Jinder Mahal will be at the 9/9 UFC show in Edmonton, which in and of itself isn’t that big of a deal, since he’s from Alberta and wrestlers go to UFC events all the time. But he’ll be walking Arjan Bhullar to the cage in his debut fight. Bhullar, 31, is a heavyweight who is 6-0, of Indian Sikh descent, from Richmond, British Columbia and the two are friends. Bhullar was Canada’s top heavyweight in amateur wrestling, winning the the gold medal in the 2010 Commonwealth Games and representing Canada in the 2012 Olympics, before starting in fighting in 2014. He faces Luis Henrique

On the 8/8 edition of Dana White’s Tuesday Night Contenders, Donovan Frelow lost a decision to Ricky Simon. He was then with his team, which included his girlfriend. He then got on his knees, pulled out a ring that he had stored in his cup, and proposed to her. She accepted

Islam Makhachev has pulled out of the 9/2 show in Rotterdam, Holland, which is the company’s next show. His former opponent, Michel Prezeras, will now face the debuting Mads Burnell, who is 8-1

Bobby Green will be replacing Abel Trujillo in facing Lando Vannata on the 10/7 show in Las Vegas

Gregor Gillespie vs. Jason Gonzalez and Olivier Aubin-Mercier vs. Tony Martin have been added to the 9/16 show in Pittsburgh

Jan Blachowicz vs. Devin Clark, Ramazen Emeev vs. Trevor Smith and and Jonathan Wilson vs. Oskar Piechota are the first three fights announced for a 10/21 show in Gdansk, Poland.

BELLATOR: MMA Fighting reported that Frank Mir has signed here. Due to his suspension for testing positive for the anabolic steroid Turinabol after a fight with Mark Hunt in 2016, and the subsequent two-year suspension, he won’t be able to fight until April 2018. Mir, 38, has an 18-11 record and his 16 consecutive years with UFC I believe would have been the longest of any fighter in the promotion

The California State Athletic commission turned down a protest by Josh Thomson regarding his knockout loss to Patricky Pitbull Freire on the 2/18 show in San Jose. Thomson claimed that he was knocked silly by an accidental head-butt right before the finish, which was a knockout punch. The referee, John McCarthy, wrote a letter saying he missed the heads clashing and only saw it after watching a replay of it. The commission accepted that the illegal head-butt had taken place, but that knockout came from a punch after the head-butt. “The commission determined an actual clash of heads did occur and the referee didn’t see it,” Foster told MMA Fighting. “But the question the commission was faced with was: Was that enough to overturn that result; take that win away from (Friere), when that win was caused by a legal blow?” To me, if the head-butt occurs right before the finish and stuns the competitor, who is then knocked out from a subsequent punch, it is an illegal move that led to the finish. The fouled fighter, if they didn’t make a full recovery from the illegal move and got finished, that should be a no contest. Anything else makes no sense. This is similar to if an undetected eye poke makes a fighter unable to fight, but he’s then knocked out in a subsequent flurry of punches, the illegal move led to the finish, and if that’s the case, it should be made very clear that’s a no contest, and that’s where instant replays should be part of the sport

Tito Ortiz underwent another neck surgery recently

Former UFC fighter Sam Sicilia has signed here. Sicilia had been with UFC since 2012, but had lost his last three fights, most recently losing a unanimous decision to an impressive Gavin Tucker on 2/19.

OTHER MMA: Javier Vazquez, 41, who fought from 1998 to 2011, including in WEC and once in UFC, is battling colon cancer. He’s facing six months of chemotherapy after surgery. Vazquez said that he started experiencing abdominal pains, and was diagnosed with cancer. Surgeons removed 12 polyps, four of which were stage 3 cancerous. Vazquez recently went through a divorce from Rose Gracie, the daughter of Rorion Gracie. He was 16-5 in his MMA career, which ended on June 26, 2011, with his only UFC fight, a decision win over Joe Stevenson. During his career he held wins over Jens Pulver and Rumina Sato. He has been unable to teach at his Jiu Jitsu Academy in Rancho Cucamonga. A Go Fund Me campaign for him already raised $37,000

Rondel Clark, 26, an amateur fighter in his second bout, passed away on 8/15 after suddenly suffering from kidney failure during a fight on 8/12 in Plymouth, MA. Clark, who was 1-0, was facing Ryan Dunn, who was 0-2, in a bout for the Cage Titans promotion. Clark dominated the fight, winning the first two rounds and the report we got said he won the first round by a 10-8 margin. But he was totally exhausted when the third round started and Dunn got the mount and threw what were described as “the weakest punches you ever saw.” Clark was covering up and didn’t take much damage, but he couldn’t get out of that bad position and the fight was stopped. Clark couldn’t move, and had to be taken out on a stretcher and rushed to the hospital. The report we got was that they believed his kidneys shut down during the fight. He was moved to a hospital in Boston to undergo surgery as he was going through multiple organ failure. The fight aired on the Flo combat channel. According to what we were told, Clark cut ten pounds, which is not a lot, to make weight so it wasn’t one of those crazy weight cuts that caused the kidney damage. But still, kidneys shutting down after a weight cut does make you question the weight cut and one of the greatest things in this sport will be if the officials can find a way to reduce or eliminate weight cutting of more than a few pounds.
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Ronda Rousey has been training of late with Brian Kendrick so there you go. It’s pretty clear she’s not doing that just for fun. With her and Jessamyn Duke there, it looks like a Horsewoman vs. Horsewoman thing starts it but they’ll probably build to a Rousey singles match at Mania if they think they can pull it off, because that would be the money. I just hope they use it to give the rub to a woman on the roster but the original idea was always Rousey vs. Stephanie in a singles match after the 2015 angle at WrestleMania in Santa Clara. There was a time, when the women were treated as third-class performers where I wouldn’t have like it but would have thought it was best for business because Stephanie was such a good promo and more of a star than any of the women wrestlers. Today, that dynamic has changed. It’s like which was more valuable, Mr. T teaming with Vince, or Hogan, or Mike Tyson having the square-off with Vince or Austin (granted Trump vs. Vince was the most valuable use of Trump, but that’s completely the hair stipulation and that Trump couldn’t do a match)