Shamrock has been on a losing streak for some time now. In fact his last fight was on March 8th in which he was knocked out in 3:26 against Robert “Buzz” Berry. Both fighters have generated much publicity and a large amount of viewers.

While Shamrock’s record in the ring hasn’t been impressive after leaving the sport in 1997 to go into pro wrestling for three years, he still poses some danger on the ground. He significantly injured the knees and ankles of Don Frye in a 2002 battle in Japan, and even though he lost quickly to Rich Franklin in 2005, his submission work in the first minute did put Franklin on crutches for a week.

But he’s been prone to quick knockout losses and a power game that made him a star dating back to UFC 1 in 1993 hasn’t been evident much in the past decade. It will be great to see which one of these powerful fighters will end up on top.

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When Caitlin Lowe grounded to third for the final out, Vicky Galindo, who led off the U.S. team’s seventh inning with a pinch-hit single, wrapped her hands over her helmet and cringed. Moments later, U.S. coach Mike Candrea huddled his stunned players, many of whom couldn’t even look up. Lowe choked back tears as slugger Crystl Bustos tried to console her overwhelmed teammates.

Bustos, who homered in the fourth for the Americans’ only run, was first in line to congratulate the Japanese players. As she shook hands with the U.S. team, Japan catcher Yukiyo Mine was overcome by tears. “You don’t want it to end this way, but it’s all we could do,” said Bustos, who attended the medal ceremony wearing sunglasses.

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“It got very sophisticated because obviously the battery doesn’t last long and then we had to look at circuits and interrupters, so we have been working on it around two months with a crack team,” swimmer Andrea Fuentes said.

“It looks a bit like Christmas lights,” added the Spaniard, one half of the team that won silver at the last world championships and are favourites for a medal in Beijing. Swimming’s world governing body, which sets swimsuit rules for a sport where sequins are almost obligatory, said the lights were an accessory but Fuentes still hoped they might back down.

“This is a very conservative sport … their excuse that is you cannot have accessories on your swimsuit, but they are sewn in. If you use those standards, sequins are a type of accessory.”

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She performed an almost flawless routine on the balance beam and beat out China’s Cheng Fei and her teammate Nastia Liukin to win the gold medal. At the end she unleashed a smile as big as Beijing itself, a glorious conclusion to a competition that never got her down and only taught her more about herself as she came to appreciate the journey as much as the destination.

“I kept saying, ‘finally’ a lot,” Johnson laughed. “I made it. I finally won a gold medal.I can’t stop smiling. I’m so excited.” The 4-foot-9 powerhouse from Iowa had won over the fans here with her strong performance and profound grace. You can’t call an Olympics a disappointment when you win three silvers. Johnson came here for gold, however. She was the favorite, the best in the world. And she kept losing by the slimmest and most frustrating of ways.

There was an age controversy and a teammate’s foibles that overshadowed the team competition. She lost to Liukin, who she routinely defeated in the States, in the all-around. She had the floor gold wrapped up only to lose on the very last performance.

Throughout, the belief was that Johnson wasn’t receiving her customary high marks because the Olympic judges preferred taller, lankier, more graceful gymnasts to her stocky power. It is the unfair twist of gymnastics. It isn’t just how many flips you can do, it’s how you look doing them. Johnson couldn’t get taller or leaner, she could only get tougher.

“The first time it did hurt a little,” she said. “But I go by, everything happens for a reason and for some reason the judges were giving me scores I’m not used to. But they had a reason. “It did upset me a little, but I thought about it and I decided, I was at the Olympic Games, I was having the time of my life and I’m winning medals.”

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The first number puts him within three golds of breaking Mark Spitz’s hallowed record of seven in one Olympics; the second gives him two more golds than any Olympic athlete. ”It’s everything I ever dreamed about,” Phelps said. “On the podium I kept tearing [thinking] back at it. I’m almost at a loss for words …
“From now on, it’s just a downward slope,” Phelps said. “The end is close. I love it.”’

Phelps won the 200 meter butterfly, and once again he left the world’s best swimmers looking like they needed water wings and flippers, breaking his own world record, in 1:52.03. Then he gave the U.S. a huge lead in the first leg of the 4×200 freestyle relay, and Gold No. 11 was never in doubt. Phelps wound up with his fifth world record of this Olympics, as Peter Vanderkaay touched in 6:58.56, about four and a half seconds faster than the previous record.

The 11 golds move Phelps clear of Spitz, Carl Lewis, Finnish distance runner Paavo Nurmi and Russian gymnast Larysa Latynina for the most Olympic golds; each collected nine. “I’m just really pumped about the relay,” Phelps said. “We talked about breaking seven minutes, and we did it.” Of the butterfly, he said, “I couldn’t see anything for the last 100. “My goggles pretty much filled up with water. It just kept getting worse and worse through the race and I was having trouble seeing the walls, to be honest.

“But it’s fine, I wanted to break the record. I wanted to go 1:51 or better, but for the circumstances I guess it’s not too bad.” No, not even water can stop Phelps. Polish swimmer Pawel Korzeniowski, after finishing sixth in the butterfly, was told that Phelps was about to compete in the 4c200 meter relay.

“He has a relay today?” Korzeniowski said. “Oh, my God. I don’t know how he’s doing it. I think about, ‘How he do this — and set the world record?’ “I tried to push him, but he’s too fast.”

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“I swear, all these things were in my mind in a couple of seconds,” Lezak said. “And then I realized, ‘This is the Olympics. Let’s go.’” On the other side Michael Phelps was watching all of this thinking that all of his chances to win eight gold medals for his country were gone. It looked like Bernard’s prediction that France would crush Americans was going to come true.

Except a funny thing happened. That half-body-length lead? In about 10 seconds it was down to a quarter-length. And then the width of a head. And then nothing. And then, remarkable, amazingly, astonishingly, inexplicably, Lezak’s fingers touched the wall, exactly 8/100ths of a second before Bernard’s did. Weber-Gale exploded. Jones admitted, “I nearly fell into the pool.” Phelps emitted a primal scream that tried to lift the Cube’s ceiling clear off its hinges.

Phelps understood what all of this meant: he still has a shot at eight gold medals. “His last 50 meters were absolutely incredible,” said Phelps. “He had a perfect finish.” Phelps, remarkably, was the one who needed to be bailed out yesterday, touching the wall during his segment of the race in second place, a quarter of a second behind Australia’s Eamon Sullivan.

And by the time Lezak - nine years Phelps’ senior - jumped into the pool, Bernard was already in there and already sprinting off toward history. Except Lezak covered the final hundred meters in 46.06, which is nearly a second and a half faster than the existing world record. “I’ve never had more adrenaline in my life,” he would say.

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“I’m not allowed to say everything,” Jackson told interviewers on Thursday in his first interview since the arrest. “I was hurt by some personal problems I had. It caused me not to eat and not to sleep. Emotional, yeah.”

Jackson went to a news conference with Dana White the UFC President to help promote UFC 87 at the Mall of America. White, who introduced Jackson to a large crowd, said Jackson’s consumption of too many energy drinks, combined with the lack of eating and sleeping, plus a split with trainer Juanito Ibarra, led to Jackson’s problems last month.

According to a close source Jackson sideswiped a car during the chase. In the car was 38 year old Holli Griggs who was 16 weeks pregnant. She said that she had miscarriage in the aftermath of the accident. While Jackson did not address the loss of Griggs’ unborn child, White tried to rationalize that the accident had little to do with the miscarriage. “That one is out there like, ‘He hit her and she lost her baby,’ ” White said. “It was a week later. He knocked her mirror off her car. Rampage said, and he’ll tell you when you talk to him, ‘I care about everybody. I care about all life. I would never hurt anybody.’

“That’s the way he is,” White said. “Now he’s in a situation where somebody’s trying to civil sue him and make some money. Absolutely not. Absolutely not, this is not a criminal thing. No way. I’m no lawyer and I’m no judge, (but) this stuff will be worked out in the court.” In the 72 hours following the accident, Jackson underwent psychological evaluations, White said, and was determined not to be under the influence of  alcohol or drugs. “He literally was sick and had delirium,” White said.

Part of Jackson’s problems, White said, stemmed from the split with Ibarra following Jackson’s loss to Forrest Griffin on July 5 in Las Vegas. Jackson declined to divulge details when asked about Ibarra. When it was noted that Ibarra seemed like a father figure, Jackson grimaced.

“That’s what hurts,” Jackson said. “I can’t say. You guys will find out soon enough.” Jackson said he already has begun training and is eager to fight again as soon as possible. He said he has been working with a boxing coach to improve his striking. Though Jackson believed he deserved to get the decision against Griffin, he did not blame the alleged incident on the loss.

“It was a close fight, but I thought I won,” Jackson said. “I thought I did enough to win. I felt like I won the first round. I feel like I won the third round, and I felt like I won the fourth round. I felt like he won the … second and fifth. That’s how I feel, but I’m not a judge. “It is what it is. I don’t care about fights because I’m a fighter. That’s not going to be the last fight I lose. Who cares about that? I don’t care about winning the fight. Who cares? I’m going to come back, train hard and make more money.”

Jackson said he was reluctant to speak because “I don’t want to get into trouble with anybody.” He thanked White and the UFC and said, “I love all these guys in the UFC. They’ve been great in supporting me. I’m happy to be out here and be a regular person again.”

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Doctors stated that he was not able to weigh in and he will no longer be able to compete in the Olympics. All eyes will quickly turn to controversial USA Boxing coach Dan Campbell, as nothing says bad coaching quite like poor weight management.

Campbell required the entire U.S. team, chosen last August, to move to the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs and follow his training regime. In boxing, much like wrestling, judo and other combat sports, the athletes will continue to train with their coaches and visit the OTC for camps. Some athletes do train there full-time, but it is rarely required for an athlete for pick up and move away for a year, leaving their coaches and training partners. Some of the boxers aired their unhappiness with the program publicly, with Saddam Ali talking about it on a radio show, and Yanez saying that the fighters don’t like Campbell.

The U.S. has a strong, if small, boxing contingent, and they will likely come home with some hardware. If this happens, Campbell will be credited as a genius, while Gary Russell Jr. will only be able to watch from ringside.

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“This has been an extremely hard decision for me to make. I’ve given everything I can to be ready to compete at this Olympic Games,” Hamm said. “It’s best for me to step down and have another athlete fill my position. This is something for me that’s very tough because it’s end of my career, and it’s not the way I had planned it.”

Nothing about these Olympics has gone the way Hamm and his twin brother, Paul, planned it. Not for the Americans, either. Morgan Hamm tore a muscle in his chest in early October, an injury that required a five-month rehab. He was able to return, but the injured ankle continued to give him trouble. Bone spurs from his ankle dig into his tibia, producing “extreme” pain.

Hamm tried taping, ultrasound and other therapies to treat the injury. When those didn’t work, his doctor gave him an injection of a glucocorticosteroid, a cortisone-like anti-inflammatory, on May 2 in hopes of reducing the swelling and inflammation. That resulted in a positive doping test at nationals; the drug is allowed if an athlete gets a therapeutic use exemption, which he failed to do. Hamm had to have another cortisone shot before he left for Beijing, and yet another Wednesday.

Paul Hamm, the reigning Olympic champion, had to withdraw July 28 because he wasn’t going to be healthy enough to compete in Beijing. Besides persistent pain from the right hand he broke two months ago, he has a strained left rotator cuff.

“I wouldn’t change anything,” Morgan Hamm said. “I gave it all that I had. … Obviously it hasn’t worked out as I wanted it to, but I love gymnastics, I love competing, and I’m going to take all of my experiences that I’ve had and grow as person and move on with my life after this.”

The Hamms’ withdrawals mean the Americans, once considered favorites to return to the medals podium, now have no one with Olympic experience. Sasha Artemev, the 2006 national champion and world bronze medalist on pommel horse, will replace Morgan Hamm. He was chosen Thursday night over David Durante. Both have been training at the U.S. Olympic Committee’s facility at Beijing Normal.

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Officials from China stated that they do not need any specific reason to revoke a visa - but many people have guessed the reasoning behind it. He founded Team Darfur - which is a group of 70 athletes who have made it their goal to raise the awareness around the world of the human-rights violations in Darfur.

China’s military, economic and diplomatic ties to Sudan have been well-publicized in the lead-up to the Games. Said Cheek of his ban in a prepared statement:

“I am saddened not to be able to attend the Games. The Olympic Games represent something powerful: that people can come together from around the world and do things that no one thought were possible. However, the denial of my visa is a part of a systemic effort by the Chinese government to coerce and threaten athletes who are speaking out on behalf of the innocent people of Darfur.”

Cheek was not going to be participating in the Olympics this year - but rather to support the athletes who are a part of Team Darfur and to promote his cause. After winning gold in the Torino Games, Cheek announced he was donating his $25,000 USOC bonus to Darfur and implored his sponsors to do the same.

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