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Staged or not staged?
The debate for today is whether or not the little fistic jackpot between heavyweight champion Hasim Rahman and former heavyweight champion Lennox Lewis last week on a cable television talk show was a staged affair designed to enhance sagging ticket sales for their November 17 rematch. A surprising number of people who are not named Don King apparently think it was not staged. To which I say: When was the last time two coaches of Super Bowl teams, appearing at the same press conference in the week before the game, grabbed each other by the throat and started wailing and flailing? When was the last time in the NBA that two All-Stars, say, Shaquille O'Neal and David Robinson , bumped into each other at the local fast-food restaurant and pounded each other back and forth across the drive-thru lane? When was the last time Tiger Woods got really mad about something David Duval said and told him so by the finishing hole of a putt-putt miniature golf course? Figure it out. When was the last time Andre Agassi and Pete Sampras , Dominik Hasek and Mario Lemieux , Jeff Gordon and Dale Jarrett attacked each other in a civilian setting? When was the last time any two bitter rivals in any legitimate sport did what Rahman and Lewis did? Oh yeah, and when was the last time Stone Cold Whoever and The Rock himself had a problem in a strange setting before the latest WWF pay-per-view spectacular? Enough said. Leigh Montville appears regularly on CNN/Sports Illustrated. The opinions expressed here are solely those of the writer.
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