Few things gets us Interweb bloggy types more fired up than when an athlete gets arrested, as it gives us a chance to be indignant, poignant and self-righteous if that athlete hurt another person (or worse) or it allows us to make endless jokes at that athlete’s expense. More than anything, I think we love when athletes get arrested because they give us awful mugshots, like the Todd Helton YOLO face seen above.

How exactly did Helton’s consistent bat land him in the police blotter this week? *makes drinking motion with hand, pinky out* Allegedly.

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If you’ve been looking for the worst possible way to celebrate the warrior spirit of your favorite MMA fighter, look no further: eBay user “strong67″ is auctioning off a wooden shard from the telephone pole UFC Light Heavyweight Champion Jon ‘Bones’ Jones got drunk and drove his Bentley into last month.

From the auction, currently topping out at $36:

Well, I’ve heard people sell & buy crazy things, so I’m going to test that theory now… This is a piece of telephone pole wood that was knocked off when Jon Jones crashed into it w/ his Bentley on the corner of Grand Blvd & Helen St. in Binghamton on May 19th,2012… It measures about 14 inches long & actually has a “crashed smell odor” to it… It is about an inch wide in the middle & then narrows out at the ends… One pic shows the wood piece & the other pic shows the actual pole which is cracked near the bottom & now supported by wood beams… This is a good conversation piece & definitely WAY more interesting than his last fight… Maybe you can get him to sign it someday, but you may need to use it as protection if he throws a flying elbow your way rather than an autograph :o)

If his least favorite thing about fighting is being asked to sign replica belts, I’m sure “would you please sign this garbage I bought on the Internet from that time you almost killed yourself and others” will go over well. Especially if you mention how the debris you paid 10 extra bucks to have safely mailed to you still sorta smells like his f**ked-up car.

If you bid on this and win it, let us know what you do with it. If I won it, I’d fly to Binghamton and glue it back into the telephone pole. I’m not going to bid on it, though, I’m saving my money for strong67′s “authentic bone shard from Arianny Celeste’s boyfriend’s nose” auction.

[h/t to Maggie Hendricks @ Cagewriter]

Thank goodness Kurt Angle is so intense, because he’s thrown integrity and intelligence out the window.

The four-time WWE Champion and 1996 Olympic gold medalist in freestyle wrestling was arrested in Virginia early Sunday morning on charges of driving under the influence. Again. From TMZ:

Law enforcement tells TMZ … Angle’s car was spotted by another driver … swerving between lanes on I-66. Angle was busted by Virginia State Troopers, who responded to the call, and taken to Warren County Jail.

He posted $2,000 bond and was released at 3:31 AM.

There are a lot of ellipses in the TMZ recap, so I don’t know how the arrest actually happened, but I am sad enough of a wrestling fan to know that this is Angle’s third arrest for driving when he shouldn’t since 2007; He was arrested at his Pennsylvania home in 2007 for DUI after almost running a lady over at a restaurant, and again in March of this year for “being in control of a motor vehicle while intoxicated” and failing a field sobriety test in North Dakota. It’s his second arrest as TNA/Impact Wrestling World Champion, a company that just released one of their biggest stars for doing the same thing. Impact Wrestling’s response to Angle’s arrest will be very telling, but keep in mind that the major advertising point for this week’s episode is the return of Jeff Hardy, the brother of the first guy they released for drunk driving, who asks the fans for “one last shot” despite awaiting trial for drug trafficking. So, uh.

You’d think a guy with an Olympic gold medal could avoid taking so many mugshots. We’ll have more information as the story gets sadder and sadder.

Cycling has erythropoietin. Major League Baseball has “the cream” and “the clear”. But news out of Jessamine County, Kentucky, confirms that the hallowed sport of Demolition Derby has the most harmful performance enhancing drug of all — getting piss drunk.

36-year-old David Warner has officially gotten in trouble for the dumbest thing in human history. Nicholasville police at the Jessamine County Fair arrested Warner and charged him with DUI after receiving complaints about his driving in a demolition derby. They approached him after he got out of his car, noting that he was “staggering” and not once attributing this to the fact that he’d just spent the last however long driving his f**king car into things. This sounds like the type of thing any free-thinking, rational adult would laugh at and dismiss, but people who love Kentucky enough to try and run its parks and rec events are outraged.

“The young man has no future here as far as events. He will not be allowed to participate in any event on these fairgrounds,” Jessamine County Fair board president Jay Bruner said.

Warner talked to NEWSFIRST Thursday afternoon saying he was unfairly treated, and called the charge ridiculous.

“I mean, I’m not denying I wasn’t drinking by no means, but I was not drunk. I was under the limit,” Warner said. Warner claims he drank a few beers before hitting the track, to “loosen me up,” but he said it wasn’t enough to warrant a DUI.

“I’m not perfect, but this has gone too far, and I will fight it,” he said.

Saying you’ve been drinking but were still “under the limit” is like starting sentences with “how is it racist when” or “how it it racist that” to prove you aren’t being racist. I think “yes I was drunk, but you’d think traffic laws wouldn’t apply when I’m crashing into things for sport about twenty feet from the pig tent” would be the better argument, or maybe “why don’t you arrest the guy operating that rigged-ass ring toss”.

The worst part is that Warner WON the damn thing, and now he could be stripped of his trophy and prize money. You drive drunk at a Kentucky fair demolition derby and there’s still room to fall.

[h/t Off The Bench]

I wanted to give this update a more clever title, but the next 250 stories you read about Jalen Rose serving 20 days in jail for his drunk driving arrest are going to be called JAILIN’ ROSE, and I mean come on, how much better can you get than that? Parenting advice: If you want to keep your son out of prison, don’t put “jail” in his name.

From the Detroit Free Press:

Judge Kimberly Small, known for her tough stance on drunken driving, ordered the former NBA player and University of Michigan basketball star to serve 93 days in jail, but she suspended all but 20 of those days.

Small, during a 40-minute sentencing hearing in 48th District Court in Bloomfield Township, told Rose: “You’re not here because you drank. I have no problem with that. Have at it. I do mind when you get behind the wheel of a two-ton vehicle and use it as a weapon against the rest of us.”

Keith Davidson, Rose’s California-based attorney, made sure to explain that driving drunk was No Big D as soon as the sentence was announced. Also, he’s a lawyer who quotes Gorilla Monsoon.

“We have two crimes here … what my client did, and what happened here today,” he said. “What we have is an elected judge legislating from the bench. What we saw today was a miscarriage of justice.”

A miscarriage of justice. He should’ve responded with “WILL YOU STOP?” as soon as she finished talking.

Of course, who knows where this will go now. If I have a crack in my windshield I’m legally required to spend two weeks in court and eight months in jail, but then again, I don’t work for ESPN. As a public figure I guess it’s impossible to look at things objectively from either side. From my side it’s, “he got arrested for drunk driving”. From Jalen’s side it’s, “Nobody famous ever pays for this, why should I?” Or the more reasonable one, “I’m sorry and I won’t ever do this again, I promise”. I guess both sides have a point. Although one side drove drunk, so f**k one of the sides.

Does this shirtless guy with green hair and a leather mask strike you as the kind of person who might be having internal problems? Well, former WWE star Shane “Hurricane” Helms is now under investigation for driving drunk after blowing through a stop sign on his motorcycle, losing control of the bike, and sending himself and his girlfriend flying face first through a chain link fence.

Cops say one of the witnesses told officers he was hanging out with Helms at a local restaurant minutes before the crash and said he “was sure” Helms had been drinking there.

While no charges have been filed, this isn’t Helms’ first go-round with being drunk and doing things he isn’t supposed to; he was arrested in January of 2010 for public intoxication when he got piss drunk and tried to fight Chris Jericho in a cab. It’s also not his first go-round with being thrown face first into a chain link wall (they teach you that in wrestling school … although they don’t teach you how to fall off of a twenty foot ladder), but the accident this accident gave him what I’m gonna go ahead and call a “face turn,” pictured right. Not really the way you want to turn your face.

Also, come to think of it, he used to drive a motorcycle around (with his girlfriend in it, even) on wrestling shows. He called it the “Hurri-cycle.” Man, I hope that eyewitness who saw him drinking wasn’t wearing a sweatshirt with “Super Hero In Training” on the front.

[TMZ]