19-year-old tennis star Sloane Stephens became a Brent-Musburger-style overnight sensation when she upset Serena Williams at the Australian Open, gaining almost 40,000 Twitter followers in one night and earning congratulatory tweets from Shaq, Dirk Nowitzki, singer John Legend and more.

Serena’s response to the upset was pretty predictable — at one point she angrily broke her own racquet — but a quick look at Serena’s Twitter reveals why she might’ve been in a bad mood, and why she might’ve not been at 100% going into the match. I don’t want to overstate it, but it looks like her ankle ate the three-course meal chewing gum from Willy Wonka’s factory.

A pic of the swollen ankle is below. Warning: it may give you The Klumps flashbacks.

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Lately, we’ve been trying to focus more on the positive side of sports news and gossip, which means more Dirk Nowitzki dressed up as Dr. Satan for the benefit of children or Daniel Bryan letting a little boy with cancer tap him out and less TMZ comparing women to sows. Even that had Kate Upton pictures in it. This trend will probably reverse when the new year drops and suddenly everybody has a sex tape, but for now, it’s a good thing.

In the spirit of positivity, here’s my favorite story of the day — a young Houston Texans fan became concerned when Arian Foster left the team’s 23-6 loss to the Minnesota Vikings early with an irregular heartbeat, so she decided to write him a letter to tell him he’s the best player on the team, and that she hopes his heart feels better. And she drew the logo!

As cute as that is, what makes the story truly great (and different from the time I wrote a letter to Cal Ripken Jr. when I was four with an enclosed macaroni & cheese baseball card and did not/have not heard back from him in almost 30 years) is the fact that Foster saw the letter, and took to Twitter to respond. He didn’t draw any logos, but it’s almost as adorable:

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OH GOD I JUST READ MY OWN HEADLINE

Ray Elbe — you may remember him from season 9 of ‘The Ultimate Fighter — suffered an injury that no man should have to suffer. If the headline didn’t make you gag and step away from the computer, here’s the nicest way I can put it … he was having sex with his girlfriend, slipped out of her as she was going up, then suffered the consequences as she was coming down. And by “consequences” I mean SHE BROKE HIS PENIS IN HALF.

“I ended up fracturing my penis bone … I tore the urinary tract, tore some membrane — as it happened you can imagine the shock and the horror that was going on,” Elbe said in the video. “I jumped up from the intimate moment, blood shooting out of my groin. I immediately tried to run to the shower, felt myself losing consciousness, tried to walk back to the bed at which point I collapsed, knocking myself out. I gave myself 10 stitches and fractured a couple teeth.”

Elbe wrote about the situation (pretty accurately described as “as close to death as you can come without dying”) on his blog, MagicalRay.com, and if there’s ever been a time to NOT end a sentence with LOL, it’s this one:

This is probably the worst nightmare you can think of. The biggest problem people suffering from this medical emergency encounter…is not immediately seeking medical attention … I hope my story helps someone with a similar injury in some way…as this experience is truly something you would never wish on anyone..lol

Nobody is laughing.

[h/t (or should that be a d/t?) to Larry Brown Sports]

Thanks to Katy Perry for that horrible headline, and for wanting to see my dick so badly.

Anyway, what appears to be a centipede crawling up a dude’s nose is actually the facial wound of Craig Peacock of the UK Elite Ice Hockey League, a 24-year-old Belfast Giants forward who dumped a guy over the boards and caught a skate blade in the lip. As we learned from a profusely bloody KHL defenseman who left most of his jugular on the ice, you should always be mindful of the other players’ feet, because they are attached to death and dismemberment.

I have a tendency to overstate the gruesomeness of injury photos, so I won’t get all hyperbolic about this one, but will warn you that the before stitches shot (included after the jump) is … pretty horrifying. It looks like somebody was trying to dig an irrigation ditch in his face. Viewer discretion is advised.

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We miss you, J-Cutty.

We’re going to get into this more in-depth tomorrow in the With Leather Fantasy Football Support Group, but it’s just remarkable to me how many high profile players were injured in the past two weeks. Tonight’s a perfect example, too, as both the Chicago Bears and San Francisco 49ers will face off on Monday Night Football without their starting quarterbacks. Obviously, that’s bad news for the Bears, as Jay Cutler had been just Dilferesque enough to support the Bears’ amazing defense.

But it might be good news for the 49ers. Nothing against the equally Dilferian Alex Smith, but I’m sure there are some fist-pumping San Fran fans out there. You don’t have to celebrate your QB’s injury, but it’s okay if you say something like, “Hey, at least we’re not stuck with Jason Campbell.”

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The With Leather audience is split down the middle when it comes to pro wrestling coverage. One half loves it, and spends hours every Monday night in one of our WWE Raw open discussion threads making esoteric jokes about the Christmas Creature or whatever. The other half can’t express their feelings beyond “fake” and “gay” and wish I’d hurry up and get back to posting UFC Ring Girls. Both sides are valuable to the community, so here’s something we can all agree on: when a pro wrestler almost dramatically kills himself in the ring, it’s a terrifying thing of interest.

This clip (borrowed from Cage Potato, which secretly just wants to be a wrestling blog) features Atlanta-based wrestler Charade going for a double rotation moonsault in a match at a Beyond Wrestling show in Rhode Island on September 30th and, well … sometimes your double rotation moonsault only gets 1 3/4 rotations, and that’s a terrible thing for your entire body.

If you’ve never seen a double moonsault, this is what it’s supposed to look like:

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