A few things, because this worked well on the wrestling post.

1. Don’t be afraid to leave us a comment. I don’t troll the commenters, I actually want to hear what you have to say and interact with you. Creating a community of sports fans at With Leather is one of the best ways to differentiate us from the +1 Dens and gargling bitchfests of other sports blogs.

2. Follow us on Twitter @WithLeather and like us on Facebook so you don’t miss anything, or follow ME on Twitter @MrBrandonStroud for Nickelodeon jokes and sh*t you don’t care about.

3. Click these links, because hey, they’re here.

Sports

Just in Case: The 2011-2012 NBA Schedule Released - Highlights include the Miami Heat being awarded the NBA Championship at the BEGINNING of the season, just to make sure, and “Cleveland Cavaliers” with quotes around it playing a Cub Scout rec-team in January. The Cub Scouts are going to kill them. [Smoking Section]

When Neck Still Mattered - Green Bay Packer Sam Shields decided to get a gigantic tattoo of his own Super Bowl ring on his neck. I think it’s a great idea. I won 2nd place in my 5th grade science fair and have had the ribbon tattooed on my neck since I was 11. [Kissing Suzy Kolber]

Duke Roufus Talks About Pat Barry and the Future of His Gym - Including this for three reasons: 1) we need more MMA coverage on this pro wrestling and Kate Upton website, 2) Maggie Hendricks is great, and 3) whenever somebody talks about the future of their gym I imagine them as Cutty Wise, standing in their doorway making bug-eyes at some petulant 14-year old who would rather shoot Snoop than box. [Cagewriter]

Why Can’t NBA Players Be Aerophobic? - An opinion piece about why NBA players playing overseas would be a bad thing. If I was an NBA player, my response to this would be “lol I’m rich, gonna go get a million dollars to play pick-up basketball for two months in Prague, smell ya later”. I wish I was an NBA player :( [Pineriders]

With Leather

The Best and Worst of Raw 7/18 - With over 100 comments and counting, I’m doing my very best to create and nurture a community of sane, level-headed wrestling fans who just want to enjoy their dumb show and not have to explain to to everyone, much less the other people who watch it. If you don’t like wrestling, click through and look at hot muscular girls in their underpants. [With Leather]

This is the Greatest Collection of Kate Upton Pictures You’ll Ever See - If you still haven’t clicked this, do it just to read the comments section, where a guy is convinced that Kate Upton, super hot magical woman Kate Upton, is a “chubber”. Hilarious. [With Leather]

In Case You’re Wondering, Michael Jordan Is Still Michael Jordan - One of the best comments we got for this story was a retweet that added “if you didn’t think 48-year old Michael Jordan couldn’t dunk, kill yourself”. Man, if I killed myself for every misconception I’ve felt I would’ve perished in the womb. [With Leather]

Chris Kluwe Is The Voice of Reason - The most controversial thing ever said by a punter (outside of With Leather) is now an online phenomenon, and Lockout or no we should spend the next five months watching NFL players compare dicks and lengths of piss on the Internet. [With Leather]

Not Sports

Amazing Spider-Man Trailer Leaks, Goes First Person POV - You know what would make Spider-Man better? Making it be exactly like Twilight. You know what would make the Twilight Spider-Man movie better? Making me play Mirror’s Edge for 20 minutes while it’s on. [Gamma Squad]

Call James Cameron, They’re Planning a Captain Planet Movie - Hopefully they’ll get the guy from Sugar Ray to play Captain Planet like I’ve been joking about since I found out what “Sugar Ray” was. Donald Glover with a flat-top as Kwame NEEDS TO HAPPEN. [Film Drunk]

Fun with the New Two and a Half Men Ads - To date, the only thing remotely resembling fun I’ve ever had with “Two and a Half Men”. [Warming Glow]

The 10 Most Bangable Celebrities on the Planet - I really hate the word “bangable”, but Alison Brie made the list so I’m sharing it. People who did not place, but should’ve: the girl from Paramore, the Chickbusters, the drugged-out 30-year old Taylor Momsen is pretending to be, Mia Tyler (no, seriously), Julie from “Growing Pains” (still), Aubrey Plaza (specifically in Funny People), Scarlett Johansson (all versions). [Pajiba]

[header photo credit to Cody Duty]

Have you ever been to a baseball game and seen your favorite player warming up a few feet in front of you, but when you call out his name or try to ask him for an autograph he waves at you and moves or just ignores you completely? It’s not because he’s a dick, it’s because in today’s sports media world literally any interaction between an athlete and another human being will be reported, analyzed, misinterpreted and manipulated to suit the needs of a writer.

Such is the case of Josefine Öqvist, a Swedish soccer player who traded her jersey for a fan’s t-shirt following Sweden’s 1-0 victory over North Korea in group play of the Women’s World Cup on Saturday. I haven’t read anything explaining why she did it; she was probably just being cool and affable, because hey, she’d just won a World Cup game. 35 years ago they would’ve turned it into a Coke commercial. But today isn’t 35 years ago, it’s 35 minutes ago, so German News reported the incident and put a gigantic black bar across her torso to “censor” it.

So either the German news wanted us to think she’d been playing a World Cup soccer game without a bra and decided to flash everyone in the crowd, or the image of a woman in a sports bra was so potentially damaging to German children that it had to be halted. The best part of the video (besides NEIN! across her chest) is the higest rated YouTube comment, which reads like it was written by Kyle Farnsworth:

What the f**k in the world is that f**ken black box doing there she was f**ken dressed
jnmexico1997 19 hours ago

The uncensored version is now available, which you can watch after the cut.

Read the rest of this entry »

I feel like we may’ve gotten off on the wrong clubbed foot with our new readers from Friday, so I want to dedicate an entire day to them. Today will be nothing but MMA coverage, from The Ultimate Fighter to UFC to our personally organized backyard hobo battles. Of course, by “today” I mean the first two links in today’s morning links, then probably nothing.

Sports

TUF 13 Finale GIF: My God, How Did Danny Downes Not Tap to That? - Like that image at the top of the post? Click over to Cage Potato to watch the gif. It’s sort of like the gif of the big fat guy powerbombing little girls into the swimming pool, except on television. I would’ve started tapping out the second they made me wear those shorts. [Cage Potato]

Joe Rogan Needs To Get Rid Of The Seaward - If you missed this unnecessarily controversial post from Friday, give it a read. If you already read it, go back and read the comments. You won’t believe how tactful people can be during anonymous conversation. One guy said I had a “jew face.” I can only assume that means “handsome.” [With Leather]

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The St. Louis Cardinals have reclaimed first place in the NL Central thanks to a six-game winning streak, which included a four-game sweep of the Los Angeles Dodgers to start the second half of the baseball season. The Cardinals are now a half-game up on the Cincinnati Reds, who are also playing great baseball right now. Some might claim that St. Louis has found its balance of power hitting and precision pitching that was expected of the Cardinals coming into the season, but I say: “Blah blah blah, Anna Kournikova is still a hot piece of sexy wonderful.”

Anna threw out the first pitch of Saturday’s Cardinals/Dodgers game at Busch Stadium in St. Louis, and the Cardinals went on to win 2-0. Kournikova plays for the St. Louis Aces as part of the World TeamTennis organization, which is basically like extreme tennis. So it includes a DJ between plays, coed play and high-fiving. Kournikova’s other female teammate is former No. 1 women’s player Lindsay Davenport (not pictured, because she’s not Anna Kournikova), who has been limited in tournament play since having a kid a few years ago.

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