With Leather would like to celebrate four straight months of stories about butthole soccer fans trying to hurt players with explosives! The streak started back in September, when a guy lobbed a grenade onto the field and almost took off a player’s hand. That was one-upped in October by fans throwing firecrackers at an injured player, and quickly followed by a goalkeeper having his eardrums exploded by a bomb (and stadium arson!) in November.

December almost passed us by without anybody being ASSAULTED BY BOMBS FOR PLAYING SOCCER, but with only four months left in the month, Turkish fans have kept the horrible dream alive.

Galatasaray striker Burak Yilmaz, who used to play for Trabzonspor, was struck in the head by a foreign object (possibly a water bottle) and dropped to the ground. As Trabzonspor defender Giray Kacar went to check on him, a smoke bomb went off near Yilmaz’s rear end. (via Holdout Sports)

Video is below.

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Chael Sonnen, on Jon Jones:

“I have friends on the card. I have fighters who and scratching and clawing their way through the undercard to the prelims, even the main card guys … their whole future depends on the check that they were gonna earn for doing their job next week. That’s all been taken away from them, because one selfish brat didn’t want to go in there and fight. You know, I just don’t understand it. I don’t understand how you could put yourself in front of the company and the industry. … He’s with Nike, Nike should change their motto with Jon Jones to ‘Just Do Nothing’.”

Jon Jones, on Chael Sonnen:

“The things you say about me hold absolutely no weight, you disrespected Anderson and his country but fought like a child. If you’re going to disrespect me out of nowhere, at least disrespect me to my face like a man. And you call me a punk, I’m more man than you’ll ever be. #Coward #Cheater. You’re not worth my time. Earn a title shot instead of trying to talk your way into one and I’ll be glad to hurt you.”

They’ve got a title fight set for April 27th and have been named as opposing coaches for the next season of ‘The Ultimate Fighter’. This is serious business, and shit’s about to go down. Here’s a picture of them palling around at Thanksgiving, taking cheesy holiday pictures.

Wait, what?

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Tomorrow is Thanksgiving, which means it’ll be a light day at With Leather. Burnsy will be enjoying a turkey dinner with all the trimmings, and I’ll be driving an hour south to San Antonio to eat mashed potatoes, green bean casserole and something called “glazed wham”. We’re very different people, but we love you the same.

If you’re like a lot of Americans, Thanksgiving means football. At UPROXX, Kissing Suzy Kolber means football, so here’s my best contribution to the vibe: a clip of Jimmy Junior, Wild Turkey Bourbon spoketurkey, choosing Thursday’s NFL match-ups. He picks the Houston/Detroit, Dallas/Washington and New England/New York games by eating feed out of a particular helmet, and hey, it’s not rocket science, but it’s as statistically valid as anything you’re gonna read at Bleacher Report.

Check out Jimmy’s picks below. “That turkey belongs on my plate” jokes not appreciated. Well, by half of us.

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A tale as old as time, and a great reason to love soccer: one guy says something racist, so the other guy lifts him off the ground with a boot to the nuts.

By way of It’s Always Sunny In Detroit:

Didier Zokora claimed that Emre Belozoglu used a racial slur when the two players’ Turkish clubs met in April. Belozoglu was suspended for two games for the incident.

Zokora got his revenge Sunday when he came together with Belozoglu.

Remind me to never go to Turkey and be a racist. That looked less like a kick to the junk and more like a guy getting gored during the Running Of The Bulls. Motherf**ker kicked a field goal. Didier only got a yellow card for his actions, but watching Belozoglu roll around on the ground in agony after being flung across the stadium by his scrotum was worth any punishment.

Let that be a lesson to everyone:

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No website with a HOCKEY FIGHTS tag has the right to get indignant about another country’s hockey fights, but Lord, when your first game ends with two teams banding together to battle riot police you’re doing it wrong.

Here’s the translation of what went down, from the video’s description:

Held in Erzurum in Turkey by the Ice Hockey Federation Men’s Premier League matches first encounter is clouded with blood. Approximately 5 minutes each kick, punch, and their family bucket athletes hitting the police could not intervene. Two athletes were injured in the riot.

They didn’t even get to use Akay … I gotta say it was a good day.

In all seriousness, though, I don’t want to ever have to use “clouded with blood” to describe something I’ve done. Remind me never to join the Kocaeli Metropolitan Municipality or Ezurum Youth Sports Clubs.

[h/t Puck Daddy]

On Tuesday, Sonya “Black Widow” Thomas won the Wild Turkey 81 Eating World Championship with a world record 5.25 pounds of turkey downed in ten minutes. The next day — the very same day most blogs with nothing better to write about were getting ready for Thanksgiving and reporting the world record — barred and disgraced “bad boy of competitive eating” Takeru Kobayashi was posting live, streaming video of himself destroying Sonya’s world record by more than two pounds.

Two problems.

First, if you haven’t been keeping up with Takeru Kobayashi, here’s the SparkNotes version … Kobayashi is sort-of the Hulk Hogan of competitive eating, both in that he spent years on top as the only marketable star of his profession and that his name is well known outside of the sport, at least to folks who don’t know about esoteric benchwarmers like “Crazy Legs” Conti.

Kobayashi won six consecutive victories in the Nathan’s Fourth of July Hot Dog Eating Competition, but Major League Eating began insisting he sign an exclusive contract (I’m not making any of this up) that would bar him from competing in non-sanctioned events and sever Takeru from his precious hot dog intake. In 2010, while wearing a black t-shirt with “Free Kobi” across the front, Kobayashi stormed the Nathan’s stage to demand his “freedom” from the dispute. He was handcuffed, arrested and taken to jail. They took him off their “wall of fame” and everything.

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