1) “The Beat”, “The Beast”… “Ipswich’s Best Ever”; Kevin Beattie died this week at the age of 64. A player Sir Bobby Robson once called: “The best defensive player who could play forward that this country has produced.” Exhibits A-M can be found here. Beattie was also Michael Caine’s body double in Escape to Victory, beating Sylvester Stallone in an arm wrestle during some downtime in filming (if only smartphones existed in 1981).
2) Boxing and British sport as a whole also mourned the loss of champion trainer Enzo Calzaghe, the guiding light behind his son Joe’s rise to the very apex of the sport. The modest but magnificent Newbridge boxing club was were it all began and this film offers a behind-the-scenes glimpse from 2011. The fight that helped launch Joe to stardom was his win over Chris Eubank in 1997 to claim the WBO super-middleweight strap. And as for the Welsh duo’s greatest win, take your pick between Jeff Lacy in 2006 and Mikkel Kessler a year later.
3) Simon Yates became Britain’s fourth winner of a Grand Tour this week at the Vuelta a España. Here’s the story of this year’s race. The Bury-born-and-bred rider has … on a few occasions … been referred to as “The Flying Black Pudding”, which is rather coincidental given this month also witnessed the World Black Pudding Throwing Championships in Ramsbottom, just five miles from Yates’s home town.
4) Zlatan Ibrahimovic scored a fairly ridiculous goal over the weekend for his 500th career strike. But then so did Dimitri Payet, albeit the former West Ham winger’s 116th for club and country.
Football on BT Sport (@btsportfootball)
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Dimitri Payet 😱
Technique? Magnifique 👌 pic.twitter.com/Cd9UmBCbiV
5) From 2013, the greatest 31 seconds of kickboxing you’re likely to see in an all-Dutch bout between Tyrone Spong and Michael Duut. Talking of footwork: Australian punter Michael Dickson brings the drop-kick to the NFL, then shows how he did it. And talking of American football … the old sneaky fake fair catch! Which also means: time for trick plays.
6) And finally, ever fancied a 30-minute deep dive into one of the most iconic tracks on the N64 version of Mario Kart? For all lovers of Choco Mountain, this is for you.
Our favourites from last week’s blog
1) Andre Agassi playing Ivan Lendl in a fine pair of late-80s trackie Bs.
2) Match of the Day from 1984 kicking off with a young Harry Redknapp celebrating Bournemouth’s 2-0 win over Manchester United in the FA Cup.
3) “There just isn’t enough billiards on TV these days,” is not a phrase you hear often but this may help stir such an opinion.
4) Massimilian Porcello’s banana-like free-kick for Karlsruhe against Hansa Rostock from 2007 which also contains a weird reverse camera effect. Like that? There’s also a compilation of his set pieces here.
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