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LAS VEGAS – Colby Covington is blowing up the promotion for perhaps the biggest fight of his MMA career, but it looks like he won’t get any pay points for watching his main match.

The former UFC light heavyweight title contender faces Jorge Masvidal in the headliner of Saturday’s UFC 272. The event takes place at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.

Covington (16-3 MMA, 11-3 UFC) and Masvidal (35-15 MMA, 12-8 UFC) were former friends and teammates, but after an argument over alleged unfulfilled payments by Covington to the Masvidal coach, the two became angry enemies. Their enmity has become one of the biggest rivalries in martial arts today.

A big battle leading a pay-per-view event to the UFC usually means a big paycheck, but Covington has revealed that he won’t get part of the pay-per-sale sales cut.

“I gave up paying to watch,” Covington told reporters on Wednesday’s media day. “I don’t care about paying for this match. This is a personal battle. I want to come and do a UFC show and show that I deserve to be a UFC fighter for life. ”

The vast majority of those paid to watch the UFC are led by championship fights. Very few battles in the past have led to a pay-per-view event. These rare exceptions include very limited fighters such as MMA stars Connor McGregor and Nate Diaz. Covington v. Masvidal are now joining this select group that led the UFC pay-per-view while the titleless match.

After losing the title fight to champion Kamaru Usman, Covington says he has reduced his salary for this match against Masvidal. The “chaos” is along with the reduction of pay and the lack of pay points for watching due to the bad blood with Masvidal and his desire to enter the octagon with him.

“It’s just a personal rivalry, it’s not about the money,” Covington said. “I did not come here to fight for money. I reduced my salary, I was not interested in the money for this battle. It is about settling a blood feud.

“It was a long time. This person keeps it as long as he can, until there is no chance or no other option. This was the greatest opportunity he could get to pay his child support and pay child support, so of course he had to come and get his lost salary.

Connected

Like Russia’s attack on Ukraine continues, Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich announced on Wednesday that he was selling the Chelsea football club. Abramovich said the sale “will not be quick, but a proper procedure will follow” and that net proceeds will go to victims in Ukraine.

“It was never about business or money for me, but about pure passion for the game and the club,” he said.

Forbes estimated Abramovich’s net worth at $ 12.4 billion as of Wednesday afternoon, while Chelsea was worth about $ 3.2 billion in 2021. The 55-year-old man, once Russia’s richest man, said he would set up a foundation where net sales will be donated.

“The foundation will benefit all victims of the war in Ukraine,” he said. “This includes providing critical resources for the urgent and urgent needs of victims, as well as supporting long-term recovery work.”

He also said he would not demand repayment of any of his loans, alluding to a reported $ 2 billion loan he had given to the club.

The announcement comes after Abramovich said on Saturday that he was giving direct control of the club to trustees of the Chelsea Charitable Foundation. One day later, the team lost to Liverpool in the EFL Cup.

With other Russian oligarchs already sanctioned, the threat still looms over Abramovich and his assets. One day before Abramovich was announced, British MP Chris Bryant said that Abramovich would “sell everything until we get to his sanction”, according to CBS Sports.

Meanwhile, British Labor leader Keir Starmer on Wednesday called on Prime Minister Boris Johnson to impose sanctions on Abramovich for his “ties to the Russian state” and his “links to corruption and practices”, according to the BBC. Johnson said he would not comment on individual cases, but said “the order is being tightened on the Putin regime”.

Abramovich has denied ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin, going so far as to file a defamation lawsuit over allegations that he bought the club in 2003 on instructions from the president, according to CBS Sports.

Abramovich said on Wednesday that he was making the sale in the team’s best interest.

“Please know that this was an incredibly difficult decision to make and it hurts me to part with the club this way,” he said.

You know what’s coming now.

worse.

Worse offers. Worse bitterness. Worse results.

And not just for players and owners.

You can start imagining anyone working in a big or spring training league, wondering what to do next and how much it affects every subsidiary business around these sites (think of bars, restaurants, clothing, etc.). ). We already have the roadmap that owners will not just lose money without mitigating the consequences. Thus, how far we are from hearing terms like “leave” and “layoffs” for club employees again due to widespread work disruptions during the worst of the 2020 pandemic.

And players love to play baseball. They don’t do that. They will miss more than salaries. Lost games will affect the potential for career achievements, which are more limited than almost everyone in the country. How many thirty players are on the ice right now who don’t know – but will soon – that their careers are over because organizations just won’t spend the time or money to introduce them at a glance once they consolidate is spring preparation starting?

That should be part of the calculation here, let’s move on – how long is it worth staying away from the players. This will cost them not only 2022 salaries, but will also tighten the notion of the owners about what will be spent on the current class of free agents with hundreds in it? If you get another $ 300 million in discounts and that costs current players $ 300 million, I’m not much into math, but that’s not a profit.

This is all about why MLB and the union need to get back on the table – and now. Time is the enemy and the walls not only surround the owners and players, although the near and long term will also be miserable for them.

The weather will allow the hawks in each camp to be heard louder and it will be easier to consolidate coalitions. There are already owners who are wondering if management should accept all the short-term pain and stay out long enough to get players to accept a salary cap like the NBA, NFL and NHL have. There are owners who want to do it to crush the union, but others actually think that achieving a 50-50 partnership with the players would be better for both parties financially, because together they could solve problems, increase the game. (and mutual revenues) and that the promise is worth the short-term cataclysm.

There are certainly votes on the part of players who do not want to surrender until the luxury tax thresholds rise to the same percentages as sports income. Quite a reasonable question, except that Commissioner Rob Manfred never gets the votes he needs. So we can sit long enough not to wonder about Aaron Judge’s viability as a free agent compared to his AARP eligibility.

Manfred is currently deleting the first two series off the regular season. This only adds to the problems, such as service time will be credited to players for lost games at a time when the parties are unable to make a deal with the current package of problems. Want to see how much worse it is with 12 games, 24, 36?

If you support the sport, your hope is that both sides acknowledge that they have reached at least a third base in negotiations that lasted more than a week in Jupiter, Florida, and are trying to get back on the table quickly to regain some momentum to try to go home. Both sides (of course) have different interpretations of how close they were on Monday night.

Players believe that MLB overestimates closeness as a two-point tactic: 1) use the sense of accomplishment to motivate players to the finish line, and 2) make players look bad if they explode. I don’t put anything next to the owners. They have been moving too slowly in both negotiations and offers. But I will say that I have spoken to half a dozen team employees over the last two days who insist that they went to bed on Monday night, informed to prepare that the deal is on the doorstep. So, if MLB was pulling the wrong target, the league would attract it to its people to make the charade more believable. And I asked all these club employees directly, and no one thought it was a charade. If I’m being lied to, I think we should add an Oscar for Best Fake Office.

However, it is not a mistake that the parties have moved towards each other. Most of the extras for players at the moment are for redistributing dollars to players before the arbitration. Maybe this will lead to some higher overall costs. The key issue, as it always would be, is the luxury tax.

Players rightly see that it acts as a de facto salary cap, and if you want to challenge “rightly”, then know that the threshold was $ 210 million last year and five teams – Yankees, Mets, Phyllis, Red Sox and Astros – there were salaries for these purposes between 206.6 million and 209.4 million dollars. If you think this is a coincidence that is not on the doorstep, I have a loose team in the small league to sell you.

So raising the thresholds is vital for the players, if nothing else to do where the teams will put a higher amount of breaks. MLB’s latest offer was the first threshold to be $ 220 million for the first three seasons of a five-year deal and $ 230 million for the latter. An interested observer (OK, me) wonders if it started at $ 230 million and ended at $ 240 million, if that could motivate a deal.

This interested observer knows that the right place to ask these questions is at the negotiating table. No next meeting was scheduled for Wednesday afternoon. The greater the distance between Tuesday’s next negotiating session and the next, the more devastating it becomes. Time is now the enemy, leading to more lost money and acquired rage.

Return to the table.

I put it off all day. I’m so exhausted – sad, angry and helpless – that I don’t even want to deal with my own emotions about the closure of MLB. Every time I try to crystallize my thoughts in a really comprehensive way, I just shake my head and think how upset I am. How much damage this will do in the long run and how EASY it is for everyone to see except the owners.

Despite the grief that Major League Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred has received about the lockout, the state of the game as a whole and his own management, he offered the shortest and most insightful look at what is happening now.

“I see the omission of the games as a disastrous result for this industry,” Manfred said three weeks ago when asked what it would mean to miss regular season games as a result of failing to reach a new collective agreement.

catastrophic.

This is one of those words that we can use carelessly enough because there is such a simple definition: “Inflicting great damage.”

And Manfred was so precise in his choice of words. Major League Baseball, through its blocking and delaying and stingy offers to players, and now its unilateral cancellation of games, is indeed causing great damage to the industry. I’m not even sure I’m shaking my head anymore. He can just shake on his own, damaged will.

I have a number of other things that I think are important to share here, so I’ll just post them below …

⇒ So, what’s next for the calls? Well, MLB pointed out that Thursday is the earliest time to start negotiations again and both sides are obliged to continue to do so (from a legal point of view). I think we’ll probably see some sessions over the weekend, because I estimate more games will be canceled if there’s no deal by Sunday night. But also, according to my calculations, I don’t think the owners will be terribly worried about canceling the next part of the games. It may not be another two weeks before they start seriously considering a reasonable offer.

⇒ MLB is indeed likely to take the position that it is up to the players to make another counter-offer, as MLB’s “best” offer came before Monday’s deadline:

Manfred says “without exception” the owners have made a final proposal on each individual topic in the CBA, so “you draw your own conclusions” about who should go next.

– Scott Miller (@ScottMillerBbl) March 1, 2022

⇒ Based on the conditions we saw, I could imagine how players are declining slightly in terms of pre-arbitration bonus fund and minimum wage demands, but the balance sheet tax is probably the real battle. It always was. And it just doesn’t seem like it’s the players’ turn to make a big move on this.

CBT’s “best and latest” growth rates proposed by MLB (key tax thresholds)

2022: 4.76% ($ 220 million)
2023: 0.00% ($ 220 million)
2022: 0.00% ($ 220 million)
2024: 1.82% ($ 224 million)
2025: 2.68% ($ 230 million)

From 2011-19, the CBT base grew by 2% per year, MLB revenues grew by an average of 8% per year. https://t.co/uvWp58rYzD

– Travis Savchik (@Travis_Sawchik) March 1, 2022

⇒ I guess that means $ 225 million for the first level of CBT:

I was told that the MLBPA was strongly opposed to 14 teams after the season and that the owners would take CBT up to $ 25 million if that led to a deal.

– Peter Gammons (@pgammo) March 2, 2022

⇒ This is between the last known offers from owners ($ 220 million) and players ($ 238 million), but not the midpoint. The bigger questions might be: where are the second and third levels placed? What are the related sanctions outside the tax itself? What is the lifelong escalation of the deal? More than the first issue of the first year, all these things were also a major problem. In the five years of the deal, for example, the owners ‘offer escalated the first level to just $ 230 million (unlike players’ last year, it was up to $ 263 million).

⇒ This version of events is sad:

Blue Stays’ union representative Ross Stripling “knew we were far away” from the deal, but wanted to be optimistic, calling a broker for spring rental and upgrading the hen to live BP. “Now I feel stupid for doing that.” https://t.co/3HrAIsZVbv

– Shi Davidi (@ShiDavidi) March 2, 2022

“It must be around 12:30[AM, after midnight on Monday] and the fine print of their CBT proposal was something we’ve never seen before, “Stripling said. “They were trying to get things through us, like they thought we were dumb baseball players and we were sleeping after midnight or something. It’s like that stupid football quote, they’re what we thought they were. They did exactly what we thought they would do. They brought us to the deadline they imposed, and then they tried to sneak some nonsense past us within that deadline, and we were ready for that. We have been ready for five years. And then they tried to turn it over to us [Tuesday] in PR, saying that we changed our tone and tried to do it as if it was our fault. That has never happened. “

⇒ In other words, it seems that the plan for MLB was either to make a favorite deal in the wee hours, or to try to make the public think that the players suddenly changed their minds in the morning. In fact, the deal was never close. Everything was still in the service of the (probably) broader plan: either take a monstrous profit from the CBA, or happily cancel the games.

FWIW MLB told the media last night and today that there is momentum to the deal. Now they say the tone of the players has changed. So if the deal is not made today, we are to blame. This is not a coincidence. We had the same tone all the time. We just want a fair deal / to play ball.

– Alex Wood (@ Awood45) March 1, 2022

⇒ The PR game didn’t seem to work, however, as players spoke around today – from Jason Hayward and Wilson Contreras – to Mike Trout. I mean, if you make Mike Trout angry in public, you’ve really done something:

Mike Trout about the CBA talks through his Facebook page pic.twitter.com/ZWTPy2WsOE

– Taylor Blake Ward (@TaylorBlakeWard) March 2, 2022

⇒ Three exclusive articles in The Athletic about what happened:

Opening day has been canceled. Owners may not spoil the union. But they will break something.

Column: https://t.co/zE1NsBIbh5

– Andy McCullough (@ByMcCullough) March 2, 2022

The owners of the big league had all the advantages, but that was not enough. Column: https://t.co/Zyt2aSW8MU

– Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) March 2, 2022

New column: Rob Manfred said the cancellation of the games would be a “catastrophic result” for his sport.

Well, here we are. So, has the disaster officially arrived? Or is there still time before something gets worse – much worse? https://t.co/SRx7zKH9MZ

– Jason Stark (@jaysonst) March 2, 2022

⇒ Last part of the sadness in all this: MLB’s decision not only hurts fans, players and themselves, but also hurts so many others who are part of the larger baseball ecosystem. The stadium workers who are now losing matches and paying. Providers who lose limited opportunities to make money. The bars and restaurants around the stadiums are losing customers. Small businesses working on baseball. The service staff. The hotels. The media. And all the other employees who might see opportunities or salaries are shrinking. Who can be fired or fired. The cobweb stretches out. The side damage is real. We saw it in 2020, when a global pandemic DID similar things. This year it was just a choice. What a disastrous outcome for this industry.

It probably didn’t turn out exactly as James Harden had imagined, but the Six Star’s Allies guard made his home debut on Wednesday night, helping his team come back to beat the Knicks and improve to 3-0 with him on the court.

He scored 26 points, nine rebounds and nine assists in a 123-108 win over the Sixers.

Joel Embiid recorded 27 points and 12 rebounds. Tyris Maxi scored 25 points.

The Sixers will face the Cavaliers on Friday night in Philadelphia. Here are observations of their victory over New York:

Harden must work for his first victory at home

Harden and Sixers almost missed a few potential instant players in the audience.

The team started 2 to 9 from the floor and Harden saw a three on the wing and a floater rattling around the hoop and out. The sailing attempt was discovered after a nice double action with Tobias Harris and Embiid. Harden also made a U-turn, trying a daring pass across the court for Mathis Tiboul. Jericho Sims grabbed an offensive board and scored the ball to put New York ahead 18-9.

However, it didn’t take long for Harden to reverse the game’s momentum. He transforms one and one laying and aa step back three. Thybulle then made a three-pointer and kept it to level the game at 20-all, breaking a 1-for-16 stretch from a distance.

Harden settled into a familiar move and didn’t seem to have much trouble scoring 19 points in the first half.

There were no questions about Harden’s intelligence, but he looked physically strong. His line drives were explosive and he was determined to play by contact on Wednesday and secure a home debut.

Problems in defense in minutes other than Embiid

The game got worse for Sixers when Embiid headed to the bench.

Harden could not carry the lineup and three or four players on the bench to succeed, missing two foul shots and a three-pointer at the end of the quarter, and the Sixers trailed 44-28 early in the second quarter after an easy shot by RJ Barrett. who finished with 30 points and seven assists.

It would be hard to exaggerate how poor the Sixers’ defense was during this period, both in the transition and in the half-court. No player on the floor made a positive defensive impact and the whole group seemed a few steps back. Even with Furkan Korkmaz on the bench after another bad experience, the Knicks felt comfortable attacking every Sixer on the floor. Harden’s five stolen thefts and Sixers’ ability to force frequent turnovers in New York covered up some of the team’s defensive problems against the Knicks on Sunday, but the stops seem hard to connect when Embiid and Thybulle are out.

One glaring weakness was the rim protection. Rivers stayed with Paul Milsap as a backup for Embiid and the veteran did not provide a meaningful deterrence for the Knicks. The defending teams were also worrying for the Sixers in the first half, although much of it was just a byproduct of New York’s big men ‘victory over Embiid.

Rivers said before the game that he was not sure how the situation at the Sixers reserve center would eventually shake. He even mentioned the idea of ​​a committee approach, but noted that this was not his preference. Although Rivers indicated before the game that Willie Cowley-Stein would soon get a chance in the rotation, the 28-year-old did not play until the last minute and 15 seconds.

The Sixers overtook the Knicks by two points in the minutes of Milsap in the second half, which felt like a huge victory, given the continuing instability of the team in defense. Maxey’s presence was massive when he picked up the Sixers with aggressive thinking and gave up three. Kentucky head coach John Calipari watched everything from his place on the court.

Embiid grinned as he saw Maxey make a difficult three-pointer to increase the Sixers’ lead to 112-99 in the fourth quarter. In three games, the Sixers have a conscientious trio for points.

Korkmaz did not appear in the second half until the end of the time. He might get another chance at some point, but removing him from the rotation was justified and could certainly have happened sooner.

It is still crucial to Embiid’s diet

Just like on Sunday, Embiid committed two early fouls on Mitchell Robinson. But Embiid was disappointed in the first half.

He turned the ball three times before halftime, disagreed with a few whistles and scored a technical foul in the second quarter. Robinson even blocked the Embiid jumper, which is a rare sight. The game, after attempting a career-high 27 free throws, Embiid crossed 11 for 13 from the foul line.

Harden stared at the wide-open three-pointer to start the third quarter, but instead chose to hit Embiid in the fight. The unselfish decision paid off, as Embiid leaned over and went to bed. Embiid then drained a three-pointer assisted by Harden in the Sixers’ next reign, and the team’s deficit suddenly became just one point.

No one would mind Harden trying this long-distance jumper, but it’s obvious that he admits that the Sixers are at their best when Embiid is fully focused and confident. Harden is happy to save everyone with a fantastic, challenging game, but he is on a team that must thrive on offense if he gives priority to Embiid’s efficiency and nutrition. So far, so good.

Tobias Harris scored his third foul early in the third quarter and then suffered a rough offensive. Harden was annoyed when Harris rejected an open three-pointer and instead got involved in the traffic, keeping his eyes on the veteran ahead and telling him “Come on” when the Sixers returned to defense.

However, Harris’s performance has improved since the last two games, as he scored 14 points in a 5-on-10 shootout, seven rebounds and two blocks.

As of Sunday, the European Union has closed all its airspace to all Russian aircraft and companies. Across the English Channel, Canada and the United States made the same decision.

The European Union speaks with one voice. As of Sunday, the Union’s 27 member states have decided to close all of their airspace to Russian aircraft in response to Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

A few days earlier, outside the Old Continent, Canada announced that it was closing its airspace “to all Russian aircraft operators,” according to the Twitter account of Canadian Transport Minister Omar Algabra. For his part, Joe Biden officially banned United States airspace for Russian aircraft during his “address to Congress on the state of the Union” on Tuesday night.

According to Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, more Russian aircraft “will not be able to land, take off or take off from the European Union” regardless of the type of aircraft (passenger and goods transport, military aircraft and private aircraft).

This applies to all aircraft, charters, aircraft of airlines or aircraft owned by Russian citizens. “Let it be very clear that our airspace will be closed to all Russian planes, including the private planes of the oligarchs,” she said.

See the full list of countries that already ban Russian flights in the preview below. However, it should be noted that Belarus and Moldova, Ukraine’s neighbors, have announced a global closure of their airspace, and not just for Russia.

Immediate response from Russia

The Kremlin is returning the favor. In response to Western sanctions against Russian aircraft, the country, led by Vladimir Putin, has now banned flights from Russian airspace to all countries that have approved the sanctions. Moscow has responded by imposing several restrictions and banning airlines from the 36 countries listed below.

“In response to European countries banning flights of civil aircraft operated by Russian air carriers and / or registered in Russia, a restriction has been imposed on flights by air carriers from 36 countries,” the agency said. Russian airline Rosaviatsia in a statement issued on February 28.

However, flights by airlines from these countries can still be operated subject to a “special permit” issued by the Russian authorities.

The UN General Assembly is massively “demanding” Russia end the war in Ukraine