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Rashad Evans was fighting for respect. He earned it and then some with a devastating 2nd round TKO of Chuck Liddell in the main event of UFC 88: Breakthrough.

If Evans needed any more validation of how little respect he was getting, he could have taken a look at the UFC’s text message prediction poll of the main event which favored The Iceman by a whopping 81% to 19% margin. Or he could have listened to the UFC announcers, who had all but penciled Liddell in for a return to light heavyweight title contention after his inevitable victory. Still, Evans never whined about being disrespected as is commonplace among professional athletes in the stick and ball sports. He let his fists do the talking and with a perfectly placed overhand right will likely never have to worry about a lack of respect again.

From the opening horn, Evans showed no fear of Liddells once legendary power. Instead, he danced and moved (which was dumbly criticized as showboating by the UFC announce team), using his slick footwork and speed to dart in and out of range of Liddells punches. In the process, he was able to use his superior handspeed to get off first. His punches werent exactly highlight reel power shots at this point, but were nonetheless effective as evidenced by a cut opened under Liddells eye.

Evans highlight reel power shot was to come in the 2nd round. Liddell backed Evans up near the cage wall and went to throw an uppercut. Simultaneously, Evans responded with an overhand right that landed quicker, harder and more accurately. The perfectly placed punch knocked Liddell out cold. Evans’ KO was one of the most devastating in the history of the sport, and made all the more so by the status of the man on the receiving end.

Rashad Evans raised his record to 17-0-1 with the TKO victory. Liddell, meanwhile, saw his record drop to 21-6″with three of those six losses coming in his last 4 fights.

Liddell’s loss notwithstanding, it was a good night for UFC veterans as Rich Franklin and Dan Henderson won their fights in impressive fashion. Franklin looked particularly sharp in dismantling tough Matt Hamill, eventually prevailing by 3rd round TKO. Hamill had trouble getting inside for the takedown he needed to compete in the bout, and every time he closed the distance he was met with a barrage of Franklin punches and kicks. Franklin employed leg kicks early on, which obviously hurt Hamill’s ability to shoot for takedowns and ended the bout with a perfectly placed body kick that had Hamill doubled up and tapping out even as Mario Yamasaki covered the prone fighter.

This was the UFC’s first trip to Atlanta and despite a good attendance the crowd itself was somewhat disappointing. In a marked contrast to the knowledgeable and enthusiastic fans at the Target Center in Minneapolis for UFC 87–arguably the best MMA crowd ever at a US venue–the live crowd at Phillips Arena often acted as if they were at a taping of Georgia Championship Wrestling. Every foreign fighter was booed mercilessly–including South Korean Kim. Kim was treated like legendary Gary Hart managed pro wrestling heel Pak Song as he had to endure a USA chant during his fight. Perhaps the audience didn’t realize that South Korea has been a US ally since its establishment after WW II. The fighters from other “longtime adversaries” of the United States–Brazil and Holland–fared somewhat better.

More problematic was the crowds utter lack of respect for the fighters postfight. Poor Dong Hyun Kim was booed during his postfight interview like he was Professor Toru Takana cutting a heel promo on Mr. Wrestling 2 after winning the Georgia Heavyweight Title by throwing salt in his opponents eyes while the referee was distracted. Not quite the respect that a 4th degree judo black belt whod just won a very tough fight deserves. Even Rashad Evans was booed after his dominating KO victory.

Ross Everett is a widely published freelance writer and highly respected authority on World Cup soccer betting. His writing has appeared on a variety of sports sites including sportsbooks and betting odds sites. He lives in Las Vegas with three Jack Russell Terriers and an emu. He is currently working on an autobiography of former interior secretary James Watt.

The New York Jets and rookie quarterback Mark Sanchez found a sure fire cure to their recent struggles-a game against the lowly Oakland Raiders. Sanchez passed for–3 yards and a touchdown, plus added a rushing touchdown as New York thumped Oakland 38-0 in the largest regular season shutout win in franchise history. Oakland quarterback JaMarcus Russell continued to struggle, and he passed for just 61 yards with three interceptions before he was benched in favor of Bruce Gradowski. The Jets improved their record to 4-3 while the Raiders dropped to 2-5.

NFL football betting enthusiasts who took the Jets as -6 road favorites had smooth sailing throughout the game for an easy pointspread cover. The Jets improved to 4-3 against the spread while the Raiders fell to 3-5 against the number. The 38 points scored went OVER the posted total of 34. Oakland failed to score a touchdown for the 15th game in the past four seasons.

It was such an effortless game that the only thing that Sanchez had to apologize for was surreptitiously eating a hot dog near the end of the contest:

“I want to apologize for that. I wasn’t feeling very good and didn’t eat much before the game, so I was feeling a little queasy. Toward the end of the game, I probably should have eaten one of those bars or something, but someone offered a hot dog, so I grabbed it and tried to be discreet about it, but obviously not discreet enough. So I shouldn’t have done that, and it won’t happen again.”

The Jets capitalized on three early Raiders’ turnovers and started two of their first three drives inside the five yardline. Sanchez praised the defense for making his job easy:

“It makes it so easy on the offense when your defense is playing like that. Hats off to them, they had a heck of a game to shut that team out. I don’t care who we’re playing, that’s a big-time accomplishment for our team.”

Jets’ coach Rex Ryan was very pleased with Sanchez’s performance:

“Sanchez was great. He was just smart with the football. I think sometimes he could have put the ball on a receiver, but he was making sure the ball wasn’t intercepted. It was great to see him respond.”

Raiders’ defensive lineman Richard Seymour, who boldly predicted the team would make the playoffs despite their slow start, was singing a different tune after the rout:

“I don’t think we could have beaten an Oakland high school team today.”

Despite Russell’s struggles, Oakland coach Tom Cable remains committed to him as the team’s starter:

“I thought he was really out of sorts early in the game. I just did not feel like at that point he gave us the best chance to have the success we needed to have offensively and made the move. JaMarcus will continue to be our starter. There is no issue there.”

The Raiders will try to bounce back this weekend in a big rivalry game on the road against the San Diego Chargers. Oakland is +16′ road underdogs with the total set at 42′. They’ll then enjoy a bye week before back to back home games against the Kansas City Chiefs and Cincinnati Bengals. The Jets host Miami this Sunday, with New York a -3′ home favorite and the total set at 40′. They’ll also have a bye week to look forward to before returning to action at home on November 15 against the Jacksonville Jaguars.

Ross Everett is a freelance sports writer and respected authority on sports betting odds comparison. He writing has appeared on a variety of sports sites including sportsbooks and sportsbook directory sites. He lives in Southern Nevada with three Jack Russell Terriers and an emu. He is currently working on an autobiography of former energy secretary Donald Hodell.

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Home painters are a set of people who have become celebrities these days. The reason behind this is that home painting is a work which needs good conception and commitment. There is nobody in this world who does not like to have a home that is a matter of destination for all eyes. Apart from the cosmetic point of view, a house which is attractively painted is as great investment for the future also. Retaining the house in such a manner needs the help of painters who are experts in the field.

A painter can enhance the beauty or mar the appearance of your house. Wrong pain schemes, substandard quality of paints, minor streaks etc do great harm. It is imperative to adequate research before finalizing a painter for the job. The most essential quality of a painter is that he should know about the most appropriate color schemes. The second factor is that he should have skillful hands to do the job with perfection. Customer friendliness and openness to recommendations are other qualities to look for in a home painter.

The painter should look around for any issues that may need to be fixed before the painting process begins. He should look every walls, windows, doors, eaves etc to check if there are any unequal surfaces. Every nail, screens, wall hangings etc should be removed and there is a need to cover up the areas that are not to be painted. There are many dangers involved in painting. The painter can fall off the ladder or ingest solvents and dust. Hence it becomes essential for the home painters to come prepared for any eventualities.

Some painting companies will give you a discount off the quoted price they gave to you. In order to reach a sensible bottom line, it is advisable to evaluate the services and costs offered by various home painters. Once the job is accomplished, the painter should do the after-painting clean-ups than leaving the things as they are. This would give the property the sheen immediately that is sought after.

It has to be noted that the paint scheme of your house reveals the lifestyle as well as aptitude. No human being would love to live in dull, monotonous atmosphere. If you want to make your house look perfect, you have to take care of the painting design scheme. It has to complement to the surroundings and the interests of the inmates. Thus it lies in the hands of the home painters to enhance or spoil the splendor of your home. So make a judicious choice regarding the painting job of your home.

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The oldest fight sport adage in the world is ’styles make fights’. For that reason, no one knew quite what to expect in Saturday’s WEC Interim Lightweight Championship battle between Donald Cerrone and Ben Henderson. Henderson was known for his dominating wrestling skills, while Cerrone has a reputation as a punishing striker. Instead of being a clash of styles, however, it was an instance where the differing approaches of the two competitors complimented each other perfectly. The result was a ‘fight of the year’ candidate bout that Henderson won by unanimous-decision.

Henderson opened the fight with a takedown, but quickly got caught in a guillotine choke attempt. He extricated himself from this predicament only to find himself in a triangle choke that appeared for a moment to be a potential fight ending submission. That would not be the case, however, and Henderson would take control in the last half of the round with his powerful takedowns and ‘ground and pound’ punching assault.

Rounds two and three were all Henderson, as he took Cerrone down almost at will and began to pummel him on the ground. Cerrone managed a couple of submission attempts from the bottom, and did what he could to keep Henderson off of him with upkicks but nowhere near enough to salvage either round. At times, Cerrone looked downright clueless as to what tactical approach to take.

The tide would turn again in the fourth round, as Cerrone began to time Henderson’s takedown attempts. He became much more difficult to get to the ground, as well as administering punishment of his own after stuffing takedowns with punches and knee strikes. Later in the frame, Cerrone came close to ending the fight when he locked in a nasty and unorthodox choke that WEC commentator Frank Mir described as ‘almost an inverted rear naked choke’. After some tense moments, Henderson was able to escape. Cerrone would also control the final round, evading Henderson’s takedowns while scoring with his striking. He had another potential fight ending submission attempt in the fifth round, as he locked in an arm bar and appeared to have good leverage as he twisted Henderson’s arm into a nasty angle.

The decision itself was somewhat surprising, with Henderson winning all three judges’ scorecards by identical 48-47 scores. He’d clearly won rounds two and three, while Cerrone was the obvious winner of rounds four and five. This meant that all three judges had given the edge to Henderson in the first round, favoring Henderson’s punching attack over Cerrone’s submission attempts.

Henderson will now face WEC Lightweight Champion Jamie Varner to unify the titles. Varner entered the cage after the decision was announced to ‘cut a promo’ on the winner, and suggested the fight take place in December in Phoenix, Arizona though neither the date nor venue has been finalized.

Ross Everett is a freelance sports writer and respected authority on sports betting odds comparison. He writing has appeared on a variety of sports sites including sportsbooks and sportsbook directory sites. He lives in Las Vegas with three Jack Russell Terriers and a kangaroo. He is currently working on an autobiography of former interior secretary James Watt.

The Mapes Hotel in Reno, Nevada met its demise on Superbowl Sunday of 2000 when 75 pounds of explosives packed inside the structure’s support columns brought it to the ground. The controlled demolition came despite years of effort by a number of groups within the community to preserve the building with lawsuits, redevelopment proposals, and grass roots lobbying efforts. The National Trust for Historic Preservation even took up the cause, challenging the destruction in a lawsuit that eventually reached the Nevada Supreme Court.

While the efficacy and justification of demolishing the Mapes is debatable, one thing that is not is the glorious history of the hotel. It was built in’47, and signaled the start of the modern era of casino gambling. Despite the notoriety of Bugsy Siegel and the Flamingo in Las Vegas, it was the Mapes that became the first building in the nation to have a hotel, casino and live entertainment under one roof. It also became the hotel of choice for celebrities staying in Northern Nevada. Clark Gable and Marilyn Monroe stayed at The Mapes during the filming of ‘The Misfits’. Joseph McCarthy, America’s famed anti-Communist crusader, admitted to a reporter over cocktails in the Mapes Lounge that he really didn’t have a list of Communists in the US despite his frequent and vitriolic insistence to the contrary.

In the 50s and 60s it became, along with Lake Tahoes Cal-Neva Lodge the place to be seen in Northern Nevada. The top floor, window-walled Sky Room showcased performances by the legends: Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Jackie Gleason, Louis Prima, Mae West, Milton Berle, Sammy Davis, Jr., and the Marx Brothers among others. Subsequent years were not kind to downtown Reno but the Mapes continued to do well during the 60’s and 70’s. The hotel finally closed in’82, due more to financial difficulties experienced by the Mapes family caused by one of their other Northern Nevada gaming properties than anything else.

Reno has yet to experience the sort of growth that has been seen in Southern Nevada, and for that reason the destruction of the Mapes is more open to debate than the hotel demolitions to the south. Even the demolition of The Sands–perhaps the most historically significant casino in the state–is hard to argue against given the inability of such a small property to compete in the current Las Vegas marketplace and in light of the value of the mid-strip real estate.

That’s not the case in Reno, where vacant land and/or buildings ripe for redevelopment are abundant downtown and in the other casino areas of the city. The official reason that the Mapes had to come down was that the city needed the land to expand its vision for downtown redevelopment. While this is certainly a much needed effort, to suggest that the existence of the Mapes was a barrier is absurd. In fact, many of the proposals rejected by the city would have gone a long way to enhance the revitalization of downtown Reno and included artists lofts, office space and other mixed used properties. Despite receiving a number of viable concepts for the Mapes Building, the City Redevelopment Authority rejected all of them and the Mapes was destined for demolition.

The behavior of the City Redevelopment Authority throughout the process has come into question. Overlooking the Truckee River, the hotel was perfectly placed between the downtown casino area and the riverfront district. In’96, the city purchased the htoel and began accepting proposals for redevelopment. Despite receiving a number of proposals that made sense both in terms of their financial workability and positive impact on the downtown area, the City Redevelopment Authority nixed all of them and insisted that the hotel be razed.

Following the 2000 demolition, the lot remained vacant for over a year until a temporary ice skating rink was hastily constructed the following winter. The property has been improved and the rink is now permanent which, while not in itself a bad use for the land, further calls into question the efficacy of demolishing the structure. It would appear that the city had no clue what to do with the land, but for whatever reason wanted the building brought down. This has led to all sorts of conspiracy theories, from the City Development Agency having financial incentive to raze the hotel to rumors that the building was haunted and was destroyed to keep the Reno area from being overrun with paranormal activity. Whatever the reason for the decision, the city of Reno has lost a beautiful art deco treasure that played a significant part in the economic growth of the state.

Ross Everett is a freelance writer and respected authority on sports betting odds comparison. He writing has appeared on a variety of sports sites including sportsbooks and betting odds portal sites. He lives in Northern Nevada with three Jack Russell Terriers and an emu. He is currently working on an autobiography of former energy secretary Donald Hodell.

Your bathroom is perhaps one of the most important rooms in your house. It is a room that is used regularly and often seen by visitors too, so it makes good sense to want to have a bathroom that inspires.

If you are at the point of renovating your bathroom then this is the time to be thinking about the different aspects that make up your bathroom and how the pieces will all fit together.

One of the more important choices you will have to make is what sort of bathroom sink you are going to choose.

The number of choices when it comes bathroom sinks is almost endless these days. Whether you decide on a more traditional bathroom or a more modern up-to-date style, you will have a bathroom sink to meet your taste and budget.

Some of the more popular bathroom sink styles include:

Drop in Sink

These are the more traditional style of sink and continue in their popularity today, a great all round sink. You can choose from round, oval or square shapes, from a simple plain design to a stylish scallop design. They allow for a cupboard style vanity, excellent for storage space, they can also be fitted to a pedestal.

Pedestal Sinks

A pedestal sink sits on a column instead of a counter top or vanity. This saves on space since you don’t have a big vanity sitting underneath it. However, it also means that you lose out on that valuable storage space.

Under Counter Sinks

These sinks are all in one as a kitchen sink is. There is no lip protruding above the vanity which makes cleaning much easier. They sit on top of a vanity which allows storage space beneath.

Bowl Sinks

A bowl sink is, as the name suggests, a bowl shaped style of sink that has become very popular in the past few years particularly in very modern homes. Bowl sinks are often made from glass or stone and because of this the styles and color variations are almost endless.

The range, color and style variations available these days will ensure you that you will find the best bathroom sink for your taste and budget.

Want to find out more about bathroom renovation, then visit My Bathroom Guide on how to choose the best bathroom sink for your needs.