List of All Articles with Tag 'sports'

The PGA Tour may not need to worry about its much-maligned merger with LIV Golf turning off its

Preps-to-pros prospect Scoot Henderson is the headliner among the guards in the upcoming NBA draft

England refrained from all-out “Bazball” attack and settled for a mix of easy singles and 12 fours but no sixes to go to lunch on 124-3 against an uncharacteristically cautious Australia in the first Ashes test

Max Holloway will fight the “Korean Zombie”, Chan Sung Jung, in the main event of UFC Singapore in August. Holloway, a former featherweight champion, has long desired a bout with Sung Jung, most recently calling for the fight after beating Arnold Allen in April. Holloway, 31, outpointed Allen in a Fight Night main event in Kansas City to bounce back from his third loss to Alexander Volkanovski, who took the featherweight title from the Hawaiian in 2019 and has retained the belt against him twice. Sung Jung was also beaten by the reigning champion in his most recent fight, suffering a fourth-round TKO loss to Volkanovski last April. Holloway and Sung Jung are now set to meet in a Fight Night main event at Singapore Indoor Stadium on Saturday 26 August. Holloway and “Zombie” are both fan favourites, with each having taken on a ‘who’s-who’ of featherweights in the UFC. While Sung Jung, 36, has a somewhat patchy record in the promotion, Holloway has been largely dominant over the last decade – although Volkanovski has been a thorn in his side. The Australian and Dustin Poirier – who beat Holloway with the interim lightweight title on the line in 2019 – are the only fighters to defeat the Hawaiian since 2013. Holloway won the UFC featherweight title by stopping Jose Aldo in June 2017 and retained the gold against the icon six months later – with another TKO. “Blessed” also holds victories over Allen, reigning interim champion Yair Rodriguez, Brian Ortega, Calvin Kattar, Cub Swanson, and former UFC champions Charles Oliveira, Frankie Edgar and Anthony Pettis. The news that Holloway vs Sung Jung would headline in Singapore was accompanied by two further announcements by the UFC. The promotion revealed that Cody Sandhagen would face Umar Nurmagomedov in a Fight Night main event in Nashville on 5 August, and that Ciryl Gane vs Sergey Spivak would be the headline bout at UFC Paris on 2 September. Click here to subscribe to The Independent’s Sport YouTube channel for all the latest sports videos. Read More Conor McGregor denies allegation he sexually assaulted a woman at NBA Finals Conor McGregor announces fiancee Dee Devlin is pregnant with couple’s fourth child Vettori vs Cannonier live stream: How to watch UFC Fight Night online and on TV this weekend

Manchester United says Alessia Russo will leave the club's women's team as a free agent this summer

Swiss cyclist Gino Mäder has died one day after crashing and falling down a ravine during a descent at the Tour de Suisse

The Los Angeles Dodgers, over the decades, have endured fans' diatribes along with their cheers

“I live in the middle of nowhere, literally in the woods. It’s like freakin’ Hogwarts out here,” Modestas Bukauskas says, sounding distinctly more like a Londoner than a Lithuanian. “There’s a bit near my house with no signal, and right before I was about to drive in there, my manager gives me a video call. It was late at night, I freakin’ swerve to the side of the road, completely disregarding that there were about two cars behind me. My manager goes: ‘Bro, you’re fighting in Australia in two weeks – in the UFC.’ I literally broke down into tears.” It was as if the Lithuanian-born Briton had entered a mirrored reality; one year earlier, Bukauskas had been shedding tears over a call from his manager, but the news was altogether less positive. In late 2021, the development was that Bukauskas had been cut by the UFC. Sitting at home recovering from a serious knee injury, and reflecting on a third successive defeat, Bukauskas had in fact seen the news on Twitter before his manager could even confirm it. In the year that ensued, Bukauskas was out of the Octagon, but he was still in a cage. “The amount of pain and struggle, drinking in bed...” The 29-year-old cuts himself off. “I just so many hard f***ing memories, having to go through the deepest and darkest times. I don’t remember a time when I was acting myself. It just seemed like I was in a picture with no colour. Everything was black and white. Mentally, I was broken. I had a lot of things to fix before I could even move forward.” First to be fixed was the knee. Then, somehow, Bukauskus was indeed able to move forward. At first, it might have seemed like moving backwards. In 2019, before joining the UFC, Bukauskas had won and retained the Cage Warriors light-heavyweight title; after leaving the UFC, he turned down other offers and opted to return to the London-based promotion. Perhaps, unknowingly, Bukauskas was shining the glass of that mirrored reality. Within two months, and two fights, he had once again secured Cage Warriors’ light-heavyweight crown. And then came the call – on the side of the road, at the opening of the forest, in the middle of nowhere. “I was absolutely elated,” Bukauskas tells The Independent. “After I got off the phone with my manager, I was playing some, like, war music in the car – a remix of the Witcher video-game music – full blast for the last five minutes back to my house. I was screaming with just... fierceness. I got home and felt kind of dizzy, it was weird. I didn’t feel like I was there. “I went upstairs to tell my step-mum, and she was kind of worried, because I was almost out of breath. Then my dad was chilling in bed after a hard day, and he was like (Bukauskas taps into a Lithuanian accent): ‘What the hell do you need to get me out of bed for?’ I brought them downstairs and told them, ‘We’re back in the UFC,’ just hugged them and broke down in tears again. Over the last couple of years, that’s probably one of the happiest moments I’ve had, just me with my family, hugging each other in our sitting room.” Bukauskas’ father, in particular, understands the struggles that the sport entails. In the 1980s, before the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Gintas Bukauskas learned to fight on the streets of occupied Lithuania, before going on to work as a mixed martial arts coach. Gintas brought his family to Britain when Modestas was three years old and first introduced his son to combat sports two years later. “I just remember vividly that he would show me some kicks, some moves,” Modestas recalls. “At that age, you’re just like, ‘That looks cool! Look at that kick!’ Literally about a week into showing me some stuff, he goes (Bukauskas dips into that Lithuanian accent again): ‘Okay, now you must train hard.’ My childhood was thrown into strict regime and training. There was kickboxing, sambo. I kind of branched into different sports later – county-level tennis, I went to high school in the US for a couple of years and played basketball and American football – and I took a break from full-on martial arts from 12 to 18. But as a teenager I still became a four-time British kickboxing champion.” Bukauskas’ father was there through it all, and he was in his son’s corner when the 29-year-old’s journey brought him back to the UFC this February, as Bukauskas took on Tyson Pedro on the Australian’s own turf. Fighting in Perth on two weeks’ notice, Bukauskas emerged as a decision winner against Pedro over three rounds, greeting the revelation of the judges’ scorecards with a roar of relief in the RAC Arena. “This is where everything can start to make a solid story,” Bukauskas says. “It’s by no means finished, we’ve got many more things to do, but I’m starting to build a proper comeback story.” That story continues on Saturday, when Bukauskas takes on Zac Pauga at the UFC Apex in Las Vegas. Bukauskas might live off the map, but he is now firmly back on the UFC’s. Read More UFC 2023 schedule: Every major fight happening this year UFC rankings: The Independent’s pound-for-pound fighters list Former Conor McGregor and Michael Chandler opponent makes prediction for UFC clash MMA fighter skips press conference due to fear of heights Conor McGregor announces fiancee is pregnant with couple’s fourth child Conor McGregor offers update on Miami Heat mascot after punching incident

The Los Angeles Angels are hurting — and still winning games

Freddie Freeman singled to deep center field with the bases loaded in the 11th inning, Chris Taylor hit a tying grand slam in the sixth, and the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Chicago White Sox 5-4

Four players were ejected and the match was cut short by the referee after repeated homophobic chants

It was a rare public appearance by the head of the billionaire Perrodo family’s multinational oil company. Benoit