Monday Stuff

If you heard the show this morning, you heard us interview Nikki Boertman, the Commercial Appeal photographer who has become a rising prospect in the Morning Rush Babe Draft. She's moving up somne boards, folks, and I wanted you to be able to see what she looks like.

You can see why some people would compare her to Sarah Jessica Parker...



See the resemblance? Nikki was very confident that she would not only be drafted highly, but that she would be a starter for the winning team. She pretty much called her shot. We'll see if she's right on Wednesday.

Speaking of pictures, here's one of Tomika Skanes, the "Blasian" (Black/Asian) model that Mario brought to our attention:



Yeah. That's nice. Good work, Mario. Tomika's got a real chance to be drafted very highly by someone.

The babe moving up my draft board in a real hurry is Rachel McAdams--she stars as Claire Cleary in Wedding Crashers. She is amazing throughout the movie, gorgeous and funny; she's got to be drafted high, doesn't she? Great personality, no off-field issues I know of, incredible workouts...it all adds up to a winner in my book.

By the way, if you like comedies at all, you need to go see Wedding Crashers. It is one of the funniest movies I have seen in the last 5 years. I haven't laughed that hard in a theater since Anchorman (which I still contend is criminally underrated by most people). If you like Vince Vaughn at all, you will want to see this movie multiple times. It definitely earns it's R rating, but it is nice to see a comedy that doesn't try to sell out to attract the teen movie dollar, but instead goes all the way.

As for the weekend in sports, here are a few brief observations:

--There is no Big 5 in golf. There is Tiger, and there is everyone else. With his win at the British Open on Sunday, Tiger moved past Ben Hogan and Gary Player into third on the all-time majors list. Tiger has 10 majors for his career. Ernie Els, Vijay Singh, Phil Mickelson, and Retief Goosen combined have 9. Like I said, there is no Big 5. In addition, if Tiger could have made putts consistently at the U.S. Open, he would have won that tournament, and if he had putted well this weekend, he would have won the British by 10 strokes. His only competitition is history.

--Taylor/Hopkins was more an intriguing fight than a particularly good fight. I am very happy to see that Jermain Taylor is the new undisputed middleweight champion on the world, although the split decision victory was anything but undisputed. Scores of boxing writers from around the country adjudged the bout entirely differently than did the two judges who gave the bout to Jermain Taylor. I don't know how I feel about the fight, to be honest. I need to watch it again. Upon first inspection, I gave the bout to Taylor 115-113 due to activity level and accuracy. However, if you look at the punchstat numbers, you will see that Taylor actually landed 10 less shots than Hopkins, despite throwing much more. Indeed, Hopkins took the young challenger apart in the last few rounds of the fight, hurting him on more than one occasion and showing the composure and skills that have made him a middleweight legend. According to the judges, it was too late. One certain controversy, apart from the scoring as a whole: somehow, judge Duane Ford gave the 12th round to Taylor, when it was evident that Hopkins had dominated his opponent throughout. That kept the fight from being a draw. The biggest positive one can take from this fight is that the rematch has a decent chance of being staged in Memphis down at the Forum. It is logical--Memphis has proven its ability to stage big fights, Jermain Taylor is from Little Rock and would easily bring 7,000+ fans to Memphis, and HBO likes the setup at the Forum. It would appear that Memphis has a pretty good chance of staging the rematch.