John Cena-Gary Coleman, JBL Note, Y2J, & More News

- Chris Jericho posted on Twitter: MEMPHIS!! Meet Chris Jericho @ Spin Street SUNDAY May 30 @ 2pm. 3484 Poplar Ave. For info call 901-327-8730.

-- The 5/22 supershow in Cincinnati, Ohio drew 10,000 fans.

-- WWE stocks had a good Thursday, finishing up at $16.89 a share.

-- JBL wrote: Gonna be at world cup, playing golf with friends in sun city for a week first.Get to meet mandela, very cool.

-- John Cena posted on Twitter: CeNation. Received word of gary coleman's passing. Very sad. He was a pleasure to work with. He will be missed.

http://www.ewrestlingnews.com/stories/John_Cena-Gary_Coleman_JBL_Note_Y2J__More_New.shtml

4 Former WWE Stars Available To Join TNA - Details

Former WWE stars Maria Kanellis, Gregory Helms, Paul Burchill and Charlie Haas are free to join TNA Wrestling as their respective 90-day no-compete clauses with World Wrestling Entertainment have expired. The clause prohibits released talent from immediately joining TNA, though they're free to start with any independent promotion. As noted earlier, there were money issues which was holding up Maria joining TNA. Also according to an exclusive source, there is no interest in Burchill right now and they are waiting on Shelton Benjamin before they think about brining back Haas.

Kanellis, Helms and Burchill were released on Feb. 26 while Haas was released two days later on the 28th.

For more great exclusive TNA coverage like what you just read above including how much money TNA has offered Maria to join TNA Wrestling, visit our TNA website only at TNAWrestlingNews.com.
http://www.ewrestlingnews.com/stories/4_Former_WWE_Stars_Available_To_Join_TNA_-_De.shtml

Major Jim Ross-WWE Update Inside Here - The Latest

On His WWE Status: I have worked out what we believe to be a win/win, employee agreement with WWE and will remain with the company that I have been with essentially since 1993 when I debuted at Wrestlemania 9. (To celebrate this occasion, as I'm writing this I'm wearing a toga.) Going forward, I will be focusing on a variety of talent relations matters, essentially as a consultant, of which will not require weekly travel. I will be visiting FCW in Tampa on a regular basis to observe the development of the young men and women who, I hope, all want to headline Wrestlemania some day. This area of the company has always been of particular interest to me including when we opened developmental areas years ago in Louisville, Cincinnati, Memphis, and Southern California. Many of the WWE's biggest stars of this generation came from those areas.

On His Future Plans: We are still going forward with our book concept which is evolving really well. I tell myself every day that I'm NOT going to write an 'average,' wrestling book. (For the record, I'm still battling on what to leave OUT of the book in order to keep it around 275-300 pages.) I've also been offered a position to do some free lance writing for a major, national sports website which we'll update you on within the next 10 days or so. It will likely focus on College Football, the NFL, and MMA.

On Possibly Doing MMA Announcing: The new arrangement with WWE will allow me to explore broadcast options in other, non competitive areas such as MMA if I so choose. (For now, being a MMA fan and watching the UFC this Saturday night on PPV works for me. I'm still an Evans 'lean.' as this one has Slobber-Knocker written all over it.)

http://www.ewrestlingnews.com/stories/Major_Jim_Ross-WWE_Update_Inside_Here_-_The_L.shtml

Reinventing Robin: the hero of Sherwood down the ages

Robin Hood was a part of my childhood. But when I started to think about all the various films and re-watched them, they were unsatisfying to me because I didn’t really know who this guy was,” Russell Crowe said in a recent interview. At 46, he is about to become one of the oldest actors to portray Robin Hood on screen, with the character re-imagined as a grizzled, heavy-set war veteran. In the poster campaign for the forthcoming release, which reunites Crowe with the Gladiator filmmaker Ridley Scott, the usually immaculate English hero is shown with a blood-splattered face and wielding a giant hammer.

If there’s one thing that the makers of the latest version want you to believe, it is that they are the first to infuse the legendary tale with the back story, realism, historical context and political themes that it truly deserves. But are they?

The Robin Hood scholar Allen W Wright, who runs the website www.boldoutlaw.com, says: "Every new movie or series that comes out, the creators always claim ‘our Robin Hood doesn’t wear tights’. Well, neither did the last one, or the one before that! Each film wants to present itself as more real than the last; they want to give a sense that you are seeing the untold story.”

The 13th-century hero made his screen debut in the 1908 silent film Robin Hood and His Merry Men. Since then he has been at the centre of more than 40 major films and television series around the world.

Although the most enduring image of the outlaw remains the campy tights-and-pointy-hat-wearing swashbuckler portrayed by Errol Flynn in 1938’s The Adventures of Robin Hood, Scott and Crowe are not the first who have attempted to break the mould.

And it’s not just costume changes that have set the different incarnations of the character apart. Famed for “robbing from the rich and giving to the poor”, Robin Hood has long been seen as a champion of social justice and a hero of the political left. But over the years, he has also been used by writers to comment on Joseph McCarthy’s anti-communist witch-hunts in the US in the 1950s, the Vietnam War and even Thatcherism in the UK.

One reason the legend has lasted so long could be that its flimsy historical foundation allows it to be told in many ways.



Bob White, the chairman of the World Wide Robin Hood Society, thinks so, citing the dearth of definitive evidence about the archer, who may never have existed at all.

“It means every time someone comes along to tell a new tale, they can pretty much tell it from their own perspective,” he says.

The earliest surviving references to Robin Hood exist in 15th-century ballads, written hundreds of years after the hero was said to have lived. Although characters such as Little John and Will Scarlet exist in these sources, Maid Marian and Friar Tuck were added centuries later.

In fact, there is very little in the Robin Hood mythos that is not up for debate. In the earliest tales he is a depicted as a yeoman (a gentleman farmer) but in later centuries he was reinvented as an aristocrat. The earliest stories also place him not in Nottingham or Sherwood Forest, but Barnsdale in South Yorkshire. All agree that he stole from the rich; however, few sources state that he gave anything to the poor.

“He was probably pretty harsh and did some pretty unpleasant things,” says David Baldwin the author of Robin Hood: The English Outlaw Unmasked. “But ordinary peasants in England had a pretty hard time of it, so anyone who contravened the king’s laws would have been considered a hero and I think that’s how the legend came into being.”

Although Robin Hood’s most famous adversaries were the Sheriff of Nottingham, Guy of Gisbourne and King John, some of the earliest tales depict him as a Saxon leading an uprising against the Norman invader William the Conqueror in the 11th century. The idea of Hood as a Saxon fighting Norman nobility may go some way towards explaining the legend’s enduring appeal.

The idea of Hood as a freedom fighter grew in popularity after the publication of Sir Walter Scott’s novel Ivanhoe in 1819, which helped make the character a hero to opressed populations around the world.

Although dozens of documented outlaws could have provided some or all of the bases for the character, Baldwin believes the Robin Hood legend began with a man named Roger Godberd.

“They were both said to be yeomen. They both robbed and killed rich churchmen. They both poached the king’s deer in Sherwood Forest. They were both protected by knights called Sir Richard. They were both captured by sheriffs of Nottingham and imprisoned in Nottingham Castle at one time. They were both pardoned by the king and then returned to their former outlaw ways of life,” he says.

http://www.thenational.ae/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20100513/ART/705129976/1082

Mourinho hungry for more silverware rather than Spanish silver

Real Madrid last night agreed a compensation package with Inter Milan for Jose Mourinho, leaving the Portuguese coach free to sign for the Spanish side on Monday.

Although the amount was not revealed it, Mourinho’s decision to move to the Bernabeu is not money-motivated, insists his close friend Brendan Rodgers.

Mourinho, already the world’s highest paid coach, worked together with Rodgers at Chelsea, where the Portuguese hand-picked the then-31-year-old from his role as academy coach at Reading and gifted him the reins of the Chelsea youth squad. Within two years Rodgers was promoted to reserve team coach and when Mourinho accepted Massimo Moratti’s offer to manage Inter Milan in 2008, the Northern Irishman is believed to have been invited to follow his mentor to the San Siro.

Rodgers, 37 years old and fluent in Spanish and Italian, declined, opting instead for a full managerial position at Watford, the English second tier club. The two men, however, have kept in close contact.

Just hours after Mourinho lifted the Champions League trophy seven days ago, he was talking of next season and the possibility of coaching Real Madrid.

By Wednesday, Manuel Pellegrini, the Galacticos manager, was sacked, costing Madrid president Florentino Perez in the region of €8m (Dh36.4m).

Yesterday, Jorge Valdano, the Madrid director general, confirmed he hopes Mourinho will be presented to the fans next week now that a compensation package has reportedly been agreed with Inter.

Mourinho is expected to sign a four-year contract in the Spanish capital that will see him pocket €10m per year, while his assistants will split €5m per annum.

But Rodgers, who left Reading in December and says he is in talks with several clubs, including Manchester City, about possible coaching roles, is adamant it is silverware not money that is tempting his friend across the Mediterranean.

“Madrid need to win things and Jose’s record is proven that he wins,” said Rodgers. “His motivation is always to win trophies. Coming off of a domestic and European treble he’s obviously highly sought after.

“He’s undoubtedly one of the leading managers in the world and everyone knows Real Madrid is a fantastic and massive job. Considering that, it’s a big honour for him I’m sure and while he’s not the manager there yet, if he goes, it’ll be a great challenge and that’s what he likes.

“But the move is one where, he’s achieved the treble in Italy and there’s not much else for him to achieve there. I also know he’s very keen to become the first man in history to win three [Champions League] titles in three different countries, so if he can do that by going into a club that already has an outstanding squad and put his stamp on it over the next year or two then he has every chance of achieving that.”

Mourinho’s relationship with Italian football was notoriously prickly, but Rodgers added the outspoken Portuguese coach’s adoration for Inter was genuine.

“It was obviously difficult for him,” he said. “The football life, he loved it at Inter, but there are other aspects of it he maybe never enjoyed.

“But I know he loved working with his players and, as he does at all of his clubs, he got close to them there and built a strong spirit, which is difficult to break.

“His focus is always on the job he is doing, he never strays from the club that he’s at and you can’t argue with his professionalism. Whichever thoughts are on his mind he’s always focused on the task at hand and, at Inter Milan, he’s obviously got the job done. His focus was firmly on the Champions League final and that what he’s achieved for the club.”
http://www.thenational.ae/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20100529/SPORT/705289818/1004

Kaka wins his fitness race

JOHANNESBURG // Kaka, the Real Madrid playmaker, looked injury-free in Brazil’s first full training session in South Africa yesterday.

Kaka had been practising separately from the rest of the team because of a left thigh muscle injury and there were fears that he would join the growing casualty list of high-profile players who will miss the tournament.

But he completed all the drills and appeared unaffected by the ailment that has affected his performances during his first season in Spain.

Dunga, the coach, had said Kaka would take it slowly in the team’s first days in South Africa but would eventually be ready for Brazil’s World Cup opener against North Korea on June 15. Brazil arrived in South Africa on Thursday are aiming for a sixth World Cup title.

“Kaka himself knows what he can do and he will feel when he is fully ready,” Dunga said.

Luis Fabiano, the striker, also arrived in South Africa with an injury – a muscle ailment that kept him from playing with Sevilla when it won the Copa del Rey title last week in Spain.

But he joined Kaka and the rest of the players in a practice session with ball drills and tactical exercises. Dunga wants to the players to spend as much time together so they can work better as a team.

“We have to gain a group aspect again,” Dunga said. “It’s been a long time since we played together, so there are many details that we have to adjust before the World Cup begins.”

The coach said the team’s two warm-up matches against Zimbabwe in Harare on Wednesday and Tanzania in Dar es Salaam on June 7 will be valuable to their preparation.

“We will try to use these matches to make adjustments and test our options,” Dunga said.

The five-time world champions are practising at a school in Randburg. The session was opened to journalists but closed to fans, although several school employees and some students sneaked in to watch the players.

“It’s just fantastic to have these guys here in our school,” said 28-year-old teacher Xander Vandyk.

The team later practised at the team’s hotel in a closed session.

Meanwhile, Julio Cesar, the Brazil keeper, is horrified by the ball which will be used at the World Cup, likening it to a cheap one bought from the supermarket. “It’s terrible, horrible,” said the Inter Milan player, widely considered to be the world’s top goalkeeper.

“It’s like one of those balls you buy in the supermarket.”

Wendell, the Brazil’s goalkeeping coach, said the new ball was highly unpredictable when hit from long range.

“The danger for goalkeepers is when they come off their line,” he said. “They need to stay in a safe place otherwise the ball will drop behind them (and into the goal).”

The World Cup ball, named ‘Jabulani’ which means ‘to celebrate’ in the Zulu language, was billed as the first perfectly round ball and the most accurate yet when it was unveiled by Fifa.

Among those quoted at the presentation ceremony in December was Kaka, Cesar’s Brazil teammate, who said in a statement: “For me, contact with the ball is all important, and that’s just great with this ball.”

http://www.thenational.ae/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20100529/SPORT/705289808/1004

Defying Blockade, Cargo and Passenger Vessels Head for Gaza

JERUSALEM — Israel braced Friday for a showdown with a flotilla of nine vessels carrying hundreds of pro-Palestinian activists and thousands of tons of supplies headed for Gaza. It was the most ambitious attempt so far to break Israel’s maritime blockade of the Hamas-run coastal enclave.

The flotilla of cargo ships and passenger boats, led by the Free Gaza Movement and a Turkish organization, Insani Yardim Vakfi, converged at sea from a number of countries over the last 10 days.

Israel, which says it allows basic supplies into Gaza through points along the land border, denounced the flotilla as a political provocation and has vowed not to let the boats reach Gaza. It has invited the flotilla to land at an Israeli port, Ashdod, instead.

Gaza has been under an Israeli- and Egyptian-imposed blockade since Hamas, the Islamic militant group that does not recognize Israel’s right to exist, took over the territory by force in 2007. Israel, the United States and the European Union classify Hamas as a terrorist organization. The activists said the boats, which were expected to reach the coast sometime this weekend, were carrying 10,000 tons of cargo including cement, school supplies and medical equipment aimed at easing the hardship in Gaza.

In a statement emailed to reporters on Friday, organizers of the aid voyage, nicknamed the Freedom Flotilla, said that “for over four years, Israel has subjected the civilian population of Gaza to an increasingly severe blockade, resulting in a man-made humanitarian catastrophe of epic proportions.”

Maj. Gen. Eitan Dangot, the Israeli military’s chief liaison with the Palestinian-controlled territories, said Israel’s policy was very clear. Briefing a group of foreign reporters in Tel Aviv this week, he said that Israel had offered the activists the chance to unload their cargo at Ashdod. Israel, he said, would be willing to transfer it, after inspection, to Gaza. But he added, “We will not allow ships to come to Gaza while Hamas is in control there.”

In a news statement issued by Israel’s Foreign Ministry this week, Sarah Weiss Maudi, the ministry’s expert on maritime and humanitarian law, said the maritime blockade was in force “because Israel is currently in a state of armed conflict with the Hamas regime” in Gaza. Hamas, she continued, “has repeatedly bombed civilian targets in Israel proper with weapons that have been smuggled into Gaza by various routes, including the sea.”

The flotilla organizers described Israel’s suggestion of sending the aid to Gaza through official Israeli channels as “both ridiculous and offensive. Their blockade, their ‘official channels,’ is what is directly causing the humanitarian crisis in the first place,” the organizers’ statement said.

Israel was preparing to intercept the boats and divert them, if necessary, to Ashdod. Large tents and other facilities have been set up at the port to receive the activists, who number up to 800 and include public officials. An Israeli Arab lawmaker was aboard one of the boats. From Ashdod, the activists will either be voluntarily deported or detained.

The approaching flotilla has set off a public-relations war regarding the situation in Gaza.

General Dangot and other Israeli officials insist that no humanitarian crisis exists. Anticipating the bad publicity that was bound to accompany the arrival of the boats, the military and the Foreign Ministry published detailed reports this week of the almost 100,000 tons of supplies that Israel says it has allowed into Gaza this year. Israel says the importing of cement and iron has been greatly restricted because Hamas uses those materials to manufacture rockets and bunkers. Nevertheless, it has allowed some building materials for about a dozen infrastructure projects supervised by international bodies. Many additional goods are smuggled into Gaza through tunnels running under the border with Egypt.

In a sarcastic e-mail message to reporters this week, Israel’s Government Press Office recommended a high-end restaurant in Gaza, the Roots Club, attaching the menu and a link to its Web site. “We have been told the beef stroganoff and cream of spinach soup are highly recommended,” the office said. The restaurant would, of course, be out of reach for most of Gaza’s 1.5 million residents. Israeli military officials put unemployment there at almost 40 percent.

International organizations active in Gaza paint a bleaker picture. A United Nations Development Program report published on Sunday determined that about three-quarters of the damage caused by Israel’s military offensive in Gaza in the winter of 2008-9 had not yet been repaired. And a report by the United Nations humanitarian coordinator blamed the blockade for “suffocating” the agricultural sector in Gaza and said that insufficient food was now a problem in more than 60 percent of households.

The Free Gaza Movement has organized at least four aid voyages since the summer of 2008, usually consisting of one or two vessels. The earliest ones were allowed to reach Gaza. Others have been intercepted and forced back, and one, last June, was commandeered by the Israeli Navy and towed to Ashdod.

In other developments, police officers in Jerusalem on Thursday arrested two ultranationalist Israeli activists after they hurled insults at the White House chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, as he toured the Old City with his family, a police spokesman said. Angry at what they view as the Obama administration’s anti-Israel policies, right-wing activists had been waiting to confront Mr. Emanuel, who was in Israel on a private visit to celebrate the bar mitzvah of his 13-year-old son.

One of the arrested ultranationalists, both of them well-known provocateurs, could be heard yelling, “Shame on you, You hate Israel” and “Traitor,” according to Agence France-Presse.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/28/world/middleeast/28mideast.html?ref=middleeast