Actually I would expect a wrestler to do this

So you line up against a guy in the state tournament championship match, and then you learn - the dude wrestles tigers to train - match over before it's even started. Brian Hickey is putting the awesome in wrestling.

Brian Hickey — Kaz Dymek is so totally stoked by his chance to become a Sarasota, Fla. high school's first state wrestling champion that he's sparring with "Old Buck" who, per the Herald-Tribune, "weighs 400 pounds, eats 30 pounds of meat a day, growls with a ferocity that can peel paint, and is a Bengal tiger."

The destined-for-career-in-carnivals feel disappears, however, when you learn Dymek's family owns the Big Cat Habitat and Gulf Coast Sanctuary, and that the 29-0, 285-pound grappler "has been around cats ever since his aunt turned to him inside the family trailer one day and said, 'Here, I'm leaving for a while,' and handed him a tiger cub to babysit."

This, of course, is per Deadspin. 

Former Olympic Gold Medalist on "The Biggest Loser"

If you watched the Rams-Seahawks game the other night, you probably saw "The Biggest Loser" promo that mentioned wrestler Rulon Gardner. This guy was a stud. He knocked off the undefeated Russian Greco-Roman wrestler Alexander Karelin, who haden't lost in 13 years, to win the Olympic gold for the 286-pound weight class.

Now? He weighs 474 pounds. Yikes. See what happens when you train and train and train and eat carbs and eat carbs and eat carbs, and then stop? Yeah your body goes to pot. Anyways, this is definitely a story to follow.

Rulon attributes the weight gain to getting used to bad habits. According to the show, he's happily married, so who really knows what occurred in the past decade to take an athlete from peak physical condition to this? Oh, right—NBC knows, and will likely use this information to tug at the Biggest Loser viewers' heartstrings until the end of the season.

After his weigh-in, Rulon had a few words: "Being an athlete and winning the Olympic gold medal in Greco-Roman wrestling to... World Champion... to Olympic Bronze medal to... to this... is a shame, it's tragedy. It's horrifying for me and my family

Since he is a wrestler, and they now how to drop weight in a hurry, this guy is going to blow away the overweight housewife from Kansas. Just sayin...

High School Sports Feature: Deer Park repeats as 2A State Wrestling Champions

Since it is obvious that Casey is biased towards the west side schools :D when it comes to sports, I've decided to give you guys a taste on how we do high school sports on the east side.

Domination.

Deer Park, which is roughly 15 minutes north of Spokane, didn't just repeat as 2A wrestling state champions. They crushed the field. Here's the blog post from Mike Vlahovich of the Spokesman Review:

Deer Park put all its wrestlers in the finals today - Blake Adams, Drew Acorn, Billy Rhoads, Brandon Leliefield, Cody Miller and Shawn Burton - to wrap up its second straight State 2A championship in convincing fashion. As coach Matt Jorgensen said yesterday, it’s all about putting people through the front door and when you have six it’s pretty hard to lose. The Stags have doubled the score in the field and will approach last year’s 167.5 point total before it’s done.

On the 2A level, most schools have trouble even fielding a full roster of wrestlers since the sport doesn't have quiet the allure of basketball, but apparently the Stags have found themselves a very deep and talented pool of wrestlers. 

While it's amazing that they've gotten all their wrestlers into the finals, I find it even more amazing that they have contenders in every single weight class. That's tough to find. Wow.

Anyone see Vision Quest? That must be how they train.

This is Sparta!

In Sparta they trained their young boys to fight. From a very early age, the boys were being tested and being primed for battle.

That was 1200 BC. Welcome to 2008. Where Sparta has been reborn.

Thanks to the sport Ultimate Fighting, children as young as 6-years-old are now able to participate.

Read the full article here.

Ultimate Fighting, has now moved from the pay-per-view audience to our own back yard. But this trend has many worried.

A number of medical experts have questioned what the effects of taking such a pounding will be on young, growing bodies.

But Tommy Bloomer, father of two fighters disagrees.

"We're not training them for dog fighting," said Bloomer, a 34-year-old construction contractor. "As a parent, I'd much rather have my kids here learning how to defend themselves and getting positive reinforcement than out on the streets."

And those in favor of the young fights said that it really is no different than youth wrestling.

Hmmm. Youth wrestling = pin the guy on the mat you win. Ultimate fighting = kick the crap out of the other guy you win.

Yeah, I'm just not seeing the similarity. But who am I to question this. I'm sure that kid can beat me up.