I was a little surprised when I heard the mainstream media reporting that Brock Lesnar had chosen to re-sign with World Wrestling Entertainment instead of making a return to the UFC. Normally the mainstream media stays clear of professional wrestling unless the story is negative. It’s no real shock that Lesnar chose WWE over UFC. In case you don’t remember Lesnar has only had 8 fights in the UFC and his last two fights ended in 1st round KO/TKO losses. Lesnar lost to Alistair Overeem on December 30th of 2011 and before that he lost to Cain Velasquez on October 23rd of 2010. Lesnar only had eight total fights in the UFC and his record was 5 – 3. Lesnar is a former UFC Heavyweight champion and did defend his title successfully a couple of times. While there where no salary numbers disclosed I’m sure the figures where pretty close and maybe even favored the WWE a little. After losing C.M. Punk to the UFC last year I guess they can look at this as a win by being able to keep Lesnar. Brad Keselowski made a last lap pass on Kurt Busch to win Sunday’s Auto Club 400. It was the only lap that Keselowski led and it wasn’t even a full lap, but it was the most important lap; the last lap. In trying to hold off Keselowski Busch touched the wall and fell to 3rd place. So who ended up finishing 2nd you ask. Well of course it was Kevin Harvick. So in five NASCAR races this season Harvick has two wins and three 2nd place finishes. Harvick did lead 34 laps on Sunday and was a contender to win the race before the 2nd green, white, checker finish and a big Keselowski run to the front. Paul Menard took 4th and Ryan Newman rounded out the top 5. The NASCAR circuit heads to Martinsville this Sunday for the STP 500. Let’s see if Harvick can get another top 2 finish. I never put a lot of stock into early spring training stats. I always look at what a guy has done the last week or ten days of spring training and see if that player can take it into the regular season. So when I started looking at stats there were a few names most baseball fans would know or at least had heard of at the top of the stat lists. Mike Trout has been hitting this spring with an average of .462 and stayed at .500 for quite a while. Jose Abreu is 2nd in batting average to Trout at .459. Kris Bryant is leading everyone in home runs with 9 this spring, but he’s still headed to Triple A, Iowa; so the Cubs can get that extra year of control. After Bryant it’s Michael Cuddyer of the New York Mets, J.D. Martinez of the Detroit Tigers and Steven Pearce of the Baltimore Orioles all tied with 5 home runs. Bryant also leads everyone in RBI’s with 15. Michael Morse of the Miami Marlins and Alexei Ramirez of the Chicago White Sox each have 14 RBI’s. Spring training pitching can be even tougher to judge than spring training hitting and you can pretty much throw all pitching stats out when the regular season starts. I’ll look for strikeout totals and it’s Collin McHugh of the Houston Astros and Drew Pomeranz of the Oakland A’s who are leading spring training with 19 strikeouts. I’ll also look at walk totals and it’s Rubby De La Rosa of the Ariznoa Diamondbacks is leading pitchers in walks with 10 so far. While Bud Norris of the Baltimore Orioles and Juan Jaime of the Atlanta Braves each have 9 walks. Norris along with Trevor Bauer of the Cleveland Indians and Justin Verlander of the Detroit Tigers have given up 5 home runs each this spring. Of course this all goes out the window on April 5th for the St. Louis Cardinals and the Chicago Cubs and then on April 6th for everyone else as the baseball season gets rolling. Are the defending champion Los Angeles Kings going to miss the chance to defend the Stanley Cup and not make the NHL playoffs? With nine games remaining this season the Kings are tied with the Calgary Flames at 86 points and are two points behind the Minnesota Wild who have 88 points. Calgary also has nine games left in their season and Minnesota has eight games left. Calgary has to play both Minnesota and Los Angeles, but the Kings and the Wild don’t play each other. It’s three teams for two playoff spots and there is a chance that the defending champion will be at home watching when the playoffs start.
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