Yep, he sure loves the spotlight.

While football fans prepare for Super Bowl XLVI this Sunday in Indianapolis, football fans from the area have another thing on their minds lately and that’s the possibility that their beloved Indianapolis Colts just might decide to show the city’s most beloved hero, Peyton Manning, the door.

Based off the Tuesday TV sitdown with ESPN’s Hannah Storm, Indianapolis Colts owner Jim Irsay pretty much said the Colts won’t pay injured Peyton Manning the $28 million bonus he’s due March 8, and may show him the door in Indy and let him walk as a free agent.

Storm showed a clip from Tuesday’s “SportsCenter Special: NFL Face to Face” (9 p.m. ET) on Monday morning’s SportsCenter. The special features Storm interviewing Indianapolis Colts owner Jim Irsay, Cam Newton, Aaron Rodgers and others.

Manning’s endured three neck surgeries. In the clip shown by Storm on Monday’s SportsCenter, Irsay says it’s a ”health issue” not a money issue. Peyton Manning made about $18 million this season but never played a down.

”This is not a knee, not a shoulder or an ankle. This is a neck. It’s my responsibility as an owner to make sure that if I’m going to put a player back on the field, that it’s in his best interest.” Irsay says he has ”great loyalty” to Manning and won’t trade him. At the same time, he can’t afford to make major financial decisions on a ”sentimental” basis.

”This isn’t fantasy football,” says Irsay…

And this is for the interim UFC welterweight title.

Originally scheduled between Georges St-Pierre and Nick Diaz for the UFC welterweight title, UFC President Dana White had to take the welterweight champion out of UFC 143 after St-Pierre suffered a serious injury that will sideline him for about 10 months.

Of course, we all know the show must go on and that’s exactly what Dana White did, tapping Carlos Condit to face Nick Diaz for what now would be the interim UFC welterweight title. White announced the news on his favorite media channel, Twitter.

”GSP blown acl will be out for 10 mos.,” UFC President Dana White tweeted. ”Now Condit vs Diaz for the interim welterweight title on Feb 4th in Las Vegas!!”

Nick Diaz, a former Strikeforce title holder, was supposed to fight Georges St-Pierre in UFC 137 in a champion vs. champion match. But thanks to Diaz not showing up in a pair of pre-event press conferences, White pulled him off the St-Pierre fight and instead got B.J. Penn.

After earning a unanimous victory over B.J. Penn, Diaz called out St-Pierre, prompting the champion, who was scheduled to fight Carlos Condit, to lobby for a title fight against Diaz instead, leaving Condit hanging.

But because of the injury to St-Pierre, it turned out that Condit…

UFC on Fox 2 is on this weekend.

And featured in the co main event is the mercurial Chael Sonnen, the guy who got Anderson Silva before he got careless in the final moments of the final round and let the middleweight champion catch his arm for a triangle choke.

But as far as Sonnen is concerned, he did beat Anderson Silva. He believes it so much that he even got his own UFC middleweight belt to boot, displaying it at the press conference leading up to UFC on Fox 2.

”For those of you that can’t see, this is the world championship title of which I took from Anderson Silva, and in this country possession is nine-tenths of the law,” Sonnen said of his unofficial buckle. ”Finders keepers, losers weepers, and if he wants it back, he knows where to find me.”

Michael Bisping, who faces the self-proclaimed 185-pound king this weekend, quickly chimed in, ”Yeah, I think you can get [that belt] on eBay for about $29.99.”

When asked if Sonnen intended to walk down the aisle on Saturday for UFC on Fox 2 with the strap wrapped around his waist, Sonnen avoided answering while providing a WWE-esque response. ”It’s my belt, I slept with this thing last night,” he shared. ”You’re lookin’ at the reflection of perfection, the one that gets all your attention. You’re lookin’ at the man with the biggest arms, the man with the greatest charm, and the man in Chicago to do a lot of harm to a guy three doors down.”

”I believe that I’m the true champion. This is a true…

It’s back to Hawaii for NFL players who missed out on playing for the big dance.

That’s right, before the New England Patriots and the New York Giants resume their Super Bowl rivalry from four years ago in Super Bowl XLVI, the rest of the NFL heads back to Hawaii for the annual showcase of the league’s best.

It’s the 2012 NFL Pro Bowl people. And while these players may have missed out on playing in the big dance, at least they have an opportunity to end their year on a high note against some of the league’s best.

The league deciding to schedule the Pro Bowl on the weekend before the Super Bowl in 2010 is a brilliant idea. Well, not so brilliant since they should’ve done this a long time ago. I mean, come on, would you still watch the Pro Bowl after all the hype leading up to the Super Bowl is over? I certainly won’t. The Super Bowl is supposed to be the ultimate football game and as far as I’m concerned, it is the game I would like to watch last.

Last year, the NFC handed the AFC with a 55-41 loss so it is safe to say that the AFC will want to even the score come Sunday.

Leading them this year at quarterback is Ben Roethlisberger. After his Pittsburgh Steelers got unceremoniously booted out of the playoffs by Tim Tebow and the Denver Broncos, you know Roethlisberger will be out looking to prove something the rest of the league.

Unfortunately for him, there’s this one quarterback from the NFC who…

And if you saw their last meeting, you would know why.

It used to be all that mattered when the Clippers played the Lakers was whether Jack Nicholson bothered to show. In their second meeting this 2012 NBA basketball season, it just didn’t matter no more.

This one clearly mattered. By the final period, there threatened to be more technical fouls and near-fights than basketball plays. The basketball wasn’t that bad, either. Spectacular, actually, if you are measuring intensity. The Lakers will measure it any way you want. Led by that old hand, Kobe Bryant, the Los Angeles Lakers prevailed in a rough and rugged fourth period to win, 96-91.

Coming into this game, the Los Angeles Lakers had lost four of their last five games, including one to the Los Angeles Clippers. The Lakers play four of their next five games on the road and could ill afford to head that way with another loss to the Clippers, which would be four in a row, including two in the preseason.

With only one more meeting in the Hallway Series in April, the Los Angeles Lakers would have lost a season series to a team in its division, and with it possible playoff positioning.

Again, the Lakers took care of all that…

You read that right.

While Super Bowl XLVI is coming to Indianapolis, Peyton Manning, one of the city’s beloved heroes, could be leaving town soon, judging by the comments the quarterback made a few days ago.

Comments that were able to reach Indianapolis Colts owner Jim Irsay, the guy who engineered a huge revamp of the Colts front office which Manning didn’t like one bit.

After introducing new head coach Chuck Pagano, Irsay met with reporters and took some subtle but clear shots at Peyton Manning, the NFL’s only four-time MVP, who said earlier in the week that the Colts complex with so many getting fired wasn’t a healthy environment for his rehab from neck surgery.

”Look, I have so much affection and appreciation for Peyton,” Irsay said. ”We’re family, you know, we always will be and we are.” But then the team owner added, ”He’s a politician,” all the while admitting both he and Manning were ultra-competitive types.

That said, Irsay didn’t care for the tenor of some of Manning’s comments, which also made reference to not wanting to get into a war of words for public support.

”I don’t think it’s in a good interest to paint the horseshoe in a negative light…”

The rematch is on.

Heading to Super Bowl XLVI, the New York Giants will play the New England Patriots in Indianapolis for a Super Bowl rematch.

Can the Patriots really beat the Giants for the Super Bowl this time? We’re asking because the last time these two teams did this, the New York Giants handed the New England Patriots their first and only loss of that year to win Super Bowl XLII and deny the Pats of breaking the undefeated campaign the 1972 Miami Dolphins did.

Yeah, you can just imagine how disappointed the entire fan base of the New England Patriots then. Imagine the huge wave of momentum they were riding then only for the New York Giants to snatch it away like that.

Super Bowl XLII. The first Patriots – Giants showdown in the ultimate game. For Pats fans, it is the game that cannot be watched, the game that shall not be mentioned, the game that has left permanent scars. Eight Patriots remain from the team that came so close to achieving the ultimate four years ago, only to walk away devastated after losing 17-14 to New York.

As far as Patriots head coach Bill Belichick and his players are concerned, they have already downplayed any significance with the past meeting. Only, that’s not the sense you get from the Pats who were part of Super Bowl XLII and would like nothing more than another crack at the Giants. Will avenging that loss play any role in the upcoming game? Will it factor in at all..?

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to determine who Las Vegas oddsmakers are rooting for.

Apparently, some people were not betting on the New York Giants to turn it around this year and get to Super Bowl XLVI against the New England Patriots.

Yup, a number of sportsbooks in Las Vegas on the New York Giants winning the Super Bowl at long odds earlier into the season when the Giants were struggling. They were struggling so bad that there were odds as high as 80-to-1.

Jimmy Vaccaro, head of the Lucky’s Race and Sports Book, said in an interview this week that while he took only a few bets that could reap big payoffs for a Giants victory over the New England Patriots, he had heard from other oddsmakers who are at significantly greater risk.

”They got hit pretty hard at the high number,” Vaccaro said. ”If the Giants win this game, it could do some damage out here, there is no doubt. A lot of guys were rooting for San Francisco on Sunday, I can tell you that.”

The concern from oddsmakers has little to do with bettors wagering on the actual game, some say this game may break the Nevada record of $94 million bet on the 2006 Super Bowl between Pittsburgh and Seattle. Rather, the fear is based on what is known as futures betting.

Essentially, futures are the odds that sports books offer…

But apparently, Pacquiao and his camp continue to come up with excuses to dodge the best pound for pound fighter in the world.

Sigh. That’s the only thing I can do at this point after what is looking like another escape act being made by boxing’s biggest joke, the third world moron himself, Manny Pacquiao.

In case you’ve been living under a rock lately, Floyd Mayweather Jr. has been calling out Manny Pacquiao on all kinds of media outlets lately, be it on TV, press conferences, over the phone, and even on Twitter. The undefeated best boxer in the world just wants to kick Manny Pacquiao’s ass and to have the rest of the world witness how pathetic this third world joke is, unfortunately for fight fans, Pacquiao still doesn’t want anything to do with Money May.

Yeah, sure, Pacquiao probably got his ”very intelligent” fans thinking otherwise. He got them thinking that it’s Mayweather who doesn’t want the fight to happen. But the fact of the matter is, Mayweather wants the fight more than anything. So much so that he already got May 5 booked in Las Vegas just for this fight.

So what’s Pacquiao saying now? Well, he is now saying that Las Vegas isn’t a big enough venue for the fight. Pacquiao and his people want to build a makeshift arena, claiming that the allure of both the Thomas & Mack Center and the MGM Grand Garden Arena, the hunting ground of the best fighters in the world if I may add, just isn’t good enough for Pacquiao’s third world ass.

They want to push the fight as far back as possible until…

Who will be next to challenge Jon Jones?

The Ultimate Fighting Championship invades the United Center in Chicago on Saturday, January 28 for UFC on Fox 2 with an ultimate tripleheader.

In the night’s main event, former light heavyweight champion “Suga” Rashad Evans takes on undefeated former national champion wrestler Phil “Mr. Wonderful” Davis to determine the next challenger to the 205-pound title.


The 185-pound division will watch intently as Chael Sonnen meets Michael “The Count” Bisping in the Octagon. Plus, Chris Weidman hopes to keep his unbeaten streak alive as he battles against Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu master Demian Maia.


This outstanding two-hour broadcast airs live on FOX at 8 p.m. ET/5 p.m. PT.

History was made when the UFC® debuted on FOX in November, as 5.7 million viewers (8.8 million peak) tuned in to watch Cain Velasquez battle Junior dos Santos for the heavyweight title. Now, fight fans around the world can gear up for another incredible night of action inside the Octagon® live on FOX.


“This is the show that officially starts our deal with FOX and we’re bringing what the fans want – a night packed with great fights,” UFC President Dana White said. “We’re kicking this thing off with an incredible tripleheader. Rashad Evans looked fantastic in his last fight against Tito Ortiz and he wants to get the belt back. But Phil Davis is no joke. He’s undefeated at 9-0 and has stormed through guys like Brian Stann, Alexander Gustafsson and Rogerio Nogueira. He wants the title shot just as bad as Rashad.”

Jon Jones will have his eyes on the UFC on Fox 2…