New league in Dubai - Cano, Bartolo and Others
 

Saw this article today about a new league forming in Dubai with several prominent ex players as owners: Barry Larkin, King Felix, Ryan Howard, Adrien Beltre and Mariano Rivera.

Robinson Cano, Bartolo Colon, Didi Gregorious, and Pablo Sandoval headline players drafted into it. Seems like it’ll be a mix of senior league to start but I wonder what it’ll turn into, or maybe just stay that way:

https://bleacherreport.com/articles/...-united-league

Peanuts, popcorn & beheadings.

Sounds like a blast....literally.

Dubai is throwing silly money at a ton of current and former big names in many sports. The "group" putting a lot of it on is worth around 350 Billion. Yes B as in billion. For comparison a million seconds is 12 days. A billion seconds is 31 years.

They are putting on a MMA tournament with a supposed $300 million in total prize money. For the freak show part of the event they got 3 former Worlds Strongest Men winners and a bodybuilder/actor to fight each other.

Ben, do you have a link to that MMA tournament, I'm not seeing it.

Weirdly it has been confirmed by a couple of the athletes but there is still very little out there about it. It is supposed to be February 17th. I messed up and this event is in Qatar and not Dubia. But pretty much the same thing/place.

All I know is 3 strongmen and 1 bodybuilder/actor doing MMA is going to be an absolute shit show at best.
https://www.finisherschampionship.com/

Thanks for the link. I may need to see this. Does sound interesting, but yah could be a trainwreck.

People follow the money so if someone is putting the money up others will follow
Just going to be another form of independent minor league type baseball trying to be legite using some Name known players.
I do not think it will last long unless it gets some tv time in some or many countries and the quality of the play has to be there.
Not sure How older players like Bartolo Colon is nothing more than a gimic will help

It would help the same way it helps Inter Miami to sign Lionel Messi. And at least on the surface it seems like that's the initial draw for this league too. Watch the players you loved play against lesser competition and resemble the player you remember.

I would think there is probably opportunity in this part of the world too. If you can get even just some of the people playing cricket to play baseball that's a huge audience.

Could be a refreshing return to the early days when it was the tough guy fights.

Here's competitior 172, he has 10 years studying something nobody has ever heard of, 5'5" and 150lbs
And the challenger, a 50 year old guy who "won" a barfight back when he was 20, never shut up about it, and his friends basically forced him to sign up. He's 6'5" and claims 300.

The bells rings, and .... a few swings and misses by both then OUCH, that's going to hurt tomorrow... funny stuff :D

I'm picturing a brawl for all featuring Bas Rutten, Mike Tyson, Tito Ortiz, Dan the Beast Severn, Cabbage Correira, Tank Abbott, Chuxk Liddell, Iran Barkley, Andrew Golota Conor MacGregor, and Butter Bean.

It is awesome when both people don't have a clue what they are doing.

The reality was usually you had someone that actually trained to fight easily beat the hell out of some silly bar fighter or sport karate guy.

I am not sure I agree with the comparison to Messi going to Inter Miami.

Messi went to the US so he could follow in Pele's footsteps (and Beckham as well) and further cement his legacy and contribution to the global development of football. If he wanted the money, he could have been paid $500 million to be a hood ornament for the Saudis.

Forgive me, but I find it hard to respect athletes-- especially American athletes -- who choose to go to the UAE, Qatar or Saudi for some big payday when they have already secured multigenerational financial security. (As an off topic aside, recall that 15 out of 19 of the Sept 11 bombers were Saudis).

I have a lot of respect for Collin Morikawa (who probably didn't have as much in the bank as Tiger and Rory) for rejecting LIV.

Let's be honest Jeff. With everyone using the DH, Bartolo is one of the best slugging pitchers of all time with one home run, hardly a gimmick. Granted he'll never catch Ohtani though.:D

No charge for spelling correction.

Yep, mostly that the one time I watched back then. Plus a fight not too far pff my description. And one that was a guy who seemed trained, against an untrained guy. Trained guy seemed eh, not bad probably not good enough for regular boxing. Untrained guy.... all he had going was durability, which he had plenty of. Just enough to keep it interesting for a while.