Tag: Madison Square Garden

Boxer Jake Paul Set For Dec. 31 Bout Against Buddy The Cat

In a match-up hailed by boxing promoter Don King as “a magnificatious spectacle of pugulisticary skillsmanship,” Jake Paul will square off against Buddy the Cat at Madison Square Garden on New Year’s Eve.

He’s defeated men more than twice his age, hammered opponents 70 pounds lighter than him into submission, and made his mark as a six-time winner of the Billy Blanks Tae Bo Championship.

Now Jake Paul, the Youtuber-turned-boxer, will step in the ring with Buddy the Cat, a gray tabby from New York.

Despite the 190 pound weight advantage and Paul’s 76-inch reach vs Buddy’s 4.5-inch reach, Paul’s manager, Nakisa Bidarian, said the 6 foot 1 Paul and the 11-inch Buddy were evenly matched.

“Buddy the Cat is probably Jake’s most vicious opponent yet,” Bidarian told reporters. “Jake is taking this fight seriously, as seriously as he took the fight with Nate [Robinson],” a 41-year-old, 5 foot 9 former NBA player who had no boxing experience before stepping in the ring with Paul.

An early poster promoting the fight, which has since been postponed to New Year’s Eve.

Asked by another reporter what Paul and his team make of critics blasting him for “making a mockery of the sport” by fighting a succession of cans, geriatric opponents and people without boxing training, Bidarian waved a hand in dismissal.

“Buddy’s a cat, isn’t he? Tigers are cats, too. We’ve all seen how dangerous tigers can be, so obviously Jake is taking a huge risk here by fighting an animal who is, in essence, a slightly smaller version of a tiger.”

Buddy the Cat

As for Buddy, the massive differences in height, weight, reach, species and training haven’t deterred him. The 11-pound southpaw feline promised to “tear into Paul like a bag of Temptations” and “chew him up and spit him out like diet kibble.”

“You see this wand toy?” Buddy told reporters, throwing punches at a colorful felt parrot that dangled from the end of a stick. “That’s what I’m gonna do to Jake’s face. And if it’s legal to attack his feet, I’m gonna do that too. I’m awesome at attacking feet.”

Longtime boxing promoter Don King called the bout “a magnificatious spectacle of pugulisticary skillsmanship.”

Paul vs Buddy is set for Dec. 31 at Madison Square Garden, only six weeks after Paul is scheduled to duke it out with retired super featherweight Geronta “Tank” Davis. Despite Davis giving up more than 70 pounds and eight inches in height, Bidarian insisted the bout will be “about as evenly matched as possible.”

While most traditional boxing fans and critics dismissed the Paul vs Buddy fight as another gimmick, legendary boxing promoter Don King hailed it as “a monumentilacious rejuvenalizationary occasion” for the sport.

“Jason Paul is a heraldific resplendinizer of pugilistic entertainmentized sportulations,” King gushed, “while Buddy is the most splendiferously sanguinarius felid fighter to ever set paw in the ring. I can’t think of a better match-up between two pugnaciously bellicoserized combatulants anywhere. This is gonna be epic!”

RIDICULOUS! History Repeats As The Knicks Lose In The Most Knicks Way Imaginable

Thirty years after the Knicks suffered one of the most humiliating losses in basketball history, it happened again…

The image of Reggie Miller running up and down the court at Madison Square Garden, both hands around his own neck, gleefully screeching “Chokers! Chokers!” is indelibly burned into my brain.

It was May 7, 1995. The Knicks were leading the Indiana Pacers by six points with 18.7 seconds to go. The game was essentially over.

Even though Miller was an excellent shooter, a three-pointer would still leave the Pacers short and the Knicks with a win in the Eastern Conference Finals.

What happened next is still hard to believe all these years later.

Miller hit a three pointer, stole the ball on the inbound pass, bolted back behind the three-point line and hit another three-pointer, tying the game. After two missed free throws and a missed shot by the Knicks, Miller was fouled, made two free throws, and the Pacers won the game.

Miller had just scored 8 points in 8.9 seconds, a feat widely considered impossible, to turn a six-point deficit into a two-point win.

This was the kind of thing that might happen in a video game, not real life.

As a young Knicks fan, I was devastated. Kids raged the next morning as we gathered before the first bell at school. Miller was public enemy number one.

That was 30 years ago, or 10,972 days if you prefer.

Tonight, with Miller calling the game from the broadcast booth, the Knicks and Pacers met once again for game one of the Eastern Conference Finals at Madison Square Garden, just like they did 30 years ago.

New York had a 14-point lead with about two and a half minutes to go. Victory was assured.

Then the Pacers came storming back with three pointer after three pointer, cutting the lead to two. With seconds left on the game clock, the Pacers’ Tyrese Haliburton launched a three pointer, which bounced off the rim high into the air…and came down clean through the hoop.

Just like Miller had three decades ago, Haliburton ran the court at MSG with his hands around his neck, yelling “Chokers!”

It was deja vu. It was a nightmare.

As “luck” would have it, Haliburton’s toe was on the three-point line, rendering his basket a two-pointer that sent the game to overtime.

The crowd tried to rally the Knicks and broke into chants of “F— you, Reggie!” as if to ward off a repeat of history. It didn’t matter. Indiana had all the momentum, and the stunned Knicks couldn’t hold on despite a combined 78 points from the Knicks’ Jalen Brunson and Karl-Anthony Towns.

Absolutely brutal. To rub salt in the wound, my cousins gleefully texted me with taunts like “Oh, the pain of it all!” A small text group consisting of me, my brother and one of our closest childhood friends turned somber. We couldn’t believe this was happening again.

Haliburton, top, and Miller, both mocked the Knicks after improbable wins 30 years apart.

I don’t usually blog about sports, but I feel like I have to release some of this pent up energy. I’d already showered treats upon Bud in celebration and had just given him catnip during a commercial break. We were playing a wand toy game. The mood was jubilant, then it wasn’t. I’m sure little man was confused, but he knows I wasn’t upset at him. Besides, I laughed at how absurd the whole situation was.

After the game, Charles Barkley, legend of the court and the booth, summed up his feelings after watching the ridiculous spectacle: “We get to watch this for our jobs. We’re the luckiest guys on Earth.”

He’s right, although as a lifelong Knicks fan, I don’t feel particularly lucky right now. Let’s hope Lady Luck finally smiles upon a franchise that hasn’t won a damn thing in 50 years and the Knicks turn tonight into nothing more than a bad memory en route to the NBA Finals.

The series, and the rivalry, resumes Friday night at 8 p.m. Whichever team wins the seven-game series will go on to the NBA Finals.

El Capitan, also known as Captain Clutch and The Maestro: Jalen Brunson had 43 points tonight, but it wasn’t enough.
Hart and Soul of the Knicks, Josh Hart, pulled down 13 rebounds and dished out 7 assists in game one of the Eastern Conference Finals.

Buddy Hatches Plan To Crash Boxing Match, Steal Boxes

As the masterminds behind the genius heist, Buddy and his associates stand to become extraordinarily wealthy in cardboard boxes, making them the envy of all felines.

NEW YORK — Crammed into a small, smokey room, the felines huddled around a table laden with cocktails, cigars and architectural schematics for a large arena.

Seated at the table was Salvatore “Carniclaws” Catzarelli, Tomasso “Tommy Two Times” Felinzano, Jimmy “Little Jim” Fitzpawtrick, Desmond “Sensimeowla” Neville, a group of junior associates and Buddy the Cat.

“This here boxing is a goldmine, fellas,” Buddy told the other gangster cats, pointing a paw at the original building plans for Madison Square Garden. “The humans, they don’t want to share their boxes, which is why they guarded the secret of boxing from us cats. They want us to be satisfied with one lousy box every week or two. But we’re onto ’em now, see?”

Boxes at MSG
Thousands of glorious boxes litter the central court at Madison Square Garden in New York. Now that cats are wise to the human sport of “boxing,” humans won’t be able to hoard all the boxes to themselves anymore.

Neville licked the edge of his rolling papers, carefully adding potent catnip as he meowed without looking up.

“Mi finna be down wit da heist, mon,” he said, wrapping the paper tight around a generous portion of ‘nip. “Long as di score gonna be split equitably, ya hear?”

“That’s right,” Catzarelli nodded, digging into the pockets of his trench coat for a lighter, which he passed to Neville. “Youse guys know, there’s five of us so we split it nice and even, 15 percent each!”

A smile barely crinkled the corners of Buddy’s mouth before it vanished.

“Of course, my friend,” he said. “You’ll all walk away with 15 percent of the proceeds. If I’m right and this ‘boxing match’ is the goldmine I think it is, we’ll be richer in boxes than we ever imagined! Boxes for every mood and sleeping position. Boxes for your friends and guests. Boxes inside boxes inside boxes!

The Great Box Heist
Felinzano and associates refine plans for the first boxing heist in the history of catdom.

One of the junior associates, a kitten named Crispy, raised a paw.

“Uh, sirs, with all due respect,” he said, “I don’t think boxing is what you think it is. There are two humans in a ring and…”

Buddy cut the kitten off with a wave of his paw.

“Crispy?”

“Yes sir?”

“Who’s the criminal mastermind in this room?”

The kitten looked unsure of himself. “You, uh…you are, sir.”

“That’s right. And who pulled off the legendary turkey heist of 2018?”

“You did, sir, it’s just…”

Buddy held up a paw.

“Unless you wanna be known as Extra Crispy from now on, I’d pipe down if I was youse,” Felinzano told the kitten.

As of press time, the feline criminal ring was putting the final touches on the genius heist, so close to being unimaginably wealthy in boxes that they could almost taste it.

Buddy Scores 47 In Knicks’ Route Of Celtics

Knicks commentator Clyde Frazier called Buddy’s performance “a grandilomentitudinous clinic in splendiferousness.”

NEW YORK — With less than four minutes on the clock in the fourth quarter and the Knicks down two, New York point guard Jalen Brunson drove the lane, then kicked the ball out as the defense collapsed, finding an open Buddy the Cat in the corner.

With Boston forward Jason Tatum closing the distance, Buddy slid both feet behind the three-point line and sank a clutch shot, giving the Knicks their first lead since the second quarter.

The Madison Square Garden crowd, already boisterous, launched into a deafening cheer.

“MVP! MVP! MVP!” Knicks fans chanted, dubbing the superstar feline the league’s Meowst Valuable Player.

New York guard RJ Barrett found Buddy with a no-look pass on the next possession and the 10lb cat sailed through traffic toward the rim, banking a layup to put his team up by three.

“Buddy now, driving and conniving, dishing and swishing at the basket,” Knicks color commentator Walt “Clyde” Frazier said. “A serendipitous fourth for the frisky feline.”

Earning defensive stops on the next two possessions, the Knicks extended their lead to six on a three-pointer by forward Julius Randle, forcing the Celtics to foul Buddy on the next possession to stop the Knicks running down the shot clock.

Buddy iced the free throws, then sank another pair after a Boston timeout to give him a career-high 47 points to go with one rebound, eight assists and 11 steals.

buddynba2
Initially picked in the second round of the 2020 NBA draft, Buddy the Cat has become an impact player and fan favorite.

“If you’re [Knicks coach] Tom Thibodeaux, you’ve gotta like what you’re seeing from Buddy the Cat,” play-by-play man Mike Breen said.

Frazier agreed, piling on the superlatives.

“Buddy’s been magnetic and energetic, giving the Knicks strong two-way play with the matador D and splendiferous form as he displays omnipotence on the offensive end,” Frazier said.

The tabby cat’s career performance earned accolades from Knicks fans and players alike on Twitter.

“Buddy the Cat straight cookin’ the Celtics!” Cavaliers star Donovan Mitchell tweeted.

“Y’all see this cat? Unreal!!!” tweeted Ja Morant, the explosive point guard for the Memphis Grizzlies.

Not every player in the league was impressed, however.

“Let him try that move toward the rim on me,” said Lakers forward Lebron James, who has a 6 foot height advantage on the tabby. “I’ll swat that ball all the way to Chairman Xi’s house in Beijing.”

Frazier, who was the floor general for the Knicks the last time the franchise won an NBA championship in the 1970s, said Buddy is an essential component in the team’s promising core of young players.

“You don’t see a player like that every day, folks,” Frazier said. “A grandilomentitudinous performance that thrillified Knicks fans!”

Buddy is averaging 20.7 points, 0.7 rebounds, 6.5 assists and 6.2 steals per game on the season, and is currently the top-rated player at his position in fantasy basketball rankings.

buddynba