Page 28 - Florida Sentinel 8-11-17

Sports
Bengals vs Buccaneers Preseason Friday Night In Cincinnati
Barkley Says Kyrie Irving
Live NFL football is finally back in our lives, sort of.
Sure, preseason football may not be the same level of football we’ll see in the regu- lar season, but it’s neverthe- less football being played by NFL athletes in competition for the first time in over seven months for the Cincin- nati Bengals, as they play host to the Tampa Bay Buc- caneers in their preseason opener Friday at 7:30 p.m.
Training camp and the preseason are part of the road to how far the Bengals will go in the 2017 season. This is also a pivotal time for newcomers looking to take on big roles with this team.
Second-round rookie run- ning back Joe Mixon has
Trade From Cavs
been lighting it up in his first training camp, so it will be in- teresting to see how he does against a solid Buccaneers defense in his first live game action. He’s currently listed
fourth on the depth chart at running back, so he’ll need to have a great preseason to en- sure he’s getting a big work- load once the regular season begins.
Brent Grimes Could Miss The Bucs Preseason Game With A Shin Gash
JAMEIS WINSTON
NBA Hall of Famer and Turner Sports analyst Charles Barkley doesn't understand why Kyrie Irv- ing would want to leave the Cleveland Cavaliers and Le- Bron James for a bigger role elsewhere.
"You want to be on a good team. You want to play with other great players. This no- tion where you want to be the man, I just think is so stu- pid," he said during an inter- viewonNBATV."IfIgota chance to play with another great player, I want to do that. The objective is to win."
"When he was on a bad team and he was the man, I guarantee you that wasn't a lot of fun for him," he contin- ued. "And now you want to leave the best player in the world. And listen, I hear all of this stuff about how Le- Bron casts a big shadow. He
CHARLES BARKLEY
should cast a big shadow." As Barkley noted, playing with any great player—he cited Michael Jordan, Larry Bird and Shaquille O'Neal—means living under their proverbial shadow. But that's the price for giving yourself a chance to win
championships.
"If you get a chance to play
with great players, that's half the battle," Barkley noted.
Is 'Stupid' For Wanting
The Tampa Bay Buccaneers will have to play their first preseason game without Brent Grimes.
The starting cornerback cut up his shin in practice and had to get stitches to repair them—nothing serious but enough to keep him out for the first game of the presea- son. That’s what head coach Dirk Koetter said.
According to a source it may even be worse, as they
BRENT GRIMES
say Grimes is “expected” to miss all four preseason games. That’d give him a
month to recover for the first regular season game. That’s a long time to recover from a shin gash, though.
Grimes missing preseason games is not a big problem, though—Grimes has been through the ringer and prob- ably doesn’t need preseason games to get up to speed, while the first preseason game in particular is traditionally very light on workloads for starters anyway.
Floyd Mayweather: I've 'Lost A Step;’ Conor McGregor Has Edge On Paper
Floyd Mayweather spent much of his promotional tour last month mocking Conor McGregor's skills and confi- dently predicting he would dominate their Aug. 26 boxing match, but he struck a more deferential tone Tuesday, ac- knowledging that he has "lost a step" and that McGregor, at least on paper, has the edge over him.
In an interview with ESPN's Stephen A. Smith, May- weather, 40, pointed to Mc- Gregor's advantages in size and age as reasons why the UFC fighter poses a legitimate challenge.
"He's a lot younger. When you look at myself and Conor McGregor on paper, he's taller, has a longer reach, he's a bigger man from top to bot- tom. He's a lot younger, so youth is on his side," May- weather said of McGregor,
FLOYD MAYWEATHER
who is 29. "And I've been off a couple of years. And I'm in my 40s. So, if you look at every- thing on paper, it leans toward Conor McGregor."
Mayweather, the former pound-for-pound boxing king and five-division world cham- pion, is coming out of retire- ment for his clash with McGregor, a bout for which he is widely considered a heavy favorite.
He has not fought since his
one-sided unanimous deci- sion over Andre Berto in September 2015, which im- proved his record to 49-0. McGregor, the UFC light- weight champion, will be making his professional box- ing debut against May- weather.
Asked by Smith why he wasn't brashly proclaiming McGregor has no chance in their fight, Mayweather said simply, "I'm older.
"I'm not the same fighter I was two years ago. I'm not the same fighter I was five years ago. I lost a step," he said. "A fighter like Andre Berto isn't even supposed to go the dis- tance with Floyd May- weather, but remember, I was 38. It's obvious I'm slip- ping a little bit to even let a fighter like that go the dis- tance with me.
"I'm not what I used to be."
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