Life as a Catalyst » professional basketball

Donate Wynne Arboleda salary to typhoon victims, online petition urges

Joey Alarilla — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 07:18:08 +0000

Check out my latest CNET Asia blog post.

Here’s an excerpt.

An online petition is now circulating among Filipino Internet users, urging the management of the Philippine Basketball Association team Burger King to donate the lost income of its suspended player, Wynne Arboleda, to the victims of the recent typhoons in the Philippines.

Arboleda has been suspended for the rest of the season in the country’s premiere professional basketball league for attacking a fan who was heckling him. The suspension without pay means 2.73 million Philippine pesos (around 81,540 Singapore dollars) in lost income for the Burger King player.

Read the full story.

Triple H’s 40th birthday: Videos of cake surprise attack after Monday Night Raw went off the air

Joey Alarilla — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 06:00:47 +0000

Triple H turned 40 on July 27, and after this week’s Monday Night Raw broadcast ended, his father-in-law, World Wrestling Entertainment chairman Vince McMahon, had a surprise for The Game a.k.a. The Cerebral Assassin.

Here’s the link to the TMZ.com clip.

Below are some clips of the cake surprise attack posted on YouTube by fans who attended this week’s Raw, which was held in Washington, D.C. and featured National Basketball Association superstar Shaquille O’Neal of the Cleveland Cavaliers as guest host. Check out my previous blog entry for Shaq’s encounter with The Big Show.

Here’s an account of the post-Raw celebration on Kevin Eck’s Ring Posts pro wrestling blog for The Baltimore Sun.

Spoiler alert: Videos of Shaquille O’Neal vs The Big Show on Monday Night Raw

Joey Alarilla — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 23:41:32 +0000

Stop reading if you haven’t seen this week’s Monday Night Raw and don’t want spoilers.

The moment it was announced that National Basketball Association superstar Shaquille O’Neal of the Cleveland Cavaliers was going to be the guest host on World Wrestling Entertainment’s Monday Night Raw, you had to know he was going to square off against “the world’s largest athlete,” The Big Show.

Well, Raw didn’t disappoint, and Shaq, a huge pro wrestling fan (in more ways than one, heh), was very entertaining and looked like he felt right at home. Maybe we’ll see him involved in WrestleMania 26 next year.

Here’s a clip of the opening segment. Shaq had a hilarious confrontation with Chris Jericho, who is one half of the WWE Unified Tag Team Champions. Jericho handpicked The Big Show to be his new tag team partner at the just-concluded Night of Champions pay-per-view, to replace his original co-champion Edge, who will be sidelined for months after undergoing surgery for a torn Achilles tendon. Yup, that’s a real-life injury, not a storyline one.

And here’s the epic encounter. Will The Big Show chokeslam Shaq?

By the way, in related news, Shaq wanted to find out if he was famous enough to just go to the White House (Raw was held in Washington, D.C.) and meet US President Barack Obama without an appointment. He tweeted that he was going to try it after landing in D.C. on Sunday to host Raw the following day.

Check out this Newsweek blog to find out if Shaq was able to meet Obama.