South Africans make Ocho Cinco look like a wimp

In honor of Saturday's Rugby World Cup Final pitting the Boks of South Africa against the pasty white guys of England, here's a video of SA super winger Bryan Habana racing a cheetah. To prevent the animal from attacking Habana, they tied a piece of bait to the end of a long string to be pulled during the race. That's a totally fullproof plan if you ask me. Technically the cheetah barely won, but that's a much tougher (and deadlier) opponent than a wimpy-ass horse. Suck it Chad Johnson.

-WCK

Get off the road mate

A kangaroo hopped its way onto the track of a rally car race in Australia this weekend. It somehow managed to avoid getting hit. The kangaroo below, however, didn't fare quite as well.


-WCK

Wait, why does dogfighting have any connection to race again?

The whole time the Vick scandal has been going on there's been a ton of talk about how it all has to do with race, even though multiple ATLiens - black, white, purple, whatever - have said that most of the city isn't very happy with Ron Mexico.

I alluded to this in yesterday's links (here's the original BBC News article), but since it's finally making some headway here in the states, I thought a full post was called for.

Right now in Ireland, there is an eerily similar dogfighting case going on as well. Gerard Cavlan, a star of Ireland’s Gaelic football league, was exposed Thursday as a director of an illegal dog-fighting club. As you can see, Cavlan is white.

Earlier this year, Cavlan was convicted of possessing a dangerous dog and fined £650. In April, Dungannon Magistrates Court was told that Cavlan had merely collected the dog from kennels for a Dublin man and was not involved in any other illegal activities. That of course turned out to be a huge lie. Kind of like what Vick did. And by "kind of" I mean "exactly."

And it's not just Cavlan who's doing it. A 17-month undercover investigation by BBC Northern Ireland’s “Spotlight” program, broadcast Thursday night, found evidence of 15 illegal dog-fighting operations in the British territory of 1.7 million people.

The program secretly filmed Gerard Cavlan, a 31-year-old member of the County Tyrone Gaelic football team, discussing his ownership of more than a dozen dogs — and bragging about how one “hard-mouthed dog” gripped another in its jaws.

“Sure he had him in the chest, and he shook him and he shook him for 25 minutes,” Cavlan said during a conversation filmed covertly in his vehicle.

The program filmed Cavlan saying he had co-founded a dog-fighting club called Bulldog Sanctuary Kennels. The program described his business partner as “Dee,” a Protestant extremist and drug dealer.

Man, anyone having a sense of deja vu yet?

Interestingly, the Gaelic Athletic Association has permitted Cavlan to continue playing, although chances are he could be in some serious trouble soon since this story literally just broke.

So what exactly do we have here? It looks to me like we have a white guy and a black guy both with sketchy friends who are in serious trouble for running dogfighting operations. Race really seems irrelevant in both cases, seeing as both men committed literally the identical crimes and both are facing massive blowback and are up shit creek. Isn't that what should happen?

Anyone who thinks Vick was railroaded because he's black better pay close attention to this case in Ireland. Because it's likely Cavlan is going to be in a worse situation than Vick, considering they have Cavlan taped talking about his role in dogfighting.

Personally, I hope they throw the book at Cavlan. But that's because I'm Southern Irish Catholic. I think most of you know what I'm talking about.

-WCK