The new American Gladiators has been nothing but entertaining from day one. The male Gladiators have several interesting personalities going, the most obviously entertaining being Wolf, of course. The females side of the equation has been a little harder to figure out, but far and away my favorite is Crush. Turns out that the hottest Gladiator isn’t just a mass of muscles - she’s also Gina Carano, a Muay Thai based MMA fighter.

Believe it or not, but this:

Is the same woman that’s doing this:

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I’ve spent much of my life to date in the tri-state area, and thusly have acquired quite the distaste for all New England professional sports teams. However, that dislike is being challenged by Patriots receiver Donte Stallworth, who apparently is an awesome weirdo.

But after catching a pass from Brady along the right sideline, the receiver said he failed to break away from Mathis because he spent too long watching the video monitor so he could find the defensive back.

“I was too worried about where he was,” Stallworth said. “I was looking up at the JumboTron. Instead of actually running and kicking in my little extra turbo. I didn’t do that. I’ve already gotten grief from the guys. They didn’t spare me. They didn’t say good play or say anything. Instead, (I got) ‘I thought you were fast?’ I’m like, ‘Hey dude, I’m trying. I’m just trying.’”

Stallworth’s friends and teammates were relentless.

“I’ve already got like 15 texts from guys back home and guys in the locker room have been killing me,” he said.

But no one was harder on Stallworth than himself. Immediately after Mathis made the tackle, Stallworth pounded the ground and then started punching his legs as if they were defective.

Stallworth said that was punishment from his alter ego, Nicco, whom Stallworth has described as an extra terrestrial being that resides on Mars when the receiver is off the field.

?!??!

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As a Yanks fan, I’m not jealous of the Red Sox’s recent championship titles or superb lineup and pitching staff — but I do envy the team’s zany personality.

You got David Ortiz, one of the most charismatic sports figures of this era; Manny Ramirez, an awesomely flaked-out weirdo stoner and one of the game’s all-time greatest hitters; Daisuke Matsuzaka, who apparently invented his own pitch; John Papelbon, who seems to get fired up at the drop of a hat; and then you have Curt Schilling, an outspoken, unrepentant pain in the ass who is planning on running a video game company after he retires from baseball.

It’s called 38 Studios and supposedly two of his business partners are R.A. Salvatore, and, I shit you not, Todd McFarlane.

His new focus, post-pitching, will be to oversee the development of a still-unnamed and shrouded-in-mystery massively multiplayer role-playing game (MMORPG) that goes by the working title Copernicus.

And:

He says that some day he will be “intimately involved in making a baseball game…I will be a part of a company doing a sports game.” And at the moment, he’s playing Tabula Rasa, World of Warcraft, Guild Wars, Hellgate: London, and EverQuest 2. And he thinks NBA 2K8 is “as close to realistic as a sports game can get.”

What else did Curt Schilling reveal about his upcoming game? Not a whole lot. He’s banking heavily on his own understanding of games, which is considerable, and his two creative partners — best-selling fantasy book author R.A. Salvatore and iconoclast comic book and action figure creator Todd MacFarlane — to create a blockbuster.

Go figure.

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In what could be one of the most oddly timed news stories in recent history, it’s looking like the supposedly very damning Mitchell Report — a.k.a. Senator George Mitchell’s probe into the use of performance-enhancing drugs in baseball — is going to be released sometime during the two weeks before this Christmas.

It is anticipated that the report will name names of current and former major league players who have used performance-enhancing substances including anabolic steroids and human growth hormone.

“The names of players will come out that people will be mad about,” Los Angeles Angels owner Arte Moreno said of the report last week, according to the Los Angeles Times. “Some of my information is secondhand, but I know there’s going to be names.”

The steroid/HGH issue is a complicated one, for me at least. I have trouble leaning in any single direction. But I can point out two good books on the subject. Game of Shadows is a great read about Barry Bonds and BALCO. But for a more even-handed and comprehensive look at the subject, I can’t recommend highly enough Juicing the Game. It’s lengthy and can be slow in parts, but it has one of the finest profiles of Bonds I’ve ever read, and most surprisingly, it works best as a sharp, insightful history of professional baseball from the late 80s through the early 2000s.

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