Hugh Jackman in the Ring

These shots from Italy's November Vanity Fair certainly won't help his wife's campaign from the bathroom stall.

Five more, AFTER THE JUMP...

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Boxer Has Two Points Deducted for Kissing Opponent

On Saturday night at the Pechanga Resort & Casino in Temecula, California, Jesse Vargas was in the ring against Trenton Titsworth in a junior welterweight bout featured on HBO's Boxing After Dark program. Titsworth had two points deducted after kissing Vargas on the neck. Vargas won in a unanimous decision 39-34.

Well at least he didn't bite his ear off.

Watch it, AFTER THE JUMP...

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Boxer Mayweather to Hatton: I'd Make You My Prison Bitch

Two undefeated boxers, Brit Ricky Hatton and Floyd Mayweather, Jr., will face each other in Las Vegas at the MGM Grand on December 8. The two have been in a war of words since the fight was announced, but Mayweather recently took the conversation to a whole new place:

Mayweather: "I wish I was in prison with you. I’d make you my bitch."

Hatton: "What Floyd doesn’t know is that I don’t get insulted. But he was very offensive. He told me he wanted to buttf*** me. Trust me, it was the biggest load of nonsense and crap that I could ever wish to hear — but he needs to came (sic) out with all that rubbish. It’s just mind games with him. I just think he is very, very insecure. He tried to get under my skin but he can’t. Another time, he was saying all kinds of other stuff and I was hitting him back with slick one- liners. When he realised he couldn’t annoy me, he walked to his car screaming ‘F***, f***’."

Hatton's team is apparently taking Mayweather's tough talk, as well as his fanbase, quite seriously: "The psychological war between the world's leading welterweights moved up a notch yesterday with the Las Vegas Police Department drafting in extra armed security to watch over British fighter Ricky Hatton in his rented house in the suburbs, while his management team have been warned to get a food taster. There are fears in the desert city where fortunes are won and lost that Hatton could fall foul of fanatical Floyd Mayweather fans hell-bent on upsetting him before the fight on Saturday week."

Mayweather most recently defeated Oscar de la Hoya on a split decision after 12 rounds.

Sportrait
Sportrait: Floyd Mayweather and Oscar De La Hoya [tr]

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De La Hoya Sued for $100 Million for Coercion Over Drag Photos

So, the woman selling the photos of Oscar de la Hoya in drag is now suing the boxer because she says his lawyers coerced her into not making more money off of them.

Reuters reports: "Milana Dravnel, who the New York Post and New York Daily News reported had met de la Hoya at a strip club where she worked, said the agreement was made after she had already sold some of the images to a Hollywood photo agency for $70,000...Dravnel, 22, said a representative of de la Hoya coerced her into signing the agreement, which blocked her from selling or discussing the pictures she took of the 34-year-old boxer...She said she was "unaware of the legal consequences of the transaction" and that she did not have a lawyer present when she signed the agreement. As a result, Dravnel has been cheated out of income and has been unable to repair her damaged public reputation, the lawsuit said. Dravnel is suing for fraud, defamation, interfering with a contract, and exerting undue and intentional infliction of emotional distress."

Uh, her public reputation was damaged?

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Sportrait: Amir Khan

British boxer Amir Khan recently had a run on bus stops across Britain in the UK's version of the "Got Milk?" ads. Khan is the IBF's inter-continental light welterweight champion.

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De La Hoya: A Side By Side

I doubted, although given this comparison I'm beginning to be a believer.

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(image source)

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Authenticity Battle Over Oscar de la Hoya Crossdressing Photos

A lawyer and an agent for boxer Oscar de la Hoya say photos that surfaced yesterday on the internet of de la Hoya in high heels, fishnet stockings, and a wig are fake.

De la Hoya's agent at CAA, Jack Tiernan, told Radar: "They're completely manufactured. The pictures have been manipulated or manufactured, and the matter has been referred to his attorney."

Radar reports, "The whole thing comes in the wake of a bet De La Hoya had previously made with Sugar Ray Leonard over a minor fight in which the loser would then handle ring card girl duties during the subsequent main event. The fight was postponed."

De la Hoya's attorney Bert Fields released a statement to the press: "The photographs depicting Mr. De La Hoya's image that were posted online today by an obscure paparazzi website are fake. Many of the website's viewers (as reflected in postings on the site) identified the photos as a 'really bad photoshop job.' Unfortunately, with today's technology, anyone can make any photo seem like something other than it is."

While Fields has demanded that X17, the site which first posted the shots, takes them down, the site is defiant and has placed them more prominently: “Regarding the possibly [sic] Photoshopping of the images -- NOPE! -- we got a letter for Oscar's lawyer today and while they'd love us to take down the pix, they don't seem to dispute their authenticity!”

The New York Daily News' Rush & Molloy report that the exotic dancer from Scores West who sold the photos claims they are authentic:

"The photos are being peddled by a Scores West dancer, according to R. Couri Hay, the Gotham magazine columnist who scored the first interview with the twentysomething woman. 'She says she took the photos at the Ritz-Carlton in Philadelphia on May 17,' Hay tells us. 'I fully believe she is telling the truth. She had been reluctant to talk. But now that she's being called a liar, she's ready to sell her story. And, believe me, she has a lot of details.' A friend of the unnamed woman says that De La Hoya would regularly invite her and other party pals to join him when he left his family at home in Puerto Rico. 'He'd send a private plane or fly them first-class,' says the friend. 'They'd meet up in hotels, where the party could go on for days. There was a lot of tequila. It involved men and women. They indulged his every whim and taste. He wore size 9 ladies shoes. He also liked wearing thigh-high nylons. He liked sex games. He and the girl would sit in a chair that they'd pretend was a motorcycle. He'd pretend he was the girl on the back of motorcycle. She'd be the guy. He'd grab her around the waist and squeal, 'Faster! Faster!''"

De la Hoya's rep Debbie Caplan accuses the dancer of being "out for money".

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Oscar de la Hoya: Pretty in Pink

Those of you with fishnet stocking and high heel fetishes may enjoy these very fake shots of boxer Oscar de la Hoya that have suddenly cropped up around the net, however, this shot of the boxer in a pair of pink gloves is definitely sexier, and not Photoshopped.

De la Hoya was donning the gloves, which he signed, for a breast cancer benefit at the Hard Rock Cafe in Hollywood.

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Ravaged Serbian Village Unveils Monument to Rocky Balboa

Ravaged by floods, landslides, unemployment, murder, and diseases on farms in recent years, the village of Zitiste, north of Belgrade in Serbia, has gained a "disaster-prone" reputation, according to the Associated Press.

So locals came up with the idea of creating something that might both attract tourists and stand as a symbol of strength, courage, and victory — a good luck symbol, if you will.

The solution: a 9 ft. monument to Rocky Balboa. And on Sunday, they had the unveiling:

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Sportrait: Floyd Mayweather and Oscar De La Hoya

Boxers always try to get in each other's faces before an upcoming match. Stare down one's opponent with a display of machismo.

It's a pretty tough act for a couple of pretty boys, as was the case when Floyd Mayweather and Oscar De La Hoya faced off yesterday at NYC's Waldorf Astoria Hotel to announce their May 5th Junior Middleweight Championship fight at the MGM Hotel in Las Vegas.

The face-off broke up as Mayweather stripped off his jacket, setting off what looked like an episode of "Pants Off, Dance Off", but never quite got that far.

See the rest, after the jump...

C'mon Oscar, you can do better than that.

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