Guy Bifkin

Managed to watch it elsewhere in the end, I'll check the whole show on I-Player later.

From my perspective it was a little disappointing as a contest. Over very quickly and looked a premature stoppage. I didn't see a tap and Pitbull looked conscious when the ref called it off.  

With the hype on both guys I was expecting or hoping for a 5 round war but I guess if you've followed Bellator and these fighters closely over the years, you may have enjoyed the payoff here more than me.

What are the chances of McKee switching to UFC? You would like to see someone with his record mixing it with the likes of Max Holloway or Volkanovski.

Definitely not up there yet. 

Right, need some advice from Citizen Houchen and the HR cunts amongst you.

Redundancies have been announced at my pay grade at work. It's no surprise, most of our contracts were cancelled during the pandemic and lots of people were on furlough. I've been at my firm 20 years, and been through this a couple of times. I feel I'm safe and reading between the lines I think they want rid of a couple of others who have been underperforming for a few years, but we are all going to have to interview to preserve a veneer of fairness. The problem is I've worked fucking hard over the last year, through some difficult personal circumstances too. The job is getting worse for variety of reasons and this is a kick in the teeth after a very difficult year, when half the other people up for interview were furloughed. 

My first question when it was announced was will we be offered voluntary redundancy - no. I might have taken it had it been on offer. We've since been sent a new job description and competencies, which if anything made the job more tailored to someone of my skillset. However, one addition under "Essential Criteria" was to have a degree with "some numeric or computing content". My degree is in politics, there was no numeric or computing content and this was definitely not an essential criteria when I joined back in 2001 - and I was honest about my qualifications on my CV etc (at the time it was any degree to 2-1 level or something). 

My riddle is this - can I use the fact that they have introduced this Essential Criteria that I cannot fulfill, as a way to extricate myself from the job or interview process and still get paid what I would be due under a normal redundancy? If I refused an interview and was dismissed, would I have any grounds for an unfair dismissal? Or should I just suck corporate cock and go through the motions of the interview, safe in the knowledge that I will most likely still have a fairly decent job at the end of it? 

Kyler Phillips is always worth  look too.

Also hilarious levels of disgust and indignation in the comments at the introduction of women's teams to Football Manager 2022.

You've all read Four Kings right? Pretty sure someone off UKFF recommended it to me in the first place. It's a fucking brilliant book, and will keep you going until we get this documentary. 

Who is everyone's favourite? Roberto Duran for me, although he comes off worse in the head to heads. He was just a bit older and lighter than the other three. Having said that I love Hearns and Hagler. Such a magnificent era for boxing, I was lucky to live through it. 

This made me chuckle.

Good win by the Lionesses to kick off the women's football. 

The classic "doing research for a book" defence isn't going to wash when it comes to a professional footballer is it?

I am flat out boycotting any UFC card that features Sam Alvey from this day forwards. I realise this means I'll probably miss 50% of their output but sometimes you need to make a stand. 

2-3 years ago Hall vs Strickland isn't even headlining the prelims.

4 minutes ago, Keith Houchen said:

I see Twitter is full of the usual Hahaha child abuse hahaha stuff. Wonderful!

Yeah! You never see any quality memes when it's a grooming gang from Pakistan. 

I've never seen anyone mark Drogba out of a game like a 17 year old Phil Jones did for Blackburn. 

I've just about stopped moping about the final to give it my final thoughts. Italy deserved winners, apart from the first 20 minutes (where England seemed to have an adrenaline dump in every game), they bossed the game and it would have been harsh on them if they had lost on penalties. Chiellini and Bonucci were magnificent - add them to the long list of Italian centre backs who I have a girly mancrush on. The Italian midfielders could match the workrate of ours and look after the ball a lot better. Rice and Phillips have had very good tournaments but the sooner we get Bellingham alongside one of them, the better.

Southgate has been magnificent and deserves a job for life but got a few things wrong in the final. Not very proactive with subs and the penalty takers/order of penalties was baffling to say the least. Mancini won the tactical battle, and the battle of the clobber too. He is a sharp dressed man. 

Overall a great tournament and gutted not to win it, but maybe we've learnt some valuable lessons as a nation over the last month? Probably not.

Yeah I'm steering well clear of the pub tonight. So stupid having the final at 8pm as well!

Highlight of the night was Tai Tuavasa walking out to Spice Girls, smashing Greg Hardy up and doing a shoey on the cage.

Can't be arsed to go through the Conor stuff. He's just a horrible little scrote.

I agree completely on Rodriguez vs Dern Wand. There are only probably half a dozen women fighters I'm interested in watching (and ideally fighting each other) and both those ladies are on the cusp of ousting Weili Zhang.

I quite enjoyed the Czech national anthem, the ending reminds me of Paul Simon's Still Crazy After All These Years....

7 minutes ago, PowerButchi said:

Funnily enough I saw something about that on Newsnight tonight. The GDP rises sharply after successful runs in tournaments. 

Surely that's the case whatever party is in power?

2 minutes ago, neil said:

An England win is a Tory win

Absolutely not. Members of the current England squad are a more effective opposition than the current Labour party. Most of them come from underprivileged and multi-cultural backgrounds.  

Raheem Sterling was the man tonight, the king of football. If you disagree than you are nothing but a pussy clot. 

I really just want England to win now to put a mild disinterested finger up at the Woke Zealots whose whinnying has ruined this thread. 

Sounds like something off Be Here Now.

Woke Watch missed the teacher was holding Brie instead of Cheddar cheese. Disgusting.