TENNIS

🚗 Djoks away

To raise a Grand Slam winner, you have to make a few sacrifices: early mornings ferrying your child to training, mind-numbing smalltalk with other parents in the stands.

Or, if you’re Novak Djokovic’s dad, high-speed car chases through the streets of Belgrade to evade terrifying loan sharks.

This week, the tennis star revealed his father had to borrow money from the Serbian mafia when he was growing up, to fund his trip to a youth tournament in the States:

Fortunately he was able to pay it back, but not before a high-speed pursuit:

Weirdly, he revealed all this to ex-West Ham boss Slaven Bilić, who appears to have given up management to become a YouTuber…

FOOTBALL

🧽 Kim was aggy

Farewell, Kim Woodburn. The Queen of Clean passed away at 83 this week, after a stellar career scraping scum off bath tubs and giving hoarders a good stern talking to.

She may be gone, but we’ll never forget the incredible bollocking she gave former Spurs man and current Talk Sport rent-a-gob, Jamie O’Hara.

Back in 2017, the pair were in the Celebrity Big Brother house together, and fell out big time when Kim branded her housemates a bunch of “two-faced, chicken-livered shits”.

When Jamie called her “nasty and vile”, she hit the roof, launching into a foul-mouthed tirade about the midfielder.

Highlights included calling him a “chinless wonder”, shouting “I wouldn’t shit on you if you were on fire!”, and - most famously - screaming “You're an adulterer! You two-timed your wife and she’s got three kids!”.

COMPETITIVE EATING

 🌭 Squashing the beef

Normally, when we’re sent a video entitled “One man beats off 4 soldiers in hide the hot dog competition”, we’re reticent to open it in the office.

But it turns out this one heralds the return of competitive eater and Upshot favourite, Joey Chestnut, who recently out-ate a group of U.S Army men in a 4-versus-1 contest.

We thought we’d seen the last of Joey, after he was banned from Major League Eating’s annual hot dog contest in 2024 for endorsing a plant-based sausage supplier.

But now the MLE Have walked back on their ban, and confirmed that the 16-time champion will be competing in their 2025 event.

They released this sliiiightly hyperbolic statement to break the news:

There’s no word yet on whether Joey’s main competitor, Takeru Kobayashi, will be coming out of retirement to compete alongside him.

Last year, he announced his withdrawal from the world of competitive eating with this heart-breaking five-word statement:

SUMO

🍜 Land of the rising tum

For too long, the country’s finest sporting talents have felt obliged to ply their trade in the British drizzle.

But thanks to Jude Bellingham living it up in Madrid, and Scott McTominay gorging on ripe Neapolitan tomatoes in Italy, the tide has turned.

And now, a new elite athlete is leaving the UK behind to conquer foreign shores.

No, not Trent Alexander-Arnold. We’re of course talking about Hull’s 15-year-old sumo prodigy, Nicholas Tarasenko.

The 6ft 3in, 19st teen has won a scholarship at the prestigious Minato Beya stable, and will soon be jetting off to Japan in a bid to become a champion of the ring.

He’ll be doing five hours of intense training on an empty stomach every morning, before consuming 7,000-calories - mostly in the form of a high-protein soup called chankonabe.

The bad news for Nick is his academy duties include hanging the sweaty, never-washed loincloths of senior fighters out in the sun.

BOXING

🩳 You can leave your Hatton

Speaking of beloved fighters baring it all, Ricky Hatton went on holiday this week.

And somehow his swimming shorts perished in the pool…

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AND FINALLY…

🪵 And we’re gonna let it Bryne, Bryne, Bryne

Bryne FK’s Duarte Moreira receives a bag of logs for his Man of the Match performance against Fredrikstad.