heir own, replete with Misbah-ul-Haq and Younis having to come together on the first morning with were-getting-too-old-for-this-sh** looks on their faces. Misbah would grow incre

Bellator lightweight champion?Michael Chandler isnt overly cocky or brash, yet he isnt afraid to speak his mind regardless of what others may think.Theres a fine line between humility and not thinking highly enough of yourself, Chandler told ESPN.com. I spent a lot of years tip-toeing around, being afraid of what people were going to think. Its OK to have a little bit of pride in yourself. I spent way too many years suppressing that, and I just refuse to live a life thats not conducive of a champion.After knocking out Patricky Pitbull Freire with a thunderous right hand -- described by Chandler as hitting the sweet spot on a baseball bat -- to recapture the lightweight title in May, Chandler has begun to enjoy the fruits of his labor, to take stock of a great moment in his career.I stand here not afraid to admit that Ive watched that knockout a thousand times,?Chandler said. If my visions come to fruition, Im going to knock Benson Henderson out in the first or second round just as devastatingly.Chandler will look to make that prediction true against Henderson (24-6) on Saturday in the headliner of Bellator 165 from the SAP Center in San Jose, California. The matchup pits the Bellator and UFC 155-pound champions from 2012 and most of 2013 against each other.Henderson defended the UFC strap three times in that time frame while Chandler defended the Bellator belt twice. Chandler says he wouldve loved a shot to fight Henderson then, to see who the true premier lightweight in the world was, but he gets his shot years later -- a stretch of time Chandler claims he has only benefited from.I feel like Im the best Ive ever been, and I think its happening at the worst time for him, Chandler said. I think he has done nothing but second guess himself, decline in skill, and I think at this point hes settled on becoming the head coach at the [MMA] Lab. You know, you get to coach and be a gym owner. I was focused on gold belts.While both fighters are 3-3 in their last six bouts, Chandler is riding a three-fight win streak in which he has dominated his opponents, including the knockout of Freire that Bellators Jimmy Smith called fast in slow motion. In his own stretch, Henderson fought three times at welterweight, including his Bellator debut to Andrey Koreshkov in April, a unanimous decision loss. In his title eliminator fight with Patricio Pitbull Freire?in August, Henderson didnt look stellar prior to winning via TKO in the second round when Freire was unable to continue with a leg injury.Hes past his prime, and he has taken way too many shots, Chandler said. He doesnt believe in himself anymore, he doesnt believe he can beat me. He sat there and he lied to Scott Coker at the negotiation table. Scott Cokers writing him big checks, and hes coming out and underperforming. Im going to go out there and put a nail in the coffin, and send him off into retirement down there in Arizona.This appears to be the halcyon age for Chandler, but to get here, he had to go through some dark times. The aforementioned three-fight losing skid, in which Chandler dropped the title to Eddie Alvarez in a contested split decision, kicked it off. That loss was followed by back-to-back defeats to Will Brooks. He went 688 days without a victory, a time he says made him grow physically, mentally and spiritually into the man he is today.During that time, Chandler decided to switch camps and train with the Blackzilians in Boca Raton, Florida. He reconnected with grappling coach Neil Melanson, whom he bonded with while beginning his MMA career at Xtreme Couture in Las Vegas. Chandler says that their dynamic works great because hed run through a brick wall if his coach told him to, and it would be reciprocated. He adds that relationships like theirs are rare in this sport, and compared it to the likes of Demetrious Johnson and Matt Hume or Frankie Edgar with Mark Henry.He has been my grappling coach, head coach, good friend, mentor, and hes worth his weight in gold because hes the best grappling coach in the entire world, Chandler said. He loves me more than anybody else in this entire sport. He believes in me more than anybody else in this entire sport, and thats a very powerful thing.Based on his words, you could think that Chandler is looking past Henderson this Saturday, but that isnt the case. The Bellator champion says his work inside the gym is producing the best version of Michael Chandler to date. Saturday is the five-year anniversary of Chandler-Alvarez I, one of the best fights of 2011. A kid one year and a half out of college submitted a perennial top-five lightweight in the fourth round to win his first title. Now proven to the world and comfortable in his own skin -- to call it the way he sees it -- Chandler only has to measure up to his own standards.The only person that I need to outperform out there is myself, Chandler said. If I go out there, and I put together my game plan, and I put together my hands and my feet, and my aggression, and my speed, and my power together like I know I can, theres not a man in this division, in this world, that can stop me.MLB Jerseys China . - Blake Griffin had 30 points and 12 rebounds, J. Cheap Baseball Jerseys . Deulofeu injured a muscle in his right leg in Evertons 4-1 win over Fulham in the English Premier League on Saturday. Barcelona says that its team doctors will "co-ordinate" with Evertons medical staff as Deulofeu recovers. http://www.mlbjerseyschinacheap.com/ . -- Matt Kuchar and Harris English ran away with the Franklin Templeton Shootout, shooting a 14-under 58 on Sunday in the final-round scramble to break the tournament course record. Cheap MLB Jerseys Wholesale . Most important, perhaps, it went off without a hitch. Organizers poked a little fun at the now-infamous opening ceremony gaffe that saw only four out of five snowflakes open up into rings, leaving the Olympics logo one ring short. Cheap Nike MLB Jerseys . Pirlo limped out of Sundays 1-0 win over Udinese after just 13 minutes. Juventus says Pirlo underwent tests on Monday which revealed he has "a second-degree lesion to the collateral medial ligament in his right knee.As the game evolves at warp speed, as cricketers bodies become less attainable and skills become ever more honed, it can be comforting for fans when the unremarkable bears fruit.In New Zealands attack were Tim Southee and Trent Boult: the big-swinging thoroughbreds. They had Neil Wagner: the grim, tenacious, hatchet man. Yet on Friday, it was a seamer who barely breached 128kph that brought the worlds no. 2 side to its knees. It was uninspiring line-and-length diligence that found success on a pitch prepared for better-equipped quicks.In he came, a modest hero in Colin de Grandhomme, operating off a mid-sized run-up - shorter than a spearheads, longer than an Australia innings - all athletic competence, with perfectly-adequate rhythm in his strides, sufficient hip drive when he got to the crease, and satisfactory wrist position when the ball came to be released.Some fast bowling invites comparisons to bolts of lightning and hellfire; much mythologised are quicks who scratch at the ground like stallions about to charge, whose nostrils pour with steam as they advance, who raise the smell of sulphur from the surface when a bouncer has been bowled.For much of Friday, de Grandhomme was more a strongly-worded letter than the booming sound of thunder, and yet, none of his more illustrious teammates could rattle Pakistan like he did. He bowled dot balls to Babar Azam until he drew a poor shot twice - the first to gully was dropped, the second to the slips was fatal. He had the great Younis Khan out for 2; Younis feet stapled to the crease in a complete reversal of his batting through much of the England tour, as he reached unavailingly for a cover drive.By the end of the innings, de Grandhomme had ripped out the top order and set the tail on the run with his middle-of-the-road, wobbly medium. His 6 for 41 were the best-ever figures for a New Zealand debutant, breaking a record that stood for 65 years.The most impressive wicket among those was that of Azhar Ali, when de Grandhomme weaselled a ball between bat and pad to set off stump on a jaunt, and Pakistan into decline. But although he said he had been quite excited at the sight of the uprooted wicket, raising a single fist into the air in celebration, there still was something innocuous about de Grandhomme, even in his most animated moment. For a Tim Southee or a Wahab Riaz, that celebrration would have seemed like the power-pose of a triumphant warrior.dddddddddddd. De Grandhomme brought to mind a middle-aged protestor walking down the main street, complaining about the rising price of milk.De Grandhomme was hitting the right areas, Azhar said after play. Theres enough there in the pitch, a lot of grass on it, and there was a lot of moisture as well. The lengths and lines were really good. If you hit in that area, youre going to get a good result. On that kind of pitch you know that even a bowler whos not as fast can get a lot out of it. He has more control obviously. If you have less pace you have more swing and more control as well. As the wickets began to stack up through the day, de Grandhommes moustache drew comparisons in the media with those of yesteryears great quicks - Dennis Lillee, Richard Hadlee, Kapil Dev. But those were moustaches with personality and verve. Lillee, for example, had a malice to his handlebars; Hadlee, a touch of deviousness in his wispy tips. Kapils was upstanding and robust, giving off the impression that it would only be too happy to help an old woman cross a Chandigarh intersection. De Grandhommes, comparatively, is characterless; its as if his short-back-and-sides haircut has been perfectly replicated on his upper lip, the whole thing finished in a matte, standard-issue brown.And while he produced a performance that evoked New Zealands proud military-medium tradition, Pakistan produced a vintage batting collapse of their own, replete with Misbah-ul-Haq and Younis having to come together on the first morning with were-getting-too-old-for-this-sh** looks on their faces. Misbah would grow increasingly frustrated through the innings, as team-mates deserted him.They are so far back in the game now, they must summon more Pakistan stereotypes to pose a threat in the match. The attack must make a charge to spark a New Zealand collapse; the batsmen will likely have to overturn a first-innings deficit.On day two they were undone by a bowler who no one suspected much of, but who did just enough. For Pakistan it was a reminder their quest to regain the top ranking would be a difficult one; for the rest of us, that heroes can emerge from the unlikeliest places. ' ' '