Defector

Gable Steveson, the hottest UFC prospect in years, who arrived at the promotion with a past marked by a sexual assault allegation, got knocked out by a nobody in 12 seconds on Saturday in Los Angeles.

On July 13, California state Attorney General Rob Bonta announced that he would lead a 12-state coalition in mounting a supposedly bold legal challenge to the proposed Paramount–Warner Bros.

Laz Díaz has had enough of baseball.

Sometimes a recipe leads you astray.

For all of his flaws as a manager, and there are plenty, José Mourinho always provides clubs the full José Mourinho Experience.

It is generally agreed that the Miami Dolphins are the worst team in professional football not named the Ottawa Redblacks.

Have a seat and solve our Monday crossword.

If you're a regular reader of this blog, you probably already know the general contours of Defector's origin story.

It takes an open mind to engage with China Miéville’s work.

Over the weekend, The New York Times published an investigation into DraftKings.

If you found yourself tuning in late for Sunday's matchup between the Eagles and Titans in Nashville, you may have had a number of burning questions: Has Jalen Hurts been replaced with sack of flour?

Caleb Williams was going to score a touchdown.

The beauty of college football is that there are so many teams, and so many bad coaches, that inevitably, a play that would otherwise have a one in a billion chance of happening actually has quite a good chance of turning into reality.

I guess the addled corpus of Lee Corso was the only thing keeping ESPN’s college football arm from shedding every last trace of dignity.

The fourth season of Amazon's Reacher, which was based on Lee Child's book Gone Tomorrow and set largely in Philadelphia, came to a close earlier this week.

Welcome to the Defector College Football Watch Guide, where Israel Daramola and Ray Ratto will tell you which of the weekend’s college football games are worth giving a crap about.

Alexander Ovechkin is probably the single most famous Russian athlete.

There are few scenarios for a struggling and injury-riddled defense more nightmarish than the one the Detroit Lions' unit had to face on Thursday night.

On Thursday morning, USMNT manager Mauricio Pochettino announced his roster for a forthcoming quartet of games.

Steve Belichick has resigned from his job as defensive coordinator at UNC following an investigation that found "certain actions demonstrated a disregard for Carolina's values and standards of conduct," according to a statement released Thursday by the un…

Rory Dames—the women’s soccer coach currently banned for life from the NWSL, and who has been accused of abuse by more than a dozen former youth players—is no longer listed in the U.S.

Following this week's news that the brilliant writer Annie Dillard has died at age 81, some Defector staffers wrote about what her work and example have meant to them.

There is a cottage industry in publishing dedicated to understanding Donald Trump and his followers.

This week on the show, Harry and I hung out with the hosts of the State of the League podcast for an hour of classic offseason nonsense.

The Moon got whacked.

Drew Magary’s Thursday Afternoon NFL Dick Joke Jamboroo runs every Thursday at Defector during the NFL season Got something you wanna contribute?

Welcome to Listening Habits, a column where I share the music and musical topics I’ve been fixated on recently.

This week, five sports leagues (MLB, NBA, NFL, NHL, and MLS) and their associated players' unions sent letters to gambling regulators in 35 states requesting that something be done to curtail the increasing amount of harassment athletes are facing from an…

Well, Pope Leo gave it a hell of a go, we'll give him that.

Welcome back to Minor Dilemmas, where a member of Defector's Parents Council will answer your questions on surviving family life.

The NWSL received eight complaints about either sexual misconduct, sexual harassment, or retaliation during the first half of this year, according to documents obtained by Defector Media.

Who doesn’t love a little Normal Gossip surprise?

Ed Sheeran, perhaps best known for writing the kind of music that your second cousin chooses to play for the father-daughter dance at her wedding, cemented his status as a floppy-spine dummy this week by bending the knee to American billionaire idiot Robe…

On Tuesday, Tottenham did something that has been out of character since the start of the 2026-27 season: It scored a goal.

The operative fact is that the Mets were eliminated from the playoffs on Monday.

The YouTube title of this week's All Ball episode is “Jalen Hurts Is OVERRATED.”

For a brief period two decades ago, Miami was an amazing place to be a fan of women's professional basketball.

The year is 2022.

Time for your weekly edition of the Defector Funbag.

The 2026 U.S.

In a time when the algorithmically determined social internet serves primarily to trick people into becoming hosts to various parasites or simply drive them mad, it might be perversely comforting to imagine that the people on the other side of the screen…

Fair warning: This is a short blog post in which you are going to encounter exhausting behavior from some fellas who will leave you pining for the restoration of our culture's sense of shame.

The new Polymarket ad spot opens with LeBron James stepping onto an elevator and pushing a button labeled "SPORTS."

What does it mean for an NFL team to be "AI-first?"

On Monday morning, the rapper Macklemore posted a lengthy Instagram statement alleging that New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft and other NFL owners pitched a hissy-fit to get him dropped from the United States leg of Ed Sheeran's tour.

How strange it is to watch a whole Slam and feel as though we learned almost nothing about the true power hierarchy at the top of the men's tour.

Ryan Garcia, the often troubled and always magnetic Californian who to this point in his career seemed unsure if he’d rather be an influencer who fights or a fighter who influences, struck a blow for his fighter side on Saturday in Las Vegas.

There's been a lot of clamoring for answers as to what happened in the fourth quarter of Sunday's unusually messy divisional matchup between the Green Bay Packers and the Minnesota Vikings.

The Video Assistant Referee is supposed to get everything right.

Elon Musk loves them.