[mack]

This thread will look at famous people from the past. What are they doing now?

Lots (but not all) will be from sports, since this is the sports section dummy!

Let's start it off with Anna Kournikova. _ Have I told you all lately that I saw her play an exhibition match in a few years ago?



And that I'd seen her picture before and thought she was attractive but in person she's on a whole 'nother level, both body and face (imo)? And lastly, that she refused to go short time with me after the match?



July 14, 2008- Anna Kournikova

A decade after hijacking tennis as a brash teen, she's matured in attitude and in style, content with the phenomenon she was and the woman she's become.
By L. JON WERTHEIM (source: Sports Illustrated)

It's 1998 and I'm trying to interview Anna Kournikova. It's a bit like attempting to secure an audience with a world leader, which, Kournikova's handlers would have you believe, she is. Billed as "the most downloaded female on the planet," Kournikova is flanked by a battalion of handlers, agents, managers and other assorted obstructionists.

There are months of delays and unreturned calls. When favored with the courtesy of a response, the communication is annoying in the extreme. Can you send your questions in advance? Can you embed references to the products of Anna's various sponsors in whatever you write? That would really help speed the process! Finally, after more than a year, I am granted a 10-minute session at a hotel in New Jersey where Kournikova is being paid a prince(cess)ly fee to play in a weekend tennis exhibition. Monitored by yet another handler, Kournikova spends the excruciating session chomping on pink gum, staring at her nails, and performing a nimble feat of dialogue by giving yes/no answers to questions that begin with the word "how."

It's 2008 and I'm trying to interview Anna Kournikova. Half an hour before the appointed meeting time, my cellphone chirps. Chastened by experience, I steel myself for a call apologizing for a last-minute change of plans. But, no, it's Anna—on an unblocked number—confirming that she's running on schedule and if I'm having trouble finding a parking space at the Starbucks where we're scheduled to meet, I can always park at the adjacent Whole Foods. She arrives alone, pulling up in a tasteful but hardly ostentatious ride. She makes eye contact. She chews no gum. Ninety minutes into what is more a conversation than an interview, she is still going strong. No, I'm forced to admit, I have not read the book Eat, Pray, Love. "You really should," she says. "It's spiritual, but well-written at the same time."
She's 27 now, and while she pretty much looks the same as remembered, Anna Kournikova bears only the vaguest resemblance to the one-woman international conglomerate that damn near hijacked women's tennis a decade ago. While she's unwilling to concede that she's retired, she hasn't played a WTA Tour match in more than five years. The regal prom queen who once memorably remarked to a suitor, "You can't afford me," is now recommending literature. The tennis mercenary who allegedly made $50 million in off-court income before the age of 18 is now an ambassador for the Boys & Girls Clubs of America—which sounds like so much p.r. until you learn that in April she went to gritty Tijuana, Mexico, to help open a youth facility.

When it's pointed out how little the Kournikova of today conforms to the image she created years ago, she nods her head so forcefully her Gucci sunglasses nearly fly off her face. "Of course, I'm a different person! People say, 'I can't believe how much you've changed!' What did they expect? People grow, evolve. It would be sad if I didn't change!"

Kournikova is now a RIPO—Russian in Passport Only. She holds a green card and lives full time in Miami Beach, the port she entered in 1992, when she was a 10-year-old prodigy armed with talent and attitude in equal measure. "When Anna won a point, it wasn't an achievement," recalls Nick Bollettieri, her first American coach. "That was how it was supposed to go. I mean, she was Anna Kournikova." At age 14 she won the Orange Bowl, the top international junior event. At 17, in her breakthrough season of '98, she scored victories over Lindsay Davenport, Martina Hingis and Steffi Graf, advanced to the fourth round of the U.S. and French Opens, and cracked the Top 20 for the first time. With that, Anna Inc. was open for business.

The Kournikova phenomenon was a classic case of harmonic convergence. Women's sports—tennis in particular—were growing in popularity, eyed as a promising frontier by sports marketers. The Internet enabled fans from Minsk to Minneapolis to access Kournikova in a way they never could, say, Chris Evert. As the global economy kicked into high gear, you could scarcely find a more ideal exponent for it than an exotic Russian who spoke flawless English and performed all over the world.

Kournikova embraced it all. The daughter of communism (she was born in Moscow in 1981) took commercialism to new extremes. She endorsed products from watches to brokerage firms to sports bras, virtually every campaign built around her looks rather than her athletic prowess. When she wasn't pushing products, she was striking come-hither poses for magazines. (Full disclosure: In 2000, Kournikova, then 18, graced the cover of a certain weekly sports magazine, wearing little besides a peach shirt and a Mona Lisa smile.) The pundits could debate whether this was a feminist setback or a feminist triumph—"What is she supposed to say, 'No, I don't want your money?' That's like winning the lottery and then saying, 'No, I don't really deserve it,'" no less than Martina Navratilova once said of Kournikova. Meanwhile, Kournikova was making bundles of cash for her sponsors, her tour, her agents and, not least, herself. Nathalie Tauziat, a higher-ranked but less publicized WTA player at the time, called Kournikova, "a blonde windfall."

But Kournikova's cult of personality exacted a price on her tennis. While the contagion known as Annamania raged and hormonally charged boys showed up en masse at women's tennis matches for the first time, an inconvenient truth persisted: Kournikova, for all her appeal, had never won a tournament. Pitted against the hype, her ability had little chance. Distraction was her destruction.

In the retelling, Kournikova was the tennis equivalent of the Fridge, a unique physical specimen rather than a creditable athlete. In truth—and this is what gives the story a slightly tragic ring—Kournikova was abundantly gifted. She played whimsical, well-rounded tennis and excelled at the net, an area of the court most contemporary players avoid as if it were quicksand. She reached as high as eighth in the singles rankings and in 1999 was the world's top doubles player. But the weight of never having won a title ultimately crushed her. "I put pressure on myself, especially as I got older," she says. "At 16, 17 you have no fear. You don't think or analyze. You just play on automatic. You can get smarter as you get older, but in sports you can be too smart, you know?"

Her fragile psyche was compounded by a fragile body. Foot, back and ankle injuries forestalled her career. By the spring of 2003 she was playing low-level challenger events in an attempt to revive her game. That May she withdrew from a match against a 16-year-old arriviste named Maria Sharapova. The following week Kournikova played in Charlottesville, Va., in front of a crowd consisting mostly of Virginia frat boys. She lost to a Brazilian ranked outside the top 300 and hasn't played a sanctioned match since.

Her impact unquestionably went beyond commerce and Internet photo galleries. Following the trail blazed at least in part by Kournikova, there are five players in the WTA's Top 10 from Russia or the former Soviet Union. "Anna," says fourth-ranked Svetlana Kuznetsova, "showed there was possibility through tennis." As playing careers go, however, Kournikova's is a case of sizzle beating steak, in straight sets.

In assessing her record, Kournikova speaks with such candor and detachment that it's almost as if she's describing another person. "In a perfect world, would I have won a tournament? Yes. But I wasn't able to string those matches together. Sometimes I got unlucky, and sometimes I just lost." Regrets? "Not a thing. Except to be a little stronger physically. Come on, regrets? I grew up a little girl in the Soviet Union playing at a small sports club. Tennis gave me my life."

Does she wish she'd dialed back the hype machine a bit? "It's hard. We did the best we could. But there was no blueprint." And whatever you do, don't lavish her with a shred of sympathy. "Hey, I took the money. It's simple. If you don't want the attention, don't take the money."

Tennis has come to rival boxing in the frequency of comebacks, so don't be surprised if Kournikova joins the swelling ranks of the "unretired." She works out daily and this spring clocked seven-minute miles running in a charity triathlon in Miami. Though her hands are noticeably free of calluses, she plays tennis a few times a week, sometimes on the public courts not far from her waterfront home. This summer she'll compete for the St. Louis Aces in the World TeamTennis league. "Honestly, who knows?" she says. "I'm young enough to still play. But physically could I take it?"

Meanwhile, she spends her days living what she admits is a charmed existence. Her parents, Alla and Sergei, divorced in 2004, but Alla moved to Palm Beach, remarried and has a three-year-old son, whose half sister is all too happy to babysit. "I get my kid fix," she says. "Then I say, 'Here ya go, Mom. See ya.'"

Kournikova is a spokesperson for K-Swiss. She reads. When the urge strikes, she hits the South Beach clubs. And there are those Boys & Girls Club fund-raisers. "Don't get the wrong idea," she says. "I basically get dressed up and beg people for money."

Testament to the durability of fame, she still has run-ins with the paparazzi. She claims it's particularly bad when she goes out with her longtime boyfriend, singer Enrique Iglesias. "Girls look at him. Guys look at me," she says. "It goes with the job, but it gets annoying when you feel violated. Just take the picture and be done." She can still watch celebrity shows and learn about herself. For the record: "I'm not married, not pregnant, didn't have a boob job, no Botox. What else"

If it sounds as though she's figured life out, well, she hasn't. "Here's one thing I don't get," she says. "Why are people afraid of getting older? You feel wiser. You feel more mature. You feel like you know yourself better. You would trade that for softer skin? Not me!"

[tommiecoughlin]

Remember Corey Feldman?



Corey was a successful child actor who starred in blockbuster movies such as "Stand By Me" and "Goonies". He was also a close personal friend of Michael Jackson.

With child fame.... often come the pitfalls of fast friends and drugs.
His personal demons robbed Corey of his youth and he dropped out of sight for a few years..... rumored to be addicted to heroin......but with the help of friends, Corey cleaned up his act and jumped started his Hollywood career again.

Corey came full circle when he won an Emmy Award for his portrayal of.....




..... Grandpa Munster.

[Thebomb]

always wondered where corey went....tradgic loss to the acting world............corey haim too??? wasted talent

[mack]

Where's 'manos de piedra' now what's he up to?

?

Lost In Translation
[ ROBERTO DURAN ] A quarter century after he famously quit against Sugar Ray Leonard, the former champ still doesn't understand why he was held in such disdain
by Richard Hoffer (source- Sports Illustrated; written in July of 2005))

First of all, in regards to the two most famous words in all of sports, he never said them. Not that it matters much. His words were still a declaration of surrender. But what Roberto Duran actually said on that strange November night in New Orleans 25 years ago was "No peleo [I won't fight]," wagging his glove softly, his back to Sugar Ray Leonard , their rematch suddenly and shockingly over. This is weird news, after all this time. So where, you ask, did No mss, the most memorable phrase yet for athletic capitulation, come from? Duran , who has been an enormously playful storyteller throughout lunch (he is in Minneapolis to help a friend with a boxing promotion), turns into his old, forbidding self. In language that would survive any translation--we all know what puta means, right?--he blames announcer Howard Cosell . "I am standing here, he is sitting there," Duran petulantly explains. "How does he know what I'm saying?"

Cosell, whatever he heard, certainly didn't mistake Duran 's intentions. And Duran , for all the shame he suffered following that fight, doesn't argue that he gave up. Oddly the facts of his disgrace do not disturb him as much as the headline that delivered its news. To this day he remains blase about the event, saying he had simply decided to cut his losses and re-engage Leonard a third time, more properly prepared. "I would get in really, really great shape," he says, "and I'd really knock him out." He pauses and then laughs. "I didn't think the fight would take nine years to make."

When they did finally meet for a third time, in 1989, both were past any motivation beside money, and the fight was an unsightly affair, Leonard winning on points. Duran , in the meantime, had rebounded to win the WBA light middleweight title from Davey Moore in 1983, fight Marvelous Marvin Hagler nearly to the death five months later and finally win the WBC middleweight championship from Iran Barkley in 1989. His comeback allowed him to reclaim a portion of his legend, the Hands of Stone mystique that originated in Panama , where he emerged as possibly the greatest lightweight of all time. But it could never erase the no mas--rather, the no peleo fight, one of sport's great puzzlers.

Had an election been held, Duran would have been voted least likely to quit in the ring. He was such a fierce and reckless combatant that when Joe Frazier was asked whom Duran reminded him of, Frazier said, "Charles Manson." Out of the ring Duran was a fun-loving guy, but he recognized from the beginning that boxing was his only way out of the worst kind of poverty, and he practiced the sport desperately. And he really did have manos de piedra. In the early days of his career his trainers made more than he did at his fights, hustling bets ringside on which hand Duran would use to deliver the knockout.

Leonard felt those hands in their first meeting, in Montreal in June 1980. Duran had been lightweight champion from 1972 through '78, finally moving up to engage America 's sweetheart for his welterweight title. It was a brutal bout, Leonard drawn into a street fight he never wanted. But if Leonard wasn't smart, losing for the first time in his career, he became a genius in arranging the rematch. Duran says he gained 50 pounds that first month out of the ring and that the Leonard camp rushed him into a return bout five months later. " Leonard , he was back in the gym immediately," Duran says. "I was completely different from him. While he was training, I was in the discotheques. They knew it, too."

Duran , as usual, was in no position to negotiate the date or even the money. He needed the dough; there were tax problems. He had just seven weeks of training, some of it in a rubber corset, the last days living on diuretics. He still says it was cramps, not that embarrassing left jab Leonard delivered in the seventh round after pretending to wind up for a bolo punch, that dictated the result.

"Frustrated? No, that's how Leonard fights," he says, dismissing the armchair psychologists who claim he quit in protest over Leonard 's insistence of style over substance. "My stomach was paralyzed." He even pulls up his shirt to show the location of his pain. Although he seems to be describing appendicitis, he believes it was the hot coffee he drank right before the fight, coming after he had purged (and then, following the weigh-in, gorged), that produced his distress.

Duran was amazed at the furor his retreat created. To him it was a good business decision; he wasn't going to win this fight, so he was saving himself for the next one. Yet in Panama he was mocked, called a chicken. Minus a third fight with Leonard , though, he didn't see a way to redeem himself, so he continued to train on the dance floor. He lost decisions to Wilfredo Benitez in January 1982 and, in a fight that was judged the upset of the year by The Ring magazine, to Kirkland Laing in September '82.

It wasn't until the summer of 1983, when, finally fit, Duran upset Moore to become the WBA light middleweight champion, that he could be taken seriously again. Six years later, at the age of 37, he surprised once more, beating Barkley for the WBC middleweight crown. Lightweight to middleweight, champion all the way. Back in Panama City fans lined the streets to welcome their old hero.

It is now possible to laugh at the idea of Duran as a quitter. He fought until the age of 50 and retired only because of injuries sustained in a serious car accident in Buenos Aires . Now, at age 54, he still wishes he were in the ring. "I would have no problem with the young guys today," he says. "None."

That said, Duran seems to enjoy life outside the ring, dabbling with salsa groups he hopes to get off the ground--"I've spent three to four million dollars on music," he says, shrugging comically. He also goes to Europe for autograph shows and assists Luis de Cubas, his former manager, with Team Freedom Promotions, a Florida -based outfit that stages cards around the country. "I am never home," Duran says, although he often travels with his family; he has eight children and has been married to his wife, Felicidad, for 33 years. He would like to do a book about his life, and maybe a movie, although he thinks, as with the 1980 Leonard fights, there would have to be two of them. "One where you laugh," he says, "one where you cry."

A big part of his job seems to be nurturing the legend of Roberto Duran . The complicated story of a poor boy who always took the first 60 cents he made at his shoeshine stand to light six candles and who became the fiercest fighter of his time hardly needs burnishing, but Duran will gladly give it a buff. For example, the story of his decking a horse. There are several accounts that Duran , drunk in a bar after celebrating an early victory, was dared to fight a horse. Now which was it? he's asked. Was the bet for a bottle of whiskey or for $200? Duran realizes his history could use some attention. He thinks for a minute. "Both," he finally says, and proceeds to reenact the entire event--it's practically a cabaret act--with a hilarious attention to detail, incorporating every possible version of the anecdote.
In any case, he points out, the horse did go down. Nobody's ever disputed that.

[Bilbobaggins]

Mack I am sure I saw somewhere that Duran was fighting again this summer against someone nearly as old..............

Can't remember where is was now, maybe in a British tabloid.
I think Colin Hart was saying it shouldn't be allowed......

[mack]

Bilbo, I hadn't heard anything about Duran fighting again... he's 57 now so...?? Probably one of those false rumors, like jonny heading back to soon.

June 30, 2003 (Source: Sports Illustrated, 'The Vault')
Short And Sweet
You don't need to be Yao Ming to make your mark in the sports world. We caught up with six former athletes who, though small in stature, measured up in the eyes of history.
by Melissa Segura

AARON PRYOR , 5'6"
Boxer

At 47 Aaron (the Hawk) Pryor was ready for the ring. "Hawk Time! Hawk Time," the crowd chanted. "It was just like going to a championship fight," says the former WBA junior welterweight titlist, "and I was only getting married." On June 5 Pryor wed Frankie Wagner at the boxing hall of fame in Canastota, N.Y.

The cheers were long in coming. The man who had defended his belt eight times from 1980 to '83 battled crack addiction in the late '80s. His $3 million in earnings evaporated, and he wound up on the street and, eventually, in jail. "Then I got saved," says Pryor . He was lying on the floor of a Cincinnati crack den , ulcers bleeding, when someone called 911. After Pryor left the hospital, he went straight to the New Friendship Church. He's now a Baptist deacon.

Pryor also helps guide young fighters, including sons Aaron Jr. and Stephan. Occasionally he sees his virtual image get KO'd on his PlayStation. "They needed a machine to knock me out," he says. Or maybe just a woman. "The Hawk," he admits, "has finally been tamed."

(Update from Wikipedia): Pryor lives in his hometown of Cincinnati with his wife, Frankie Pryor, and their four children – Aaron, Jr., Antwan, Stephan, and Elizabeth. Pryor is an ordained deacon at New Friendship Baptist Church and travels the world making personal appearances and spreading his anti-drug message. In the 1990s, Pryor opened a gym in his hometown where he helps children learn boxing and stay off the streets. He remains active in the sport of boxing training both professional and Golden Gloves amateur boxers. The Pryor boxing legacy continues today with Aaron, Jr. and Stephan following in their dad’s footsteps.

[Bilbobaggins]

It definitely wasn't a rumour Mack (note the inserted U in rumour, as the Queen requested)

[Figjam]

Originally Posted by Bilbobaggins

It definitely wasn't a rumour Mack (note the inserted U in rumour, as the Queen requested)

The Queens English Bill, Macks a septic

[Fork Handles]

Rumours wasn't Queen, it was Fleetwood Mack.



You blokes are losing it.

[mack]

Another 'Where are they now?'


Volsfan pictured jumping an abandoned bus shell just outside of Sakon Nakhon, 1987.

Volsfan... What Goes Up Must Come Down.

Throughout Southeast Asia in the 1980's, all one had to say was the name "Volsfan!" and images of a daredevil on a motorcycle, soaring through the air jumping long lines of cars or small buildings would immediately flash into people's minds.

Dubbed, 'The poor man's Evil Knievel' by the media, Volsfan defied death on a regular basis, whether through his seemingly impossible motorcycle jumps or through the amount of beer he could drink in one setting.

Then in 1989, while jumping a row of water buffaloes in a small rural village in the Isaan area, Volsfan's world came crashing down. A skittish end buffalo bolted and Volsfan's moto landed on it. The result was a severely broken leg from the accident, compounded by the fact that the local villagers nearly beat Vols to death for killing their beast of burden.

Volsfan dropped from sight but his name would continue to surface in rumors...such as the 2006 one that Vols would meet Roberto Duran in the ring as 'Manos de Piedra' made his own comeback bid, or the 2007 rumor that he would enter the 'Coney Island Hotdog Eating Competition' in an attempt to wrest the crown from Joey Chestnut. All the rumors proved false of course.

Today Volsfan lives a quiet life in a small rural village in Thailand. ("I'd rather you not say exactly where, there's still some people in the Isaan area who never seem to get over the past," Volsfan said with a weary sigh).

Designing and selling T-shirts to unsuspecting Thais with English slogans such as, "Save A Tree- Eat A Beaver," "Pierced In Places You'd Love To Lick" and "Smell My Finger," Volsfan is enacting his own form of revenge against the rural Thai's who nearly beat him to death years ago. ''"Som nom na," said Volsfan with a smile.