accept

Fabian Edwards doubts Mike Shipman will accept co-main call out for Bellator Birmingham

Coming off his concise victory over Lee Chadwick at Bellator Newcastle, Fabian Edwards has another former U.K. champion in his crosshairs in Mike Shipman. But “The Assassin” doubts the Londoner will accept his invitation to meet him in his hometown of Birmingham, England on May 4.

Bellator announced the Birmingham event during the inaugural European Series card on Feb. 9 in Newcastle.

Speaking on this week’s Eurobash, Edwards spoke of his excitement ahead of his first fight on home soil.

“It means a lot to me, I’m very excited,” Edwards told Eurobash. “I’ve always wanted to fight in Birmingham, but I’ve never had an opportunity to do it. It’s great for Bellator to do it and it’s going to be a great show. They have to have me on co-main. Let’s see who they can come with because I’m ready to go.”

Edwards immediately called for a showdown with former BAMMA champion Shipman in his post-fight media scrum and has heard that the London Shootfighter’s proponent is interested in settling their score.

“It does make sense. Someone said that he said that he wants the fight [against me], but I haven’t heard anything. I think it does make sense. I consider myself the best middleweight in the U.K., Ireland and wherever else, so I have to take out all these guys,” explained Edwards.

“Mike Shipman, some people think he’s good, so I’d like to go in there and show people that he’s not. I’m much better than these guys; I just took out a veteran with a big winning record. It’s not like he was a vet who had lost all his fights. He was a former champion with 24 wins under his belt. It would be good to take out another former champion because Shipman was a BAMMA champion as well, so it would be good to take out two champions back to back.”

Despite hearing promising things about the proposed matchup, Edwards doubts Shipman will want to face him in Birmingham.

“I think wherever they offer him a fight with me, he’ll just say no and that’s just it,” Shipman said. “I’ve been calling for a fight with this man for ages now and I haven’t heard anything off him, so let’s see if he signs. He’s talking about, ‘Let’s fight in London,’ but I’m like, ‘F*ck London! We’ve got a chance to be co-main on the Birmingham card!’ That’s a big opportunity for him,” he said.

Check out the latest episode of Eurobash. The Fabian Edwards interview beings at 38:00.

'Don’t accept gun violence as a fact of life.' A call to action as our country continues to spill blood.

When I read that the last day of Trevor Wehner’s life was the first day of his internship at Henry Pratt Co. in Aurora, I thought about Dayna Less.

Less was in her first year of a pharmacy residency at Mercy Hospital & Medical Center when a gunman opened fire there in November. She walked off an elevator, and a bullet hit and killed her. She was 24.

“She was the strongest person I know,” her dad, Brian Less, told the Tribune after she died.

Wehner was 21. A Pratt employee said Wehner was sitting in on a meeting to fire plant worker Gary Martin, who police say pulled out a .40-caliber Smith & Wesson and started shooting. Five people died.

Their families will never recover. None of us should. Not fully.

Not to the point where we forget their names or how they lived before they died.

Thinking about Less got me thinking about Tamara O’Neal, the emergency room doctor at Mercy whose ex-fiance shot and killed her in the hospital parking lot that November day.

“She was the pride of our family,” O’Neal’s uncle, Anthony Bean Sr., told the Tribune after she died. A doctor. The first one in her family.

Chicago police Officer Samuel Jimenez died at Mercy that day, too, the gunman’s third victim. He was 28. He left behind a wife and three kids.

So did Josh Pinkard, who was killed Friday in Aurora alongside Wehner. Pinkard was 37. He texted his wife, “I love you, I’ve been shot at work,” just before he died. She’ll be raising their three children without him.

READ MORE: Illinois State Police acknowledge it wrongly issued a gun license to Aurora shooter »

Two days before Aurora? That was the one-year anniversary of another Chicago police officer’s death. Commander Paul Bauer. His wife is my friend. His daughter is my daughter’s friend. He should still be here with them. Sometimes my breath catches in my throat when I think of them forever without him.

The day after Bauer died, a gunman walked into Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., and killed 17 people. Thursday was the one-year anniversary of their deaths. It was also the 11-year anniversary of the day a gunman opened fire on Northern Illinois University’s campus, killing five people and then himself.

The day after those anniversaries was Aurora.

The week before Aurora, a 1-year-old baby, Dejon Irving, was shot in the head in Chicago’s Longwood Manor neighborhood. More than 180 people have been shot in Chicago so far this year.

So this is life in America. A land of unparalleled ingenuity and staggering bravery and astounding natural beauty. And gun violence. Always, always gun violence.

I’m not ready to accept that. I don’t want a young person shot to death at work to remind me of another young person shot to death at work three months earlier. A father of three’s shooting death to remind me of another father of three’s shooting death three months earlier. Students shot at school to remind me of other students shot at school — same day, different year.

No. We can do better.

“It’s important to understand that gun violence is preventable, and that activism can make a difference,” Shannon Watts told me Monday.

Watts is the founder of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, a group she launched in 2012, the day after a gunman shot 26 people at Sandy Hook Elementary School, mostly 6- and 7-year-olds, before killing himself.

“Our volunteers have fought in hearing rooms, statehouses and boardrooms to change our nation’s culture of gun violence,” Watts said. “Don’t accept gun violence as a fact of life.”

Moms Demand has chapters in every state and is part of Everytown for Gun Safety, an organization that advocates for common sense gun legislation.

Moms Demand is not just for moms, Watts said. The group’s website, momsdemandaction.org, tells you how to join and take action.

“Just like MADD (Mothers Against Drunk Driving),” she said, “we welcome all Americans concerned about this issue.”

March for Our Lives, the student movement that sprang from Parkland, also has a website: marchforourlives.com. There’s a petition there to pass universal background checks. You can sign it.

Shaun Dakin, a Virginia-based gun-reform activist, maintains a site called 30 Gun Reform Actions You Can Take Now (30guncontrolactionsyoucantakenow.com). Most of them don’t cost any money.

BRAVE (Bold Resistance Against Violence Everywhere) activists from the Rev. Michael Pfleger’s St. Sabina Church on the South Side host events year-round. You can check them out at saintsabinapeacemakers.org/brave-youth-leaders.

“Any action at this point, instead of just stagnancy and blaming the other side,” Parkland survivor David Hogg told TV cameras, one day after his classmates and teachers were slaughtered. “You guys are the adults. You need to take some action.”

I wonder what we’re waiting for. I really do.

Join the Heidi Stevens Balancing Act Facebook group, where she hosts live chats every Wednesday at noon.

Former Chinese diplomat says British cannot accept loss of the empire in fresh rebuke to Gavin Williamson

Chinese state media has blasted the UK’s plans to send its largest warship through disputed waters where Beijing has staked its claim, saying that Britain can't accept the loss of its empire.

A state editorial written by Wu Zhenglong, China's former ambassador to Croatia posed the question: “As an island country in the Atlantic Ocean, why does the UK travel far and wide to the South China Sea to make troubles?”

The answer is because the British are “reluctant to accept the demise of the empire,” Mr Wu writes.

“The UK now acts as a tool of the United States to contain China, and just win a bubble reputation of ‘global military presence.’ It may just as well face the reality and apply its precious funds to the development of domestic economy and improvement of people’s lives.”

The row between Beijing and London started last week when Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson announced plans to send a new aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth carrying two squadrons of F-35 fighter jets into the disputed waters of the South China Sea.

His speech came as the UK and US conducted their first joint naval drills in the disputed South China Sea last month.

In retaliation, China is believed to have cancelled trade talks that were being arranged with Philip Hammond, Chancellor of the Exchequer.