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After Sunday's MLS Cup final, the Colorado Rapids can testify to soccer's capacity to inspire great passion and joy. FC Dallas can attest to its cruelty. On a chilly night with winds sweeping in from Lake Ontario, Dallas had the better of play...

Taylor Twellman scored his 100th and 101st goals in Major League Soccer on June 7, 2009. It was only his second game back from a head and neck injury suffered 10 months earlier.

Major League Soccer has its most improbable champion in its 14-year history. Real Salt Lake, a small-market expansion team that dealt with a harsh political landscape to survive in Utah and scraped into the MLS playoffs, won the MLS Cup 2009 final...

Jonathan Bornstein scored a late goal to give the U.S. soccer team a 2-2 draw against Costa Rica that clinched first place in the regional World Cup qualifying competition.

Trailing early and giving up chances late to an El Salvador team not thought to be a threat, the USA used two goals late in the first half for a 2-1 win Saturday night in a World Cup qualifier it simply could not afford to lose.

Michael Bradley didn't generate as much publicity upon entering Major League Soccer as fellow teen phenoms Freddy Adu or Bobby Convey, both first-round draft picks. His biggest claim to fame at age 16: He was the coach's son.

The U.S. team warmed up for next week's home World Cup qualifier against the world's 121st-ranked team by playing the No. 1 team to a standstill before a crowd favoring light blue and white over red, white and blue.

For all the changes in Major League Soccer over the past six years, two things remain constant Dwayne De Rosario's match-winning ability and the New England Revolution's playoff heartbreak. De Rosario, who scored the winning goal in the 2001 MLS Cup...

The Chicago Fire's curse on D.C. United lives on. Barely. The Fire got the better of United in the playoffs yet again Thursday night, scoring two first-half goals and surviving a thrilling D.C. comeback in a 2-2 tie that sent Chicago to the Eastern...

Go ahead, says Landon Donovan. Heckle me. Get on my case about the World Cup. Post the Landon in Germany: Worthless banner. I'll just play better. That's the message Donovan and the Los Angeles Galaxy sent Saturday in Washington, handing runaway MLS...

Nick Rimando stopped Clint Dempsey's shootout kick, and D.C. United rode Brian Carroll's successful boot moments earlier to a 4-3 victory Saturday over the New England Revolution and advanced to the MLS Cup. It was the first Major League Soccer game...

USA is a legitimate, if peculiar, soccer nation If you're wondering whether reaching the quarterfinals qualifies the United States as a soccer nation, consider this: An American director (Terry Gilliam, the sole non-Englishman in Monty Python) took...

Annoy everyone; support the USA To those who aren't sure whether to back the US national team as it runs the gauntlet of World Cup qualifying games known as the Hexagonal, consider this reason: Rebellion. The very idea of the United States...

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New York is by far the biggest holdout in the USA in the 10-year push for MMA regulation, an effort spearheaded by UFC and accelerated in the past four years with Marc Ratner, former Nevada state athletic commission executive director, leading the...

The collision between head and fist doesn't always favor the fist.

The UFC is all about fighting, but President Dana White has been repairing business relationships over the last few months.

On Nov. 12, 1993, 10 fighters from assorted backgrounds gathered for a competition billed as a no-holds-barred fighting contest -- the Ultimate Fighting Championship, broadcast on pay-per-view from Denver's McNichols Sports Arena.

For nine years, the UFC has led an effort to get mixed martial arts accepted, legalized and regulated through most of the USA, succeeding across three-quarters of the country.

Fans booed. Tim Sylvia protested. UFC President Dana White was shocked. At UFC 48 in 2004, referee Herb Dean was besieged. He had just stopped the heavyweight title bout between Sylvia and Frank Mir.

Many mixed martial artists need the money. Some just prefer to stay busy and take on mental challenges along with their physical challenges.

Movie chronicles life of deaf fighter.

Brock Lesnar isn't one to seek out an image makeover. But the former pro wrestler and current UFC heavyweight champion is showing a different public face these days, and it's not because he's sporting a beard. Often shown in Ultimate Fighting...

UFC welterweight Koscheck exudes positive energy, whether he's picking the music for his walk to the cage, reading Bible-inspired motivational e-mail or helping others through tough times via his Twitter feed. Yet, he also uses Twitter to remind...

Early Ultimate Fighting Championship events included the occasional ill-prepared sumo wrestler. Japanese shows have featured everyone from cartoon characters to Olympic athletes making abrupt transitions to a new sport.

UFC President Dana White had heard plenty of surprising things from Brock Lesnar. But nothing prepared him for a call he got last fall from Lesnar, while the heavyweight champion was hospitalized and on painkillers.

Fedor, who gets the same first-name treatment in MMA circles that Kobe Bryant gets in the NBA, is several contradictions in one. He's a gentle, humble man whose mystique can rattle opponents. He has a doughy figure but is quicker than his opponents.