Names In The News

Stallone Settles “Rocky” Lawsuit With Boxer

NBA Senior VP/Marketing & Team Business SCOTT O’NEIL and NASCAR Music & Talent Relations Manager PHIL METZ are included in AD AGE’s annual “40 Under Forty” (AD AGE, 8/7).

BALBOA CONSTRICTOR: SYLVESTER STALLONE has “quietly settled a 3-year-old legal battle” with CHUCK WEPNER, who “claimed the movie ‘ROCKY’ was really his unauthorized life story — and one he deserved to be paid for.” Terms were not disclosed, but Wepner sought at least $15M when he first filed the suit in ’03 (Newark STAR-LEDGER, 8/8).

JUSTICE SERVED? A WALL STREET JOURNAL editorial on the arrest of former BetOnSports.com CEO DAVID CARRUTHERS states, “By any measure, this is a case of extraordinary prosecutorial zeal.” Carruthers and the company “are not charged with dishonest behavior toward their customers. They are being told that a business they believed was legal was a criminal enterprise even if it was being run in the open.” This “smacks of a politically opportunistic prosecution” (WALL STREET JOURNAL, 8/8).

EAGLE EYED: Eagles New Business Development Manager CHRIS MOLNAR recently took “a trip to Hollywood to drum up media attention” for the team. After a stop at NBC’s “Tonight Show,” Molnar visited the Playboy Mansion, where he met with KENDRA WILKINSON of E!’s “The Girls Next Door” and “plied her with gear, including the new pink woman’s shirt.” Wilkinson, whose mother was an Eagles cheerleader in the ’70s, blogs for the team’s Web site. Molnar “couldn’t get HUGH HEFNER himself to model anything” (Michael Klein, PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER, 8/8).

DROPPING IN: Last night’s edition of MTV’s “Cribs” featured the home of LAIRD HAMILTON and GABRIELLE REESE. At the point when subjects normally show their cars, Hamilton said, “The most important piece of equipment in my line of work are Honda jet skis. They bring us home every day” (MTV, 8/7). Hamilton is also profiled in the current issue of SI (THE DAILY).