A BRITISH boxer has been found dead in a Thai hotel room reportedly next to drug paraphernalia.

The 21-year-old was found next to unconscious Australian star Jayson Tonkin in a room on the fourth floor of a hotel in the coastal resort city of Pattaya.

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Cops said the two men were found just after midnight Wednesday with “drug paraphernalia” on the table after staff heard a commotion in the room.

On arriving they found Jayson panicking “in a state of severe intoxication” about why his friend was “lying still”, local media reported.

The Brit was found shirtless, wearing just black shorts and a waist bag.

A police spokesman said: “We have taken photos of the scene and collected all evidence.

“We believe he may have died from a drug overdose based on what we found in the room.

“We will question his friend further when he is conscious.”

Jayson was later taken to hospital and is currently in the ICU unconscious.

Despite that, Thai cops, who take a hard line on drugs, could charge him with consumption or possession leading to up to five years in prison, the Daily Mail reports.

Jayson, originally from Manly in Sydney, moved to Thailand as a teen and had begun fight in Muay Thai bouts.

A middleweight Muay Thai fighter nicknamed The Dingo, Jayson opened up about his struggles with drugs – and in particular methamphetamine – in a podcast about mental health made earlier this year.

One fight planned for October 20 against WBC Muay Thai world number one middleweight champion, Tengnueng Sitjaesairoong had been cancelled after Monsoon rains had hit the area.

The Foreign Office has been approached for comment.

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Derrick Lewis shared the octagon with Francis Ngannou in a fight both have admitted they’d like to forget at UFC 226 in July 2018, but Lewis said Ngannou—without even knowing—helped him out years later.

Lewis is set to face Jhonata Diniz at UFC Edmonton this Saturday. Following his memorable knockout win over Marcos Rogerio de Lima at UFC 291 in July 2023, Lewis re-signed with the promotion. With Ngannou signing with PFL and negotiating guaranteed big paydays for his opponent, Lewis saw that as a negotiating tool.

“Francis played the role of helping me get this contract that I got right now,” Lewis told MMA Fighting. “Because, you know, the negotiations, I said, ‘Man, look what they’re doing over there, I could be over there getting that. It’s so weird. I would like to stay here.’

“So, you know, I ain’t gonna say too much.”

“The Black Beast” stopped Rodrigo Nascimento in the main event of UFC St. Louis in his most recent outing in May. Lewis was originally slated to face Alexandr Romanov, but the promotion shifted him to Diniz for what will likely be a striking battle.

Now that Lewis has a lucrative contract, he hopes to continue fighting as frequently as he did in the past. He can’t complain about the money he’s getting, even with the potential of getting millions to face Ngannou in PFL during his brief free agency period.

“Yes, because it was there, so now I’m here,” Lewis said. “So, you know, now they’re trying to space my fights out. I said, ‘No, don’t space them out. Come on, give me them three, or four fights that I wanted to give them before.’”

Ngannou recently made his MMA return at PFL Battle of the Giants earlier this month and knocked out Renan Ferreira in the first round. Ngannou battled with a heavy heart following the passing of his 15-month-old son Kobe. As a father, himself, Lewis couldn’t help but feel for his past foe.

“I heard, I read an article about what happened,” Lewis said. “It’s pretty sad his son passed away like being one-year-old at that too, because at one they are already responsive, like talking and moving around, walking and stuff like that. So to lose a son that early, like at that age, I’m sure it’s very traumatic.”

While Lewis doesn’t watch a lot of MMA in his free time, his coach showed him Ngannou’s big finish of Ferreira.

“Oh, it was good,” Lewis said of Ngannou’s performance. “It was good, I didn’t watch the fight [live]. I don’t think nobody did, I heard they only got 10,000 pay-per-view buys, but it’s good [for Francis].”

Beauden Barrett has been picked ahead of Damian McKenzie at fly-half for New Zealand’s meeting with England on Saturday.

Barrett started at 10 only once in the Rugby Championship earlier this year, with McKenzie steering the side from stand-off for the first five games.

Barrett, a former two-time World Player of the Year, spent the early part of this year playing for Japanese side Toyota Verblitz as part of a sabbatical agreed with New Zealand Rugby.

Elsewhere, Beauden’s brother Jordie Barrett is back from injury and comes into midfield at the expense of Anton Lienert-Brown, while loose-head prop Tamaiti Williams is one of only three players to keep their places from the warm-up win over Japan.

Cortez Ratima starts at scrum-half with Cam Roigard on the bench alongside McKenzie.

Second row Scott Barrett captains his two brothers and the rest of the side, with Sam Cane and Ardie Savea joined in the back row by Wallace Sititi, who wins his seventh cap.

With Election Day less than one week away, all eyes and ears are on the political discourse happening in the U.S.

One debate that took place Wednesday night in front of a national television audience was between UFC CEO Dana White and prominent businessman and television personality Mark Cuban.

The two men appeared on a News Nation town hall hosted by Chris Cuomo in front of a live studio audience. While guests Bill O’Reilly and Stephen A. Smith were featured in studio, White and Cuban joined the discussion via video call.

A staunch supporter of former U.S. president and current Republican nominee Donald Trump, White called into question the record of current vice president and Democratic nominee Kamala Harris, and criticized the exit of President Joe Biden from the race.

Cuban rebutted White’s praise of Trump, mentioning the economy under his administration, the implementation of tariffs, and his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Watch the exchange between Cuban and White in the video above.

For more news and coverage on Election 2024, visit USA TODAY.

That gallus approach is attracting attention. Even in a 3-0 defeat by Celtic last Sunday, Miller’s all-round game stood out, striking the woodwork twice.

A clip then circulated of veteran broadcaster Martin Tyler waxing lyrical about the teenager, while former Scotland striker Kris Boyd suggested the midfielder is now out of reach for both Old Firm clubs.

Experienced Motherwell duo Andy Halliday and Paul McGinn have also said Miller, who ended Wednesday’s win at Tannadice with the captain’s armband, is the best youngster they have ever played with.

When you consider Halliday trained with a teenage Billy Gilmour at Rangers, plus McGinn’s younger brother is Aston Villa captain John, the comments are “obviously a huge honour” for Miller.

But with the help of dad Lee – now a barber and a good one at that, according to his son – the youngster is able to keep a lid on things by putting plaudits and speculation to one side.

A Scotland Under-21 international, much of the chat surrounding the teenager has been whether he is capable of making the step up to the senior squad.

His dad believes he is “good enough” now, while Miller says “I’ll be ready” whenever the call comes.

Regardless, it feels somewhat poignant that his first appearance at the national stadium is set to come for the club he has dedicated more than half his life to.

The Fir Park club travel to Hampden knowing victory against a troubled Rangers side would take them to within a win of their first major honour in 33 years.

Miller recognises Motherwell will still be “massive underdogs” in the tie, but the teenager is eyeing an opportunity to make himself, along with his team-mates, a club legend.

“We just need to go out there and enjoy it,” he says. “That’s all we can do, we know it’s a massive game for everybody involved.

“And we know we have a chance to make history – that’s the main aim.”

Whatever way you slice many of the controversial overtaking clashes in Formula 1 of late – particularly those involving Max Verstappen – there’s one element that cannot be denied.

When it comes to drivers fighting hard, title rivals going toe to toe, the best racing machines on the planet being thrown at each other – it makes a great television spectacle. TV can’t replace the buzz of the crowd and the raucous response to great or contentious overtaking moves, but F1 – really more than any other – is a sport designed for broadcasting.

And yet, there is one development in all the excellent output Formula One Management (FOM) produces for its world feed coverage that needs to be undone for the sake of the championship’s sporting sanctity.

And it’s pertinent to the current furore over Verstappen’s driving towards Lando Norris at Austin. In that case, there was a healthy dose of deja vu from Brazil 2021 and the Dutchman’s controversial clash there with Lewis Hamilton.

This is how, in both episodes, the live onboard feed from Verstappen’s car was pointing backwards at the time of each incident (in 2021 it cut there seconds before the clash Turn 4 occurred).

This meant that the respective stewards of those meetings had to make their calls without a very important piece of evidence, which showed the Dutchman’s full attempts to make the corner in real time. They do have steering lock data available as part of their telemetry assessments, but this is rarely explained for watching viewers.

A forward-facing onboard is generally the best view of a drivers’ perspective in any racing move, but when the opposite angle is being used for the live broadcast (including on FOM’s OTT offering, F1 TV) the critical view can only be accessed by the officials and teams when cars return to the pits and recordings from every onboard camera are downloaded.

In Brazil 2021, this was what formed Mercedes’ doomed right-of-review request regarding why Verstappen wasn’t even assessed for a penalty there.

Max Verstappen, Red Bull Racing RB16B, battles with Lewis Hamilton, Mercedes W12

Photo by: Charles Coates / Motorsport Images

For McLaren’s own similar attempt this time around, however, Motorsport.com understands that the forward-facing feed from Verstappen’s car, when viewed after the Austin weekend, played little part in how the team put together its own unsuccessful legal argument against Norris’s Austin penalty.

McLaren was and remains convinced that Norris was so far ahead of Verstappen that the stewards were wrong not to consider the latter the attacking car, having had his rival’s MCL38 blast by on the outside with DRS.

The key aspect of its legal challenge was the timing of ‘Document 69’ that announced Norris’s penalty – they feel it simply wasn’t sent out in time to form any defence, which combines with how they wished both drivers had been able to state their respective cases. The onboard camera footage just bolstered their position, rather than established it to the point of driving its right-of-review request.

In Mexico last weekend, the forward-facing onboard feeds added considerably to F1’s spectacle and detracted from it at the same time.

Red Bull team boss Christian Horner put on theatrical display in defending the Dutchman post-race – armed with printed telemetry data.

With it, Horner claimed that in Verstappen’s next (but not last) clash with Norris post-Austin the Briton “would’ve run off track” as “you can see from his onboard steering” regarding Mexico’s Turn 4.

But a view of the McLaren’s onboard actually shows his trajectory was surely on to make the corner with at least some of his car within track limits (fine per the rules). It was Verstappen’s feed that shows the critical, brief, opposite lock that left Norris with no space and having to go off.

And then there was Charles Leclerc’s latest brilliantly wild moment – nearly dropping his Ferrari into the Peraltada barriers as Norris bore down late on.

His car’s onboard feed is looking back at the McLaren throughout. And while the off-board helicopter showed how he held the twin massive oversteer slides towards and through what is a pretty small run-off area running onto the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez’s main straight, the art of his effort to avoid a massive shunt was lost to millions of watching live viewers.

The Shotover F1 camera, which is operated by Lieven Hermans, Aerial Camera Operator for F1, mounted on a helicopter

Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images

Pontificating over the minor is very F1, but the entertainment factor provided by these feeds just shouldn’t be allowed to interfere with the job sporting officiating, as it currently does. The teams and drivers have at regular times pointed out recently how tough a job the stewards and race officials have in this delightfully complex sporting exercise, so why compromise their efforts for the sake of a camera shot that can quickly become inferior anyway?

Any functioning society wouldn’t expect legal investigators to examine a crime with their view deliberately impaired – so why should F1 be any different? Helpfully, change is afoot.  

Motorsport.com understands that a process to keep the forward-facing cameras broadcasting constantly live – at least for race control officials and stewards – is currently being developed for the FIA. This will combine with the extra analysis tools it has developed with its Remote Operations Centre in Geneva since 2022.

There is understood to be a considerable technical challenge to rolling this out, but if it can be achieved, it will solve one of F1’s glaring problems with ruling on contentious decisions. Small scale, but progress at least and something that would surely save an awful lot of future angst.