Steven Gerrard has pulled out

Steven Gerrard has pulled out of the England squad for Wednesday night's friendly with Holland in Amsterdam.

The Liverpool skipper trained on Monday but felt a slight soreness in his groin and has withdrawn as a precaution.

The remainder of Fabio Capello's squad was able to make the short flight to the Netherlands, where they will be put through their paces at the Amsterdam Arena on Tuesday night.

With Steven Gerrard not making the flight after suffering a slight groin injury in training, coach Fabio Capello has decided Young should fill the left-sided midfield berth.

Ashley Young will start England's friendly with Holland in Amsterdam on Wednesday.

Read more at Football365

Top 10 Mixed Martial Arts Fighter

MMA's 10 best pound-for-pound fighters
courtesy of ESPN

It is an active time for MMA's elite fighters, as well. Seven of these 10 pound-for-pound entrants have potential bouts on the slate in the next 10 weeks, making for a fantastic early summer for the sport.

1

Anderson Silva UFC middleweight champion Record: 24-4

Silva's April title defense against Thales Leites was exactly the sort of performance that can undermine any man's claim to being a pound-for-pound king. Sensing The Spider needed a stiffer challenge, Zuffa lined up a bout against former light heavyweight champion Forrest Griffin at UFC 101 on Aug. 8. Silva began his career by besting then-top welterweights like Hayato "Mach" Sakurai and Tetsuji Kato and then moved on to dominate the middleweight division. A win over Griffin would make Silva MMA's first man with top five-caliber victories across three weight classes.

2

Georges St. Pierre UFC welterweight champion Record: 18-2

Over the past four years, no fighter has more victories against accomplished, outstanding opponents than St. Pierre. However, despite avenging his April 2007 loss to Matt Serra 12 months later, the specter of his smashing at the hands of The Terror still looms. With another great challenger in Thiago Alves on deck for his third title defense at UFC 100 on July 11, St. Pierre can continue to pave over the Serra debacle with exceptional victories.

3

Fedor Emelianenko Affliction heavyweight champion Record: 30-1, 1 NC

No one has ever reigned in MMA like Emelianenko. The only knocks on the sport's heavyweight king have been the fact he's plagued by a thinner division than some of the sport's other stalwarts and has not fought his best contemporaries recently. Fortunately, this has changed over the past year with his demolitions of Tim Sylvia and Andrei Arlovski. If an August bout with Josh Barnett comes to fruition, it will mark Emelianenko's third consecutive match against a top 10 former UFC heavyweight champion; it's the kind of schedule that befits the sport's epic heavyweight.

Read the rest of the Top Ten at ESPN Mix Martial Arts

UFC Boxing / Fighting

The Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC)is a mixed martial arts.

History

The concept for a tournament purporting to discover the world's best fighting style came from Art Davie, an advertising executive based in southern California.[6] Davie met Rorion Gracie in 1991 while researching martial arts for a marketing client. Gracie operated a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu school in Torrance, California and the Gracie family had a long history of vale-tudo matches — a precursor of mixed martial arts — in Brazil. Davie became Gracie's student.

Rules

Although UFC used the "There are no rules!" tagline in the early 1990s, this was not strictly true; the UFC operated with limited rules. There was no biting, no eye gouging, and the system frowned on (but allowed) techniques such as hair pulling, headbutting, groin strikes and fish-hooking. In fact, in a UFC 4 qualifying match, competitors Jason Fairn and Guy Mezger agreed not to pull hair as they both wore pony tails tied back for the match. Additionally, that same event saw a matchup between Keith Hackney and Joe Son in which Hackney unleashed a series of groin shots against Joe Son while on the ground. The UFC was similarly characterized, especially in the early days, as an extremely violent sport, as evidenced by a disclaimer in the beginning of the UFC 5 broadcast which warned audiences of the violent nature of the event. A brief appearance of a match in the 1995 film Virtuosity likely did little to change this perception.