• UFC says Nascimento died in his sleep

• Brazilian flyweight was 34 years old

• Last fought in split-decision loss in June

UFC fighter Allan Nascimento has been found dead at home at the age of 34, the organisation has announced.

The Brazilian flyweight was pronounced dead after suffering an apparent heart attack in his sleep.

• Israeli striker scored, then gestured at CF Montréal fans

• Revolution ‘strongly condemn’ the chants

The New England Revolution have denounced chants they deemed “antisemitic” and “discriminatory” from CF Montréal fans during Saturday’s MLS matchup between the sides in Quebec. The specific chants were directed towards New England’s Israeli striker Dor Turgeman, with broadcast microphones capturing fans chanting “free Palestine” shortly before he scored a goal.

MLS on Monday confirmed it was “aware of reported antisemitic and discriminatory language directed at a New England Revolution player” and that the matter is under investigation.

• Berg is a senior partner at private equity firm 26North

• Commissioner will take over on 1 January 2027

The Major League Soccer board of governors has voted to install Los Angeles FC co-managing owner Larry Berg as the league’s next commissioner.

Berg will succeed Don Garber as the head of the 30-year-old league, with a term starting on 1 January 2027. He will be the third commissioner in MLS history.

• Filipino sensation beats Jessica Pegula 4-6 6-4 6-0

• Fritz beats Jodar in men’s final for first title of season

Alexandra Eala became the first player from the Philippines to win a WTA Tour-level singles title and Taylor Fritz ⁠claimed his first trophy of the season after both rain-delayed DC Open finals were completed on Monday.

Eala stunned top seed Jessica Pegula 4-6 6-4 ⁠6-0 after the weather-hit ⁠women’s final resumed ​with the 21-year-old trailing by a set but leading 2-1 in the second, while third-seeded Fritz beat Spanish teenager Rafael Jodar 7-6 (2) 6-4 ⁠in a tight men’s decider.

• Pair last played doubles at the 2022 US Open

• Serena returned to action at Wimbledon before injury

• US Open begins 31 August in New York

Serena Williams and Venus Williams are ⁠set to make their Cincinnati Open doubles debut this ⁠month after being ⁠awarded ​a wild card on Monday, marking their return ⁠to doubles action for the first time since 2022.

The Williams sisters ⁠have won 14 major doubles ​titles, including six ‌at Wimbledon, ‌plus three Olympic gold medals.

• Irish golfer one of four wildcard picks for Europe

• Rookies Ramirez, Nadaud and Rhodes also selected

Leona Maguire has retained her place in Europe’s Solheim Cup team despite a disappointing 2026, with the Irish golfer one of four wildcard picks named on Monday by Anna Nordqvist.

Maguire joins three rookies – Julia López Ramirez, Nastasia Nadaud and Mimi Rhodes – in completing the Europe side who will attempt to reclaim the trophy in the Netherlands next month.

In giving the head coach another World Cup cycle, US Soccer is tempting fate for negligible benefit

Mauricio Pochettino and US Soccer enjoyed their time together.

Or, rather, they enshoyed it, as Pochettino would pronounce it in his thick Argentinian accent, which charmingly carries over when he speaks English.

Ukraine set a major Russian oil terminal ablaze on the Black Sea coast. Operators of the SBS 413th "Raid" Regiment, in a joint operation with comrades from the 1st Separate SBS Center and the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), struck the Taman maritime terminal near the village of Volna in Krasnodar Krai on 30 July, the regiment reported.

The strike destroyed a volume of fuel equal to 1,000 rail tank cars. According to updated data, 12 reservoirs, each holding 5,000 tons, were destroyed at the Taman terminal, and the fire covered more than 17,000 square meters.

The terminal is a key southern export node

Taman is one of the most important fuel facilities in southern Russia. The terminal specializes in the transshipment and export of oil, fuel oil, diesel, and liquefied petroleum gases, operates a large tank farm, and supplies fuel to Russian forces, according to the regiment.

Destroying 12 of its tanks strikes both Russia's fuel exports and its military supply at once, the dual purpose of Ukraine's campaign against Russian oil infrastructure, which targets the refineries, depots, and terminals that turn crude into export revenue and military fuel.

Satellites confirmed the fire

The strike's effect was visible from orbit. The Ukrainian drone strikes caused a large-scale fire on the terminal's territory, recorded by the NASA FIRMS satellite fire-monitoring service.

The reported date corroborates that something large burned there, moving the claim beyond a single belligerent's word.

The unit pioneered Ukraine's long-range drone strikes

The 413th "Raid" Regiment is one of the units that started Ukraine's deep-strike campaign. In 2022, at the start of the full-scale war, a group of special operations fighters first used drone technology to reconnoiter and strike enemy forces at distances up to 500 kilometers, the origin of the regiment.

The Taman strike extends the near-nightly Ukrainian campaign that has idled a large share of Russian refining capacity and now reaches the export terminals on the coast, raising the cost of the oil trade that funds Russia's war.

• Pochettino joined US national team in 2024

• Coach led US to last 16 at 2026 World Cup

US men’s national team head coach Mauricio Pochettino and the US Soccer Federation have agreed to a contract extension that will keep Pochettino attached to the program through 2030, US Soccer announced on Monday.

The two sides had been actively engaged in discussions on a contract extension for several months, long before the USMNT’s disappointing, last-16 exit in this summer’s World Cup, with the federation making it clear it desired Pochettino to stay. Conversations picked up in the weeks following the World Cup, with the Guardian reporting last week that the sides had been in the “final stages” of agreeing to a deal. Financial details of the contract extension were not released, but Pochettino is expected to get a raise on top of the $6m per year he earned under his previous deal with the federation – already the largest outlay for a US head coach.

[L'article Un joueur originaire de Victoriaville devient l’athlète québécois le mieux payé a d'abord été publié dans InfoBref.]

• Defending champions send prospects to Tigers

• Cy Young-winning Skubal joins stacked rotation in LA

The Los Angeles Dodgers have acquired the biggest prize on the trade deadline market, getting two-time reigning AL Cy Young Award winner Tarik Skubal from the Detroit Tigers on Saturday night.

Skubal got the news during the Tigers’ 8-6 win over the Athletics and was emotional after the game as he prepared to leave the team that drafted him in 2018 and developed him into a star to join the two-time defending World Series champions.

• Poland striker scores double on his home MLS debut

• Messi returns as Inter Miami draw 2-2 with Columbus

Robert Lewandowski scored two goals on his home debut as the Chicago Fire eked out a 2-1 victory over Charlotte FC on ⁠Saturday. The win is Chicago’s first in Major League Soccer since the end of the international break.

Lewandowski, signed in late June as a free agent, produced a vintage performance to help the Fire (9-6-2, 29 points) close an ever-narrowing gap with the Eastern Conference’s top three clubs. Charlotte (7-7-4, 25pts) has now lost four of its last five road matches.

• Cunningham says rallies aren’t a distraction

• Supporters gather outside second straight game

• White: team wants focus to stay on basketball

Sophie Cunningham says she’s unconcerned that the rallies against transgender participation in women’s sports that have accompanied the Indiana’s Fever’s recent games are a distraction for the WNBA team.

Cunningham made the comments before the Fever’s game Friday night against the Portland Fire. Outside, a group rallied for the second straight game in support of Cunningham and her recent comments about transgender athletes.

World Boxing has lifted the last restrictions on Russian athletes, clearing them to compete under their own flag and anthem as they chase qualification for the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics. Days earlier, in a frontline Kherson gym that Russian artillery had wrecked, the teenage boxers who trained there had recorded their own message to the Olympic movement: keep Russia out.

World Boxing approved the change on 30 July, the latest sports federation to roll back its wartime restrictions as the Olympic movement eases Russia back toward the Games, even as its attacks keep destroying Ukraine's sports infrastructure and the lives of athletes in frontline oblasts such as Kherson.

The 11-year-old martial-arts champion who trains between drone strikes

Tymur, 11, steps out into his yard and listens to the sky. No buzzing. This means no “human safari” drones nearby. Timur has just given himself his morning insulin shot, had his breakfast, and he now heads for his punching bag, hanging from the old walnut tree. He warms up with pull-ups, the branch being his pull-up bar, as his dog runs around, and then works the punching bag, pierced by Russian shrapnel.

Training in the yard is not enough, so Tymur rides his bicycle under Russian FPV drone attacks to his practice session. Along the way, he stops to hide under a tree. In summer, Kherson poplars and sycamore trees offer many good hiding places, and the anti-drone nets cover many streets, but the Russian drones are flying low now.

When they spot a car, a pedestrian, or a child on a bicycle, they dive even lower. The pilots on the other side of the river see their targets but carry on with their hunt. Lately, some drones fly without making any noise.

Hearing loud buzzing, Timur jumps off the bike and throws himself in the grass. Lawns are often littered with mines, but there is no choice. After a few stops, he arrives at the practice, held in a basement. For a while, Timur can focus on the training—until he starts on his way back home.

Tymur, the Kherson city champion in hand-to-hand combat and the Mykolaiv Oblast champion in MMA, takes his training seriously, even after he was diagnosed with insulin-dependent Type 1 diabetes right after the occupation. He dreams of becoming the champion of Ukraine, Europe, and the world.

His role model is Muhammad "D.K." Ali, a British professional boxer who, like Tymur, lives with insulin-dependent Type 1 diabetes. He is also inspired by Yulian Pozdniakov, a Ukrainian professional kickboxer, a European professional kickboxing champion, a Ukrainian IFMA Muay Thai and WAKO K-1 champion, and Timur has recently started training in kickboxing and Muay Thai.

Chess retreats to a basement after Russia jails the grandfather who taught it

Like Tymur, Sasha started boxing before the occupation. Eight at the time, he also practiced chess with his grandfather, an avid player, who was kidnapped by the Russian military during the occupation and sentenced to 20 years of strict regime on fabricated charges. Sasha stopped boxing, but he still plays chess.

His grandmother Tania, who also plays chess, said in an interview that Kherson is “a sports city.” Tania trains at home, doing yoga and general fitness routines.

“Everything here—our rivers and fields—is made for an active lifestyle,” said Tania. “And so our people are fit, morally and physically. The enemy is trying to destroy our places of strength, but our children stand firm and train. They do not give up in spirit.”

Her daughter, Sasha’s aunt, also practices with him over the phone as she had to move to Mykolaiv due to intense attacks on her district of Kherson. She used to go to the Children’s and Youth Sports School, also known as Chess Club. Sasha practices online with a coach during the week, but on the weekend he follows the family tradition and joins about 20 other young Kherson chess players for in-person training at the same school. Tania often walks her grandson to the basement practices, and fondly remembers the chess club and its beautiful home.

Since the 1980s, the Children's and Youth Sports School, funded by the city, held training and national and international tournaments at a historic building, a snow-white villa with arched windows and ornate wrought-iron balconies downtown Kherson. Vitaliy Bohdanov, the president of the Kherson Oblast Chess Federation for over 20 years, told Euromaidan Press that generations of young Khersonians studied chess and checkers in a former residence of the Italian embassy.

In 2023, the school had to move classes and tournaments to a safe underground facility due to constant shelling, and the building stood vacant. On 24 July 2026, the Russian military destroyed the architectural monument. The building burned out, taking a 5,000-book library of books on chess with it, and its roof collapsed after artillery and drone attacks, during which drones dropped incendiary napalm-like mixture.

Russia levels the last boxing gym as its teenagers film a plea to the IOC

The morning after the chess club was destroyed, Russian artillery hit Kherson's only surviving boxing gym. After the city's liberation, the gym hosted regular training sessions and competitions.

The youth team just returned from a tournament and, instead of practicing, helped to clean the premises. Four young athletes recorded an address to the International Olympic Committee, pleading to ban Russian athletes from international competitions. Tymofiy, 15, said that he trained in this boxing ring for seven years and could not find the words.

Standing amid bricks and fallen ceiling beams, Dmytro Obolentsev, Director of the Kherson Regional Children and Youth Sports School for Boxing and Other Sports and coach of the youth team, said that training will continue.

“These walls witnessed it all: the nerve-breaking moments before stepping onto the floor, the smiles after victory, the tears of defeat, the embraces of coaches, the applause of families, and the unforgettable moment when a young athlete stepped onto the podium to receive a well-earned medal and trophy,” wrote Zakhar Zhizhko, a Kherson resident. “Years will pass, but the memory of those competitions will remain. We want to believe that this gym will once again be filled with children's laughter, genuine emotion, and the joy of victory.”

The Olympic medalist who can no longer reach his river, and trains anyway

Serhiy Kyrsanov, a fit man in his sixties, cleaned the destruction site on 29 July, after several Shahid drones devastated his neighborhood in the residential area of Kherson. Serhiy and his wife Luiza mopped broken glass and considered themselves lucky: their neighbors’ homes were destroyed and burned. Their spacious house featured Olympic posters and impressive memorabilia: Serhiy, a prominent Ukrainian rower, is an Olympic silver medalist and three-time world champion.

As Luiza wiped dust off the medal display in the living room, she said that both she and her husband are still involved in youth training in the city.

“I can’t row as we can’t reach the river,” said Serhiy. “But we do all sorts of other training, and we are not going to stop.”

Explore further

UN traces Kherson’s “human safari” up the chain of command — to Putin himself

The chess world condemns as the boxers' video circles the globe

The Italian Embassy in Ukraine condemned the attack on the chess school building, which was built for the Italian Ambassador in 1905 and hosted the Italian Embassy from 1906 to 1918. Lithuanian grandmaster and politician Viktorija Čmilytė-Nielsen expressed her indignation. Peter Heine Nielsen, a Danish chess grandmaster and five-time Danish champion, also condemned the attack. Garry Kasparov, former World Chess Champion and one of the greatest chess players in history, wrote that he was looking forward to helping to rebuild the chess club.

The boxing team’s video address to the International Olympic Committee went viral and was shared globally. Vladyslav Heraskevych, the first Ukrainian ever to compete in skeleton at the Winter Olympics, and an advocate for excluding Russian and Belarusian athletes from international sport, shared the address, adding that “Russian sports is an accomplice to Russia’s crimes.” The Boxing Federation of Ukraine issued a statement about the attack and looked into fundraising options.

"A sports city": 221 venues destroyed, its athletes still on the podium

Tymur, Sasha and the young boxers are not an exception. The girls’ soccer team used to train outdoors until a Russian shell destroyed the soccer field. Russian shelling heavily damaged Kherson's only indoor ice rink, once home to youth hockey and figure skating. The war has devastated Kherson Oblast's sporting infrastructure as 221 sports facilities have been damaged or destroyed, forcing many clubs and sports schools to relocate, operate in basements, or train in mixed and remote formats.

Yet, sports go a long way in the city nicknamed “invincible.” Mothers and grandmothers frequent various training sessions, from fly yoga to belly dance and karate. Fathers and grandfathers run under drones and used to play basketball and soccer in the red zone until the point when being outside became impossible due to the massive FPV drone attacks. Swimming pools and gyms operate in half-ruined buildings and, in winter, in freezing temperatures.

Despite daily Russian attacks, Kherson's sports community continues to compete. According to the official regional statistics, provided by the Department of Physical Culture, Youth and Sports of the Kherson Regional State Administration, in 2025 more than 50 athletes from Kherson Oblast were winners or medalists at international and Ukrainian competitions across more than 20 sports, including rowing, wrestling, boxing, kickboxing, athletics, archery, volleyball, swimming, karate, sambo, draughts, sumo and canoeing.

The list included Olympic, Paralympic and Deaflympic athletes, as well as world, European and national champions and medalists. Kherson athletes competed at the Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games, the Deaflympics, and World and European Championships, while more than a dozen regional coaches were recognized for training international-level competitors.

During the first six months of 2026, 396 athletes from Kherson Oblast took part in Ukrainian and international competitions, winning 74 medals in Olympic sports, 93 in non-Olympic disciplines, and 10 in Paralympic and Deaflympic events.

Nearly 200 displaced children from Kherson Oblast participated in regional sports competitions, while another 198 children from frontline communities attended a two-week sports and rehabilitation camp in the Carpathians.

The boxers whose gym Russia destroyed had asked the Olympic movement to keep Russia out. On 30 July, World Boxing gave its answer: Russian athletes will compete under their own flag, like everyone else. Their ring is still rubble. Training, their coach said, continues—in the basement, under the nets.

• CBS sidelines Romo indefinitely after arrest

• JJ Watt promoted to lead booth in absence

• Arrest followed Wisconsin OWI traffic stop

Tony Romo has been placed on leave from his role as the lead analyst on CBS’ NFL coverage following his arrest last week on suspicion of operating a vehicle while under the influence.

CBS Sports announced Friday that the former Dallas Cowboys quarterback was on leave “until further notice”. JJ Watt will join Jim Nantz and Tracy Wolfson as CBS Sports’ lead NFL team during Romo’s absence.

A six-time world champion and three-time World Cup MVP, Japan’s Ayami Sato joins the new Women’s Professional Baseball League hoping to help build the sport’s future

When Ayami Sato takes the mound as the starting pitcher for the Los Angeles Queens on Saturday, it will be the culmination of a professional career that has spanned 16 years and three countries. The right-handed hurler is largely considered the best pitcher in the history of women’s baseball. She has the awards and experience to prove it, and now she’s taking on America when she makes her debut in the Women’s Professional Baseball League, the first pro women’s baseball league in the United States since the 1950s.

Even though most Americans tuning into the WPBL may not have heard of her, Sato’s resume speaks for itself. Sato’s fastball has been clocked at nearly 80mph and her curveball has a devastating spin rate that is higher than many Major League Baseball pitchers. As a member of the Japan National Team since 2010, Sato has won six gold medals. She is the only player in Women’s Baseball World Cup history to win three consecutive MVP awards. As a member of the now-defunct Japan’s Women’s Baseball League, Sato led the league in strikeouts in three of the last four seasons. And most recently, in 2024 she became the first woman to play pro baseball in Canada as a member of the Toronto Maple Leafs of the Intercounty Baseball League.

The World Cup gave MLS unprecedented momentum. Keeping it will depend less on signing aging icons than convincing America’s best young players to stay

“Thanks World, we’ll take it from here,” is Major League Soccer’s message to the American public. Yet two moves in the last week were emblematic of the issues the league faces in taking on the mantle of North America’s hosting of the game’s grandest stage.

A rising, under-the-radar homegrown player left for Europe, and a veteran with immense pedigree arrived, likely to close out his career. Sebastian Berhalter’s swapped title-chasing Vancouver Whitecaps for Middlesbrough of the EFL Championship. Free agent Brazil legend Casemiro traded Manchester’s Old Trafford for Nu Stadium in Miami.

World Boxing has stripped away the last restrictions on Russian competitors, clearing them to fight under their national flag rather than as neutrals, Reuters reported. The move brings the sport into line with a wider loosening across international competition, as the Olympic movement edges Russia back toward the Games while its war on Ukraine grinds on.

Boxing lifts the neutral-status rule

World Boxing's executive committee approved the change at a meeting that also discussed the allocation of major competitions in the 2027-29 cycle, which take in the qualifying route to the Los Angeles 2028 Games. 

 "The ExCo accepted that Russian athletes would now take part in World Boxing competitions like boxers from any other national federation," the body said.

he governing body attached only a monitoring commitment, none of it tied to the war. It said it would "strictly monitor the behaviour of Russian delegations during events as well as compliance with the anti-doping protocols." That pledge to police Russian anti-doping sits oddly beside Russia's own record, since WADA recently closed an eight-year case into the country's state-run doping program with hundreds of athlete sanctions.

Explore further

Sports federations are quietly readmitting Russia, which killed 660 Ukrainian athletes. UEFA is about to become holdout

Sport keeps reopening its doors to Russia

The boxing decision follows the International Olympic Committee provisionally reinstating Russia's Olympic body this month, clearing Russia's path back toward the 2028 Los Angeles Games. It caps a run of federations doing the same through 2026: artistic gymnastics scrapped its restrictions in May, muaythai restored Russian flags and anthems alongside wrestling, judo, sambo and taekwondo days later, and tennis never dropped the neutral pathway at all.

Not every sport has bent the same way. World chess went in the opposite direction in June, when the International Chess Federation suspended the Russian Chess Federation, the first time it had stripped its most powerful member of its membership rights. 

• Infantino’s role as president under increasing pressure

• 143 of Fifa’s 211 members now stand against scheme

Gianni Infantino’s authority has been dealt a fresh blow after Carlos Cordeiro, one of his senior advisers, resigned with immediate effect in protest at proposals to sell a stake in the World Cup.

In the latest embarrassment for Infantino, who saw European FAs threaten to boycott future Fifa tournaments on Thursday, the former US Soccer chief Cordeiro criticised “a bad deal for football” and pointed out that the global governing body already sits on huge amounts of debt-free reserves.

Western sanctions and Ukrainian drones are squeezing Russia’s Black Sea trade in looted goods, but they are not stopping it. The networks are finding new routes—and one of them now runs through Georgia, a country that one day hopes to join the European Union.

A new study finds that ships arriving from Russian-occupied Ukrainian ports are turning up at Georgia’s port of Poti far more often than they used to.

The same links that allow Russia to profit give Europe leverage to disrupt those networks.

The numbers climb steeply: 22 visits in the second half of 2023, 68 in 2024, and 145 in the first half of 2025 alone—on course, the study estimates, to nearly five times the 2024 total. Türkiye’s ports still take most of this traffic, but Poti is rising fastest.

The increase has tracked the Georgian Dream government’s drift toward Moscow since a disputed October 2024 election, a slide the European Parliament condemned as evidence of state capture. The authors caution that they cannot yet prove the shift is the result of deliberate policy.

A $120 billion pipeline that reaches into Europe

The study, which maps how Russia sustains and profits from its war on Ukraine, was produced by the Serious Organised Crime and Anti-Corruption Evidence Programme at the University of Birmingham and funded by the British government.

It follows goods moving through Black Sea shipping—worth about $120 billion a year—with military supplies flowing in and grain, coal, metal, and kaolin clay stripped from occupied territory flowing out, alongside oil sold above the price cap set by the Group of Seven in 2022. The study’s authors, Olivia Allison and Joshua Coyle, argue this trade is not a by-product of the war but an essential part of it, and one that reaches deep into European business.

The rerouting is happening under mounting pressure. Ukraine has spent 2026 hunting Russia’s Black Sea tankers and cargo ships, hitting 201 vessels in three weeks this July, according to the commander of its drone forces, Robert Brovdi, while the European Union and others tighten sanctions on the ports and ships involved.

Explore further

Ukraine hits 201 Russian shadow fleet ships in three weeks. Commander says Crimea’s supply route is now blocked indefinitely

Grain is at the center of the trade. Investigators have documented Russia plundering the harvest in occupied Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, relabeling it as Russian, and selling it on to buyers in the Middle East and Africa. Ukrainian authorities have been tracking multiple ships carrying that grain to Israel, Egypt, and Algeria.

The upheaval reaches the top of Russia’s own grain business. In January 2025, a Russian court handed Rodnye Polya—for years the country’s largest grain exporter—to the state, ruling that its owner, Petr Khodykin, could not legally hold a strategic asset because he was a citizen of both Saint Kitts and Nevis and Russia.

The seizure did not prove a windfall. After an earlier auction drew no bids, the state sold the company in July 2026 for 11.7 billion roubles (about $150 million)—a small fraction of its former annual revenue—to a little-known firm that, as Kommersant reported, was acting for a grain holding part-owned by the sovereign wealth fund of Oman.

A vulnerability that runs both ways

On both ends of the trade, the study argues, are European companies. One Turkish port that receives ships arriving straight from occupied Crimea is run by a firm with a Dutch parent and a Taiwanese ultimate owner. Vessels in the trade, meanwhile, have been repaired in European Union shipyards and fitted with European-made cranes.

That overlap, the authors write, cuts both ways: the same links that allow Russia to profit give Europe leverage to disrupt those networks. The bloc’s newest sanctions package has begun to use it, targeting the shadow fleet, banks, and firms selling stolen Ukrainian grain.

Explore further

EU’s 21st Russia sanctions package will target the shadow fleet, banks, and firms selling stolen Ukrainian grain—Politico

Whether Georgia’s opening ports reflect a deliberate choice or simply the path of least resistance, the researchers do not say. Their data show only that the traffic keeps growing.

Akbar Majeed’s new feature tells the story of the sport through a Black lens and asks hard questions about the barriers facing the game’s breakthrough

Akbar Majeed takes a deep breath as he considers the legacy of the 2026 World Cup and, in particular, the effect of the US team’s collapse against Belgium for a last-16 exit.

“Unfortunately, that performance in the last game did not help at all,” he says.

• Family says Smith faced ‘dementia caused by CTE’

• College Football Hall of Famer played 10 NFL seasons

Former San Diego Chargers linebacker and College Football Hall of Famer Billy Ray Smith Jr has died. He was 64.

Smith’s family said in a statement Wednesday that Smith died following a bout with CTE-caused dementia.