The "stupid injury" story is a favourite of the Sports Diary, but Plaxico Burress, of the New York Giants, might have taken the title. Not for him dropping a jar of mayonnaise on his foot, or tripping over his dog: Plaxico accidentally shot himself in the thigh, while in a nightclub.

The "stupid injury" story is a favourite of the Sports Diary, but Plaxico Burress, of the New York Giants, might have taken the title. Not for him dropping a jar of mayonnaise on his foot, or tripping over his dog: Plaxico accidentally shot himself in the thigh, while in a nightclub.

What he was doing with a firearm in a nightclub, and how he managed to shoot himself with it, were not explained. The Sports Diary likes to think it went a little like this: Plaxico: "Check out my new gun, but please don't touch, in the wrong hands guns can be dangerous. I am the only person here capable of handling this weapon safelAAAARGH!"

Burress could face criminal charges if he is not licensed to carry a concealed weapon in New York. He was in the nightclub and not at home resting before a match because he had a hamstring injury. Well he certainly does now.

• Boris Becker, famed ginger swordsman and professional poker player, has been dumped by his fiancee. By text message. Six times.

"On Friday evening, October 31, I suddenly got an SMS from Sandy . . . saying that this was it, that it's over,"

Boris told the Sports Diary. "To make sure how serious she was she sent me five others saying the same thing."

The 40-year-old, whose main claim to fame is fathering a child with a Russian model in a broom cupboard of a Japanese restaurant, is 15 years older than Sandy Meyer-Woelden, the daughter of his former trainer. Her message "trampled on my soul," the BBC Wimbledon pundit added. Sue Barker's whereabouts are currently unknown.

• In a recent stomach-churning diary entry we highlighted the spate of herpes infections among professional sumo wrestlers caused by grappling.

A similar tale of weeping blisters now reaches us from the United States, but with a key cultural difference: somebody's to blame and his ass is getting sued.

Andrew Bradley is one of three former college wrestlers who have filed a law suit against York College of Pennsylvania, claiming that their coach and trainers were responsible for an outbreak of herpes gladiatorum. Bradley says he caught it on the mat from infected team-mates who had been allowed to fight with tape over their sores, instead of being told to take time off until the infection cleared up.

"I had a rash by my left eye, and then it was crusty and it was full of pus and itching, and with that came flu symptoms," said Bradley. "I was really devastated because I know that this is permanent, I knew there was a stigma with the virus." A stigma about crusty, pus-filled eyes? Never.