Most Jets fans find it easy to root against the Patriots. How easy is it to root against them? The answer depends if you can root for Russia over the Pats. No, I am not talking about Ivan Drago and Rocky IV here, I am talking about Vladimir Putin. Yahoo Sports has an update on what actually happened in 2005 when Kraft met Putin. It had previously been reported that Kraft gave his Super Bowl ring to Putin as a gift.
As the story goes, Kraft met Russian President Vladimir Putin at a gathering of business and political leaders at Konstantinovsky Palace near St. Petersburg, Russia, in June of 2005. Kraft and Putin talked a while, Kraft took off his ring to show it to Putin, and Putin promptly put the ring in his pocket and walked off.
“I showed the president my most recent Super Bowl ring,” Kraft said in a subsequent statement. Putin “was clearly taken with its uniqueness.”
“At that point, I decided to give him the ring as a symbol of the respect and admiration that I have for the Russian people and the leadership of President Putin.”
But as Kraft said recently, per the New York Post, that’s not what really happened.
“I took out the ring and showed it to [Putin], and he put it on and he goes, ‘I can kill someone with this ring,’” Kraft said during the Carnegie Hall’s Medal of Excellence gala in New York City.“I put my hand out, and he put it in his pocket, and three KGB guys got around him and walked out.”
The NY Post says that Kraft wanted the ring back, but was told that wasn’t the best idea.
But Kraft really wanted the 4.94-carat bauble back, he said Thursday, admitting he’d gotten a call from the George W. Bush-run White House, saying, “‘It would really be in the best interest of US-Soviet relations if you meant to give the ring as a present.”
The question remains Jets fans, how easy is it to root against the Patriots? Other Jets fans are sounding off in our NY Jets message board.
