Bob Calhoun's Open Salon Blog

I Sing the Body Ventura

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 10:11:09 -0500

Jesse "The Body" Ventura at his pulpy pro wrestling best before being dragged into the muck of Minnesota politics.

When Jesse “The Body” Ventura won the Minnesota governorship in 1998, it must have given other high profile bodybuilders a feeling of inadequacy that they likely hadn’t felt since they were skinny runts getting sand kicked in their faces. Less than a month after Ventura’s upset victory, Hulk Hogan announced a bid for the presidency of the United States that barely made it through a couple of talk show appearances. Hogan’s reason for running was that he was “10 times more popular” than Ventura. In 2003, when Ventura decided not to run for reelection, Arnold Schwarzenegger picked up the gubernatorial torch and became “The Governator” of California in the recall election that same year. In order to decisively one-up Ventura (his Predator co-star), Arnold won re-election in 2006 and sunk the California economy in the process. Jesse “The Body” envy can drive an oiled up muscleman to extreme levels of electoral lunacy.

Following last week’s big announcement that Arnold won’t be running for office again, and Hulk Hogan’s signing with TNA, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that Ventura is resurfacing. Those guys tend to work like that. Tonight, Ventura is returning to his old stomping grounds to host a three-hour Thanksgiving episode of the WWE’s Monday Night RAW. Like all RAW guest hosts (or all guests on any TV talk show), Jesse’s there to shamelessly plug his latest project, a Tru TV show called Conspiracy Theory that looks like a more serious version of Penn & Teller’s Bullshit!. But as he trades verbal barbs with the current WWE roster, Ventura might be rubbing elbow-drops with the future political leadership of America. After reading the tealeaves, here is my expert analysis of the political prospects of some of Vince McMahon’s top superstars…

WWE Champ John Cena (left) and regular guest on "The View," MVP (right).

JOHN CENA: The current WWE champ’s freakish ability to lift two wrestlers with a combined weight of over 600 pounds onto his shoulders before slamming them to the mat shows that he could probably even elevate the ailing economy of his native Massachusetts. As a candidate he’d be a dream. He supports our troops, has won an award from the Make-A-Wish Foundation and the Hollywood salute that he learned for his action movie turn as The Marine (2006) gives him a touch of the Reaganesque. However, in order to run for elected office he’d have to lose those baggy denim shorts of his. Even Arnie traded in his Terminator leather jacket and shades for a suit when he entered the political arena. Cena could become a political force in ten years when his rabid pre-adolescent fans finally become old enough to vote.

MVP: This former United States champ has been seen currying the favor of Sherri Shepherd on ABC’s The View a lot lately and that could be a smooth political move. Boosting one’s cachet with that daytime TV audience proved crucial to the success of the Schwarzenegger and Obama campaigns and Sarah Palin’s appearance on Oprah has definitely generated a lot of buzz. Although MVP has the charisma and the oratory skills for public life, he also has a conviction for burglary that could keep him from even voting in his home state of Florida let alone getting on the ballot there. While acts of burglary are often committed by our political class, most successful pols save their lawbreaking for when they are safely in office. Whereas MVP served 8 ½ years in an actual prison for crimes he committed when he was 16 years old, felonious elected officials are usually remanded to appear on Sunday morning talk shows, The Apprentice or Dancing with the Stars.

Tag-team titlist Chris Jericho lobbies for the endorsement of one-time democratic presidential candidate Al Sharpton.

CHRIS JERICHO: Yes, this co-holder of the unified tag-team belts is Canadian but he was born in New York, so unlike Arnold, he can still run for president. His other potential negative is that he’s a bad guy who regularly refers to wrestling fans as “gelatinous tapeworms.” But remember, Jesse always played the part of the heel too and that didn’t stop him from moving into the governor’s mansion. What makes Jericho interesting in today’s polarized political landscape is that he’s a born again Christian who not only gets irony, but revels in it. Some of this may be due to his growing up in a country that already has a universal healthcare system so his faith isn’t automatically combined with a rabid belief in death panels and birther conspiracies. Jericho’s ability to maintain his Christian beliefs while still being way into to 80s metal makes him the ultimate crossover candidate.

SANTINO MARELLA: Marella provides an ethnic comedy relief that we haven’t seen since the days of Chico Marx but it’s doubtful that his clueless Guido shtick will endear him to Italian-Americans. His donning of a tight skirt and wig to win the “Miss WrestleMania” crown is equally unlikely to win the GLBT or women’s vote for him. If only Marella was really Italian instead of Canadian, he might have a legit shot at the Italy’s Parliament. If the Italians would vote in Cicciolina the porn queen or Moussolini’s granddaughter or, hell, Silvio Burlusconi, what’s to stop them catapulting Marrella into high office? Think about it Santino.

JERRY “THE KING” LAWLER: This Southern wrestling legend and longtime RAW color commentator is best known for giving a vicious piledriver to Andy Kaufman, but he’s also a two-time candidate for mayor of Memphis, Tenn. The first time Lawler ran was in 1999 (the same year that Ventura was sworn in as governor) and the second was in a special election earlier this month. Both times Lawler came up short. Although he garnered only four per cent of the vote this last time around, I wouldn’t be surprised if this river boat gambler tries to make the third time a charm. This still begs the question for Jerry: why would you want to be mayor when you’re already the king?

TRIPLE H aka HUNTER HEARST HELMSLEY: By marrying WWE heiress Stephanie McMahon, Triple H has put himself in the company of recent presidential contenders John McCain and John Kerry. Having what Rush Limbaugh would deem a “sugar daddy wife” (but only if you’re a democrat) on your arm, whether she’s the inheritor of a beer, ketchup or grappling fortune, can almost get you to the top but you still might come up short come election day. I’m sure that Stephanie McMahon-Helmsley’s winning ways with audiences will be just as much of a boon to any Triple H candidacy as Cindy McCain and Teresa Heinz-Kerry were to their husbands’ presidential aspirations. Under normal circumstances, the presidential also-ran who is married to an heiress could look forward to a long career in the senate to salve the wounds of rejection by the electorate, however certain familial circumstances may deny Triple H this booby prize…

LINDA McMAHON: She’s Triple H’s mother-in-law, Vince McMahon’s wife, former WWE CEO and candidate for Chris Dodd’s Connecticut senate seat. Like other successful businesswomen entering Republican primaries such as former Hewlett Packard CEO Carly Fiorina or former eBay Pres. Meg Whitman, McMahon may be “too liberal” for the rabid tea-bagger wing of today’s GOP. 1970s wrestling king and Goldwater conservative, “Superstar” Billy Graham (a big influence on both Hogan and Ventura), has already chastised McMahon over the WWE’s penchant for “bra and panties matches” and encouraging steroid use. Graham is supporting conservative congressman Rob Simmons in the primary and you can expect Glenn Beck to do the same. On her side, Linda McMahon sports a slight lead over Dodd in recent polls as well as a $50 million war chest. Just don’t expect followers of Beck’s 9/12 Project to consider such things when drumming McMahon out of the race for a more ideologically pure candidate.

SO TONIGHT, Jesse “The Body” returns to the WWE to once again bask in the limelight generated by the company that put him on the national stage. Just don’t expect him to stick around too long. Jesse’s got his new cable show to think about. Hulk Hogan and Ric Flair may be beating each other bloody in a tour of Australia right now, but Ventura won’t follow his contemporaries back into the squared circle. Jesse’s always known that the hard thing in wrestling isn’t making your big comeback; it’s staying away. The same can certainly be said for politics.

The special 3-hour Thanksgiving episode of RAW with guest host Jesse "The Body" Ventura airs tonight at 8pm on the USA Network.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Happy Thanksgiving everyone. I’ll be back on December 3 with my review of Steven Seagal’s loony foray into reality television, Lawman. Special thanks to Greg Franklin for coming up with the rad title of this article.

When he's not being hit by steel chairs or fighting Sasquatches, Bob Calhoun is a San Francisco author and journalist. His bestselling punk-wrestling memoir, Beer, Blood and Cornmeal: Seven Years of Incredibly Strange Wrestling, is available through Amazon.com. The book is also available for download for Macs, PCs and the Sony e-Reader.

2012 vs. 2112: CGI Apocalypse vs. the Ayn Rand Rock Opera

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 10:11:47 -0500

Illustration by Brandi Valenza

Roland Emmerich has built a career by putting the event in the event movie. His most famous film, Independence Day (1996), set the pattern by giving us Jeff Goldblum and Will Smith thwarting an alien invasion with a Mac laptop (presumably running OS 7) on the Fourth of July. With the exception of an anorexic Godzilla in 1998 and the Mel Gibson colonial gorefest The Patriot in 2000, it’s been all specific dates and times for this guy. Emmerich’s last movie was titled 10,000 B.C. (2008) and the one before that was called The Day After Tomorrow (2004). His latest showcase of computer-generated cataclysms, opening this Friday, is titled 2012 after every pothead’s favorite Mayan prophesy of the end of the world. If only Emmerich had been tapped to helm the recent Friday the 13th remake, then we could have had Jason destroying virtual models of every non-Muslim landmark with tidal waves and lava flows.

However, Emmerich may have gotten a tad too specific with 2012. If by some miracle the world is still here in 2013, blu-ray discs of the movie will seem more dated than Meteor (1979) or even Beyond the Time Barrier (1960). It’s a little like releasing a big-budget, apocalyptic disaster movie called Y2K in the late 1990s and then expecting viewers to sit through USA Network reruns of it in 2002.

One way to give this film an extra century of shelf-life would have been for Emmerich to scrap the whole Mayan-tsunami mishmash altogether and instead make a film adaptation of the rock band Rush’s dystopian, sci-fi album 2112. According to Mercury Records’ ad copy, the first side of the Canadian power trio’s 1976 opus takes us to a time of “Templevision, Megadon, twin moons, atmospheric domes.” While “Rush’s chilling vision” of a 22nd Century where “city and sky merge into a single plane” would give a director like Emmerich plenty to digitally project onto an IMAX screen, 2112 is also more topical than the seemingly more pressing 2012.

Left to Right: Ayn Rand, the goddess of unbridled capitalism and Neil Peart of Rush, her most rockin’ disciple.

In the album’s original gatefold, band lyricist and percussion virtuoso Neil Peart acknowledges “the genius” of libertarian icon Ayn Rand as the inspiration for the future-shock rock opera. Rand has been getting a lot of press lately despite being dead since 1982. Last year’s economic collapse and election of Barrack Obama have created an upsurge of interest among the American right wing in the enigmatic figure that Slate recently described as the “amphetamine-addicted author of sub-Dan Brown potboilers.” Two biographies of Rand—Goddess of the Market by Jennifer Burns and Ayn Rand and the World She Made by Anne Heller—have just hit the bookstores and South Carolina Governor Mark “Appalachian Trails” Sanford reviewed both of them for Newsweek. Where powerful acolytes of Rand such as Alan Greenspan engineered a global financial meltdown worthy of an Emmerich film (if only the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy could be expressed with CGI), Peart and Rush did the even more impossible by taking Rand’s “One Objective Truth” and making it rock.

Peart joined Rush for their sophomore album Fly by Night (1975), replacing original drummer John Rutsey who left the band for a career in bodybuilding. Bassist Geddy Lee and guitarist Alex Lifeson had already shown their instrumental prowess on the hard-driving jam Working Man from Rush’s self-titled debut album (1974). By rounding out the trio, Peart made Rush the greatest instructional rock band of all time, a favorite of young rockers struggling to learn licks through music store tablature books for decades to come. Lyrically, Peart steered the band away from party songs about ice-cold beers and casual sex and to a synthesis of Rand and Tolkien that probably would have confounded either author.

2112, the band’s fourth album and Peart’s third, wasn’t the first time that the drummer used Rand as source material. The song Anthem (from Fly by Night) takes its title from Rand’s 1938 novella and its lyrics extol selfishness, Rand’s highest virtue. “Well, I know they've always told you selfishness was wrong,” vocalist Geddy Lee sings in the song’s concluding verse, “Yet it was for me, not you, I came to write this song.” In a shockingly contentious interview with J. Kordosh in the June 1981 issue of Creem, Peart explains, "I think everything I do has Howard Roark in it,” referring to the pissed-off architect of Rand’s The Fountainhead (1943) who dynamites his own building rather than compromise its design.

In the novel, Roark sums up his and Rand’s philosophy while representing himself during his trial: “I do not recognize anyone's right to one minute of my life. Nor to any part of my energy. Nor to any achievement of mine. No matter who makes the claim, how large their number or how great their need.” During the Creem interview, Peart channels Roark in defense of his (Peart’s) devotion to Rand. "It is a life that no amount of money can ever compensate for," Peart explains. "That's why I could never, ever feel guilty about the dollar I earn."

With Peart’s uncanny drumming abilities, it’s not hard to see how Rand’s tyranny of the talented, where the masses are “second-handers” and “inanimate objects,” would appeal to him. As the eighties progressed, Peart enclosed himself within 360 degrees of percussion containing almost every chime, cymbal and roto-tom imaginable, almost as if he needed the extra gear to slow down his thought process in the same way that a speedy computer runs extra scripts to slow down a program so that a normal person can comprehend it. In order to compete, Geddy Lee played both bass and keyboards, often at the same time through a system of pedals. Alex Lifeson, whom Creem described as “the only homo sapien in the group,” seemed to pale next to his band mates, despite his comparable abilities on his instrument.

In the 2112 suite that takes up the first half of the album, Peart delves more deeply into the conflict between the collective and the individual and borrows more from Rand’s Anthem than just its title and ethos. In Rand’s sci-fi parable, global society is run by a World Council that burns people at the stake for the merest trace of individualism or innovation. In 2112, the Earth is under the heel of the “Solar Federation,” which is run by priests who cram equality down everyone’s throats with massive computer banks. Red star banners are also unfurled showing that Peart both overestimated the longevity of the Soviet Union and was oblivious to Moore’s Law, which states that the number of transistors that can be placed on a circuit doubles every two years. The Priests of the Temples of Syrinx wouldn’t have needed “great computers” filling their “hallowed halls” but could make the meek inherit the earth through a device no larger than an iPod.

The conflict in 2112 comes when “a man” discovers a guitar and learns how to play it. He shows the guitar to the priests but they smash it like a disapproving Pete Townsend. Instead of “going Galt” like any good libertarian hero, the man kills himself to the strains of a really ripping Alex Lifeson guitar solo. Then, all hell breaks loose if the ballsy crescendos of The Grand Finale are any indicator, but a voice over at the track’s end tells us that the Solar Federation has “assumed control.” The individual fails and collectivism triumphs making one wonder what was going on in 1976 for Peart to pen such a bleak outcome. Maybe he was upset by the successes of Soviet proxies in conflicts on the African continent or perhaps it was the Saskatchewan government’s takeover of the province's potash industry.

2112 was Rush’s first album to go gold and the album cover’s image of a naked guy pressing up against a red pentagram came to represent the band in the same way that inflated lips and a wagging tongue symbolize The Stones. By making the playing of a guitar the central heresy to the Solar Federation of 2112, Peart adds a human element not found in Rand’s writing and connects with Rush’s audience of young musicians in doing so. The priests reject the man’s guitar playing as “just a waste of time” in the same way that many parents discourage their teenaged sons and daughters from wanting to be rock stars. Where Rand’s heroes are belligerent industrial tycoons, Peart’s is an everyman, the listener of the album, the kid cramming himself into an arena to see his/her favorite longhaired rock band. Even when embracing Rand, Peart and company cannot escape hard rock’s populist underpinnings.

A late 1970s Capetronic composite stereo system similar to the one that I had as a teenager. Mine had a cassette deck and I must have played the shit out of "Exit Stage Left" and "Caress of Steel" on that thing. I also wore out my first copy of "2112" on its turntable.

My own devotion to Rush occurred when I was 16 and took up the bass guitar. Peart’s liner note urgings even had me reading Rand, but I soon found that cranking up 2112 over and over again on my cheap Capetronics stereo (purchased at Gemco) was a lot more rockin’ than plodding through Atlas Shrugged. By the time I puzzled out the meaning of The Trees from the album Hemispheres (1978), a cautionary tale of the evils of unionizing and trying to level the playing field, I was done with Peart’s politics if not his band’s music. As I watch today’s Randian supermen of the market like Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein claim to be doing “God’s work” while raking in millions in bonuses and inflating the bubbles of the future, it’s hard not to think that maybe the trees should all be “kept equal by hatchet, axe and saw” (or at least the return of the Glass-Steagall act), even if Peart would disagree.

Despite my ideological disagreements with Peart, I still get the chills when I hear that wicked note bend that kicks off Lifeson’s solo in The Trees or when Lee strums some bass chords during the end of Red Barchetta. I’d also be among the first in line for 2112: The Movie along with scores of math rockers, Guitar Hero enthusiasts, Canadians, and guys like Ron Paul’s son Rand (I doubt he was named after the atlas company). 2012, however, has to resort to cheap tricks to lure us into theatres like miscasting John Cusack and then drenching him with pails of water as he stands in front of a blue screen for hours on end.

But a true Howard Roarke cannot submit to the will of the masses and allow a film like 2012 to exist at the expense of 2112. My suggestion is to exercise your free will by storming your multiplex's projection booth, mute the soundtrack of 2012, crank 2112 through the Dolby THX sound system, smoke lots of weed and rock out to the creative destruction. It's either that or wait for 2112: The Musical.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Ed from Rushisaband.com informs me that Peart has distanced himself from objectivism in recent years. In Peart's books he has desribed himself as "no one's disciple" and a "left-leaning
libertarian". --Bob Calhoun, Nov. 13, 2009

With acknowledgment to the genius of Darren Norris for coming up with the concept of this post.

Hulk Hogan Returns: 80s Nostalgia Goes Off the Deep End

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 10:10:56 -0400

Terry Gene Bollea aka Hulk Hogan was able to navigate the psychotic world of professional wrestling for decades, but three seasons of reality TV destroyed his life more thoroughly than a jack knife power bomb through a stack of tables.

Since Hogan Knows Best first aired in 2005, Hogan’s marriage has been in the crapper. His wife wants half and is dating a 19 year-old from their kids’ high school. His son Nick went to jail for eight months for a 2007 reckless driving incident that left his friend, John Graziano, in need of round-the-clock nursing care for the remainder of his life. While Nick was in the Pinellas County stir, guards caught Hulkster and son plotting to spin the tragedy into yet another reality show. Hogan Knows Best got cancelled proving that even VH1’s Celebreality has its limits but the show’s IMDB and Wikipedia entries seem to leave open the possibility that it can return at any time.

After his show was put on hiatus with the disintegration of his family, Hogan has tried to cling to the reality TV gravy train. Brooke Knows Best, a show focusing on his daughter striking out her own, has made it through two seasons, but Hogan is just back story there. His stab at re-branding, the depressing Hulk Hogan's Celebrity Championship Wrestling, was mercifully ended by the Country Music Television cable network after only eight episodes in 2008. The re-boot of American Gladiators, which employed Hogan as an announcer, didn't make it out of 2008. While Hogan is most likely proud that Brooke has been able to let the cameras into her life without him, the Hulkster is one of the most limelight starved individuals ever to be ready for his close-up. With dwindling off-network options, Hogan has retreated to the last place that would have him with his appearance last night on Spike TV’s Total Nonstop Action (TNA, get it?).

Taped in a TV studio in Orlando, Florida, TNA’s flagship show Impact! is a far cry from the comparative glitz of Vince McMahon’s WWE, which made Hogan an 80s icon. While Impact! maintains the gritty feel of traditional big time wrestling that McMahon’s slick shows lack, and TNA does gives a lot of young talent a chance that might not make it on any of the WWE’s three weekly programs, the promotion’s top tier is beginning to look like a last stop for broken-down pieces of meat before they fade into Randy “The Ram” Robinson oblivion, or worse.

Recently, TNA broadcasts have made extensive use of highlight footage from an August pay-per-view match where the grey-haired Kevin Nash (age 50) and former WWE champ Mick Foley (age 44) beat each other into crimson messes with steel chairs, baseball bats covered with barbed wire and hidden razor blades. The most painful aspect of watching these scenes isn’t the massive bloodletting but it’s the obvious pain that both men have from wrestling on bad knees. Sadder still is the sight of Foley going to such extremes after his initial retirement from the ring in 2000. His three wrestling memoirs have made the New York Times bestseller list and he has written three children’s books and two novels. With publishing and commentary duties, Foley shouldn’t be risking his health and sanity by wrestling hardcore matches, but TNA somehow lured him back into their five-sided ring.

Like Hogan, fellow WWE castoff and recent TNA champ Kurt Angle also has marital problems. In September 2008, Angle’s wife left him and shacked up with Jeff Jarrett, TNA’s co-founder and a wrestler best known for smashing a guitar over peoples’ heads. That can’t make for a supportive working environment. In August 2009, Angle was arrested for violation of a restraining order and possession of performance enhancing drugs in a suburban Pittsburgh, Penn. strip mall. Angle parted ways with the WWE in May 2006 due to concerns over his then growing painkiller addiction. TNA scooped him up just four months later.

TNA president Dixie Carter and Hulk Hogan in the sleep-inducing finale of this week's installment of TNA Impact!

Hogan’s first TNA appearance itself was beyond lame. He didn’t appear in the ring, didn’t call anyone out, didn’t stare down Angle, Sting, Samoa Joe or any of the promotion’s other better known grapplers. Instead we were treated to footage of a boring press conference held in what appeared to be a concourse of Madison Square Garden. Hogan, clad in a tight, pink t-shirt and a matching pink bandana (maybe to make him look less orange) gushed about how great Spike TV was as the president of the network stood beside him. He also referred to himself as a “game changer”.

Dixie Carter, the businesswoman who serves as president of TNA not the Emmy-nominated actress from Designing Women and Desperate Housewives, referred to Hogan as “the man, the brand” in a yawn of a speech that could have been delivered at any sales convention. She was also sure to let us know that she had joined Twitter. I shit you not. Like, that’s so early-to-mid 2009. At 9:30pm PST on Thursday, the Twitter feed itself contains only two posts, the first of which reads: “Celebrated the Hogan signing at staff meeting this morning with champagne and donuts.” In a nutshell, the fundraising symposium I had to go to last week contained more gripping mat action than Hogan’s TNA debut.

Vince McMahon would have never allowed things to go down this way. If Hogan had signed to the WWE, he would have been on Monday Night RAW staring down “The Viper” Randy Orton before being double-teamed from behind by Legacy. Hogan may have also been put through a table or hit with a folding chair right before the show ended, compelling us to tune in next week. At this rate, the Hulkster is far from making TNA “the number one sports entertainment company in the business,” as he promised from the podium. Instead, he will be another budget-draining mistake for a promotion with limited resources.

Yes, Hulkamania is back brother, but does it still run wild?

TNA iMPACT!airs on Spike TV Thursdays at 9pm. Tune in next week to see if Hogan bothers to show up.

24/7: HBO Boxing’s Gritty Infomercial

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 11:10:20 -0400

Manny Pacquiao, the "People's Champ" of the Phillipines, talks about the worst disaster to hit his country since World War II in the HBO Boxing documentary series "24/7."

Manny Pacquiao is in the city of Baguio in the Phillipines to train for his November 14 fight against WBO welterweight champ Miguel Cotto. The HBO Sports documentary series 24/7 is there to show us the fighter’s training camp but recent typhoons have left half of the city underwater. In between footage of the boxer hitting the focus bag with lightening quickness are scenes of the city’s poor wading chest deep through floodwaters. Mountains of mud have crashed down upon homes leaving hundreds dead. Actor Liev Schreiber’s somber narration sounds more like something from an installment of PBS’ Frontline than your standard sports doc. Pacquiao “would have to work as his country fell apart around him,” and the disaster takes “the most from those who have the least,” Shreiber informs us. This is heady stuff from a show that’s mainly there to compel us to shell out over 50 bucks to watch two men pummel each other through 12 three-minute rounds.

But HBO Boxing’s 24/7 has always walked the fine line between documentary and infomercial since it first started by building up the De La Hoya/Mayweather bout in 2007. Since then, 24/7 has become an expensive proposition for me. Out of the six completed seasons of the show, three of them have ended with me selecting the fight through my satellite television remote control. That’s a 50% success rate (at least as far as I’m concerned), leaving me out over $150 just to watch a few hours of television. Part of this is because I’ve always been a sucker for training reels ever since I first saw Rocky when I was six years old and 24/7 is almost nothing but training reels.

Even for those seasons of the show where I’ve been able to resist 24/7's siren’s call, I’ve hemmed and hawed about ordering the fight until the very last minute before deciding not to. Last season, we saw Mexican legend Juan Manuel Marquez prepare for his September 19th fight with Floyd “Money” Mayweather by tossing volcanic rocks around an ancient mountain and drinking his own urine. In the Floyd camp, we saw his reunion with his dad. What HBO didn’t spend too much time on was that Marquez had to come up two weight divisions at the age of 36 to meet Mayweather. There was almost no mention of how this would affect the fight. Such analysis may have dissuaded people from purchasing that PPV. During the bout, Marquez only landed 12% of his punches while Mayweather achieved a 59% connect rate. I'm glad I passed on that fight despite the pee drinking.

The show’s seventh and current season, 24/7: Pacquiao-Cotto is a somewhat lopsided affair. Pacquiao and trainer Freddie Roach are struggling to train with “destruction all around” while Puerto Riccan fighter Miguel Cotto is shown eating delicious-looking skewered meats and getting a new tattoo. The attempt by HBO to generate drama from Cotto comes not from the boxer’s present predicament but from his recent past. He quit during the 11th round of a July 2008 bout with Antonio Margarito after his face was beaten into swollen and bloody mush. “That thing that passed through my mind was stop the fight for my benefit, for the benefit of my kids,” Cotto confides.

Miguel Cotto, Sr. recalls his son crying "tears of blood" following his controversial loss to Antonio Margarito during "24/7."

Like something out of an old film noir with Robert Ryan, Margarito was later caught using illegal plaster in his hand wraps before a January 24, 2009 fight with “Sugar” Shane Mosley. “You had to see how deep his wounds were,” Cotto’s father, Miguel Sr., tells the camera to the tones of dramatic piano music, “It’s impossible to explain. I couldn’t explain how someone with gloves could do that.” Although Cotto, Jr. gets somewhat of a reprieve from the news that Margarito possibly had to resort to tampering with his hand wraps to dish out such a beating, questions as to how much Cotto can come back remain, at least according to HBO. (Cott0 has won two matches and the WBO welterweight title since his painful loss to Margarito however Cotto's June 13, 2009 victory over Joshua Clotty was by split decision.)

HBO has three more episodes of 24/7: Pacquiao-Cotto to convince me to plunk down that $54.99 for that November 14th championship match and there's little doubt that they will pull out all the stops to get this done. In the meantime they are showing us the wealthy of Baguio (Pacquiao sadly included in this) working out in air-conditioned gyms while the poor of the city languish in Katrina-like refugee camps. With this unflinching look at economic class amidst a natural disaster, HBO just might make a documentary along the way.

Click here to watch the first episode of 24/7: Pacquiao-Cotto on HBO’s website. New episodes will air on Saturday nights until the November 14, 2009 pay-per-view match.

Bob Calhoun is the author of the bestselling punk-wrestling memoir Beer, Blood and Cornmeal: Seven Years of Incredibly Strange Wrestling, which is currently available at Amazon.com and wherever fine paperbacks are sold.

Kimbo Slice, Al Sharpton and Post-Racial America

Thu, 1 Oct 2009 11:10:33 -0400

Al Sharpton tries to educate the masses inside and outside the ring on this week's "Monday Night RAW."

Capping off a month of rising racial tensions spurred by Glenn Beck and shouting Southern congressmen, this week’s installment of The Ultimate Fighter offers us a bout pitting a muscular black street fighter from Miami against a flabby redneck brawler who goes by the handle of “Big Country.” If that wasn’t enough, earlier in the week, the WWE’s Monday Night RAW was hosted by the Reverend Al Sharpton. While a former president decries racism and the current one denies it, one wonders if the post-racial era has any chance of regaining its pre-healthcare debate momentum after the shellacking it’s taking at the fists of our basic-cable combat sports, both real and staged. Only one thing is certain: the symbolism will be thick enough to cut with a tomahawk chop to the chest.

Al Sharpton is the latest celebrity to host Monday Night RAW since the WWE started this experiment with a June appearance by Donald Trump. While guests ranging from Seth Green to Jeremy Piven to Bob Barker have mostly used the show to hype new books or movies, Sharpton was there to promote his national education tour with Newt Gingrich and Education Secretary Arn Duncan (now that's a tag team). This made for one of the strangest television hybrids in the process as the USA Network brawl-for-all strayed into the realm of community access programming, only with more body slams.

Sharpton was booed heavily by the audience in Albany, NY as he made his way into the ring to James Brown’s “Living in America” during the show’s opening segment. The surly crowd also booed the mention of the words “education” and “civil rights.” Wow, civil rights and education; what horrible concepts! Remember when wrestling fans used to boo Nazis and Soviets? Full time sourpuss and tag team belt holder Chris Jericho did everything in his power to turn the mob’s ire from Sharpton to him by saying that the people in the arena were “gelatinous tapeworms” who “don’t deserve to be educated.” Sharpton finally earned some cheers by “empowering the people” and making a match between the Caucasian heel team of Jericho and The Big Show and their better-liked rivals MVP (a Barry Bonds/Kobe Bryant takeoff) and the World’s Strongest Man, Mark Henry, both of whom are African American.

Pro wrestling, a phenomenon closely associated with unwashed hillbillies in the public imagination, may seem like an odd venue for Sharpton’s outreach efforts however the WWE in particular is responsible for one of the first post-racial stars with Dwayne Johnson AKA The Rock. Like Barack Obama, the Rock is mixed-race with ties to Hawaii. Early attempts by Vince McMahon’s brain trust at casting then Rocky Maivia as an Islander babyface fizzled quickly. Later, The Rock was the head of a cabal of grappling black militants called The Nation of Domination, but little mention was made of his ethnic heritage by the time he made it to the top-tier of the WWE’s roster. He didn’t have to dance in between clothes lines like his black father, Rocky “Soul Man” Johnson, nor did he wrestle barefoot and wear puka shells like his Hawaiian uncle Peter Maivia. Like Tiger Woods, that other pillar of post-racial America, The Rock was able to become the number one attraction in an athletic field that previously had a mostly white fan base.

Al Sharpton's classroom of freaks: The civil rights leader attempts to talk education reform with Santino Marella (who mistakes him for Don King) and Hornswoggle the Leprechaun.

After Jericho and The Big Show defeat MVP and Mark Henry (through nefarious means of course), the next time we see Sharpton he's on a soundstage made to look like a schoolroom. We know it’s a schoolroom because there’s an apple on the desk. Any good that the WWE may have done by creating one of America’s first post-racial stars is almost undone as Shaprton’s classroom is overrun by a cavalcade of ethnic stereotypes. There’s an angry Chicano, an Italian with a clueless dago shtick that was collecting dust when Chico Marx was still using it and a grunting dwarf in a leprechaun suit. Sharpton soon waves them away and proclaims that tonight “it’s all about education.” Yes, I enjoyed this skit, and yes, I feel deeply guilty about this.

As with almost all of RAW’s celebrity guest hosts save for the incomparable Bob Barker, Sharpton participates in some of the worst television imaginable. Luckily, WWE champ John Cena is around to summon a steel cage to descend from the rafters as if by magic, thus restoring our bad TV equilibrium. Still, that large WWE audience was too tempting for Sharpton to pass up and the announcers did mention that you could find Sharpton’s National Action Network on Twitter and Facebook several times when they weren’t plugging this Sunday’s Hell in a Cell pay per view. Sharpton may be all about education, but Vince McMahon is still about the pay-per-view.

Kimbo Slice, the prophet!

If Don King were promoting Wednesday night’s Ultimate Fighter match between Kimbo Slice and Roy “Big Country” Nelson, it would have been billed as a race war between a black ghetto fighter and a cracker from Louisiana. While the subtext of this match-up amidst the current political backdrop may be undeniable to certain intellectuals writing their blogs, race wasn’t even mentioned during the third installment of season 10 of TUF. In fact, much more was made of Nelson’s big stomach than anything else. “He’s got the biggest belly I’ve ever seen,” Coach Quinton “Rampage” Jackson quipped before adding, “I wonder how he aims when he takes a pee.” UFC promoter Dana White, the man who sets the tone, also weighed in on Nelson’s weight by saying that the fighter “looks like he just left every buffet in Vegas.”

Instead of picking the sores of regional or ethnic divides, the producers of TUF let us get to know the fighters as likable guys with human foibles. In the beginning of the episode, Kimbo Slice talked about how he fought anyone and everyone because he felt they were “the enemy” until he had a revelation. “The true you is the enemy,” he said, “the inner me: enemy!” The more time the camera spends with Kimbo, the more you want to get to know him. “A bird that flies high eventually has to come down to get water,” he tells a fellow fighter, dispensing a kind of zen warrior wisdom that would sound cornball if it wasn’t delivered by such an imposing man. In my previous review of the season premiere of TUF, I wrote that this season’s older roster would have deeper back stories, and this episode is paying those dividends.

Nelson, bearded and scruffy, is kind of the John Kruk of mixed martial arts. As a former champion of the now defunct International Fight League, he is also the most experienced fighter on TUF this season. “He has tons of experience,” Coach Rashad Evans observes, “He won’t be intimidated by Kimbo.”

The weigh-in is brought to us by the “superior sludge protection of Castrol GTX.” Kimbo and his massive shoulders weigh an even 230 pounds and Nelson tips the scales at 264 pounds. “You don’t look like you weigh 264,” Kimbo tells Nelson but then Nelson takes off his shirt and reveals his spare tire. There will be two five minute rounds. If the fight ends in a tie, one more "sudden victory" round will be ordered.

The Battle of the Bulge: The flabby "Big Country" Nelson and the iron muscled Kimbo Slice square off in the beginning of their Ultimate Fighter bout.

Both fighters stalk each other cautiously during the first minute of the match. Nelson frustrates Kimbo early on with his jab but Kimbo rushes in and starts throwing the bombs that have sent so many other hard men to the pavement. Nelson ties Slice up and both men’s flesh grinds on the octagon’s chain link fencing as they vie for position. Nelson finally takes his man down. Kimbo’s head lands at a painful angle on the cage wall, extending his neck and folding his bearded chin into his chest. Slice almost bridges out but Nelson maintains the mounted position and starts throwing short punches to the top of Kimbo’s dome. The round ends. “Big Country” has probably won it.

The second round begins. Nelson looks a little tired. Kimbo throws punches with the force of a jackhammer. Nelson looks dazed but takes Slice down again. Both men land hard on the mat. Kimbo, a slugger with little experience in ground fighting is as effective in this position as a fighter jet is on a runway. Nelson lands more short punches to Kimbo’s bald dome. The ref orders Kimbo to fight back or else he’s calling the fight. Kimbo is tied up. He does nothing. The ref stops the bout in the second round. “Big Country” Nelson, the show’s most experience contestant has taken out its best known star, however it will only be a matter of time before Dana White reintroduces his top ratings getter back into the fray.

In reflection, this fight wasn't a victory of one color over another, but a triumph of the fat over the physically fit.

"None of us could get that big belly the hell off of us," the ever quotable "Rampage" Jackson calmly reflects, "It's like having the moon sitting on you. How do you get the moon off of you?"