<p><p>Once a week I go to Boston to work with Chris and Gabe. By work I mean sometimes I yell so much spit flies out of my mouth; when you have known someone since they were 11, you can get away with that. So yesterday I drove two hours, sat down, chatted about the weekend’s local fights, and we worked for a bit, until Chris said, “You made honorable mention for the 2009 Fight! Magazine' Power 20 list.”<br />
“ME I DID??!?”
Chris looked stern, paused for a moment, and said slowly “Sherdog made the real list.” Then he glared at me, and went back to pecking on a laptop, silently. Gabe didn’t say a word. Last time I went from pretention to ignobility that rapidly I had driven by some girls who did a double take. “I am really handsome” I thought. Then I chanced to see my face in the rear view mirror - I had sneezed and there was a booger on my cheek.
Jeff Sherwood making the list only makes sense; I have the highest regard for him, and all he has accomplished. Me I was still happy.
So last night, I emailed my dad. He is at some God forsaken gold mine in Tanzania, or maybe a marginally less God forsaken gold mine in Ghana, or maybe some truly utterly totally God forsaken oil pipeline in Nigeria. No answer. I emailed my mom, she still hasn’t answered. I told my cats, and one of them made celebratory clear fluid come out of its nose. Also left a celebratory regurgitated mouse downstairs. This morning a guy from the gym stopped by with KFC. I told him. “Cool” he said. Then he told me how he had won $8,000 in a fishing tournament on Lake Champlain this weekend and we animatedly talked fishing for a while, while eating chicken. My mom is going to care.
If someone wins the lottery, I bet the first thing they do is imagine all the stuff they can get – Cadillac, pay off credit card, more lottery tickets. So I imagined what I could do with my newly recognized Power. It was a harder exercise than the ottery winning one.
I could ban everyone on the site, but then I couldn’t eat. I could add false suspensions to a lot of fighters, but then I would get arrested, lose contract, and Bernie would shoot me. I could put a choke hold on someone at the gym and not let go, but a couple of them would pull off choke and punch my eye orbit a good couple of times. I could make a bunch of biased calls at a Grappling tournament for every kid with a hot mom, but then I would once again be a tall skinny guy getting yelled at by a Brazilian.
In the end, I decided instead to just blog about it, and cause some kvetching about who should and shouldn’t be on the list.Yah you can start with me :-) Here it is, the Fight! Magazine Power 20:
1 Dana White
2 Lorenzo Fertitta
3 Joe Silva
4 Scott Coker
5 TapouT Crew
6 Marc Ratner
7 Brock Lesnar
8 Greg Jackson
9 GSP
10 Randy Couture
11 den Albrecht
12 Jorge Guimares/Ed Soares
13 Tom Atencio
14 Jeff Sherwood
15 Urijah Faber
16 Bob Cook/Dewayne Zinkin
17 Ricardo Liborio
18 Joe Rogan
19 Mark Cuban
20 Jeff Clark/Matt Stansell
Narrowly Missing the List
Mark DellaGrotte
“Mayhem” Miller
Javier Mendez
Kirik Jenness
Tito Ortiz
Ken Pavia
Jeff Meyer
Quinton Jackson
Scott Peterson
Fedor Emilianenko
Chuck Liddell
Reed Harris
Five for the Future
Mika Casey
Miguel Torres
Robert Roveta
Gina Carano
Michael Bisping
“Oh there they go. There they go, every time I start talkin 'bout boxing, a white man got to pull Rocky Marciano out their ass. That's their one, that's their one. Rocky Marciano. Rocky Marciano. Let me tell you something once and for all. Rocky Marciano was good, but compared to Joe Louis, Rocky Marciano ain't shit.”