I have tried to avoid the full contact fighting sports. The Indignant Wife hates boxing, so I don’t even follow that anymore, but even if I was still watching boxing, I can’t see myself following two men beat themselves senseless in a miniature “Thunderdome” cage like a old wrestling match. If I want to watch that, I’ll go to a downtown Chicago bar about 1:00 AM on a Saturday morning and watch the drunks fight each other.
But I do have to talk about the latest fighter on the ultimate circuit – former running back Hershel Walker. The 47-year-old Walker fought in a match last Saturday night, and according to what I’ve read, won the match. I’ve seen pictures of Walker and video of him doing push-ups and doing things that I’ve never been able to do, even as a much younger man.
But Hershel Walker has always wondered, I think, what to do with himself besides football. My friends and I always joked back when Walker was playing because he said that when he was finished, he wanted to work for the CIA. We laughed because 1) it would be awfully hard for a man who has been in the spotlight in college and in the pros, to try and be a clandestine field officer; and 2) we thought that Walker has never been “the sharpest knife in the drawer” and that was before getting pounded in college and professional football, so how was Hershel Walker going to turn into 007?
Apparently, we were right on the second point – that Walker was much more comfortable showing his physical, not mental agility. So, like George Foreman, he is trying to beat Father Time, and unlike Ed “Too Tall” Jones, actually make a successful transition from football to a fighting sport. I only hope he doesn’t get what’s left of his faculties knocked out in some cage.