THE PROPHET'S TUESDAY TAPOUT: BAD ASS WELCOME MAT EDITION

by The Prophet, ProphetFighting

Welcome to the latest installment of The Prophet's Tuesday Tapout. As many of you know, I recently relocated to Portland, OR. I've been hard at work getting settled in to my new crib but now I need to call upon those of you out there in EC land for help. No, I don't need to have a Slurpee made, a body disposed of, a license plate or a "shiv" made or a bunch of tin cans collected despite the fact that this is the extent of most Carnies' professional qualifications. I need some help decorating my new abode but we'll get to that in a moment. Obviously its hard to find a picture to go along with my "theme" this week so we'll go off the board again. I've been told that there's nothing worth seeing in Philadelphia and that I should stay away. This picture of a gaggle of random Philly Rollergirls seems to suggest otherwise....

I NEED A BAD ASS WELCOME MAT:

There's a ton of news in the MMA world this week--so much that I really can't cover it all in one column. In fact, for that reason I probably won't even try. If you want to stay up to date you need to check out ProphetFighting or wait anxiously for the impending launch of my new fightsport "DeathStar" to be called The Savage Science. If you want to stay up to date on Savage Science developments drop me a line at savagescience@gmail.com or visit the Savage Science MySpace page. I'll try to get to as much of the important MMA news as I can, but I'm reminded of the response of Sandra Bernhardt when someone asked her to quiet down at the premier of former friend Madonna's "Body of Evidence": "THIS IS NOT A SERIOUS MOTION PICTURE".

So back to the lecture at hand....I just moved into this older art deco condo building in Portland. Everyone has welcome mats in front of their doorway despite the fact that if anyone entering was *going* to wipe their feet they would have done it in the lobby, on the carpet in the hallway, in the elevator or well in advance of reaching your door. I think its more of an attempt to be clever and most of the mats are whimsical with cutesy frogs or new agey ones with unicorns and the like.

Obviously, I'll be having none of that. I want to establish from the start that I'm not a guy that the other residents can trifle with. I've sent a few subtle signals--like wearing my six ounce MMA gloves whenever I need to go anywhere in the building--but my thinking is that there's no better way to "mark my territory" than throwing a bad ass welcome mat in front of my crib.

There's only one problem--I've had a hell of a time finding a welcome mat that is sufficiently bad ass enough for me. A friend of mine tried to explain why this is the case--a welcome mat, they theorized, should be "warm and welcoming". I thought he was suggesting that I was some kind of a pussy so I kicked his ass. After his jaw healed up somewhat, he clarified that he wasn't suggesting that *I* was soft but rather than the average homeowner who'd be purchasing a welcome mat would want it to evoke a feeling of warmth, love and hospitality.

Undaunted, I took to the Internet and headed over to that website that George W. Bush likes so much "The Google". I typed in some search terms for welcome mats that I thought would look pretty cool and convey that I was a bad ass dude and that the other condo residents should give me wide berth. Much to my dismay, search after search came up empty: "grim reaper welcome mat"..."spawn of the underworld welcome mat"..."vampire bat welcome mat"...."ghastly severed head welcome mat"...."cattle mutilation welcome mat" and so forth. I thought I had found something when "skull welcome mat" returned a number of results but they were all new agey looking southwestern cattle skulls and not cool skulls like Iron Maiden's iconic mascot Eddie.

Since I am the "future of fightsport journalism" (TM) and all of that I really don't have time to search around on the Internet all day looking for a bad ass welcome mat. On the other hand, most of you Carnies do. Since all you'll be doing on a day-to-day basis is waiting for the unemployment check to come and watching cartoons take some time to help me out. I haven't decided what the prize will be yet but the reader who finds me the best welcome mat and either posts it in the comments or emails it to me at savagescience@gmail.com will get a prize of some sort. You don't have to *buy* the welcome mat for me, but if you insist I won't discourage it.

Here's a few rules--I make the final determination of bad ass-edness. No sports team logos, NASCAR mats, etc. They're just not bad ass enough. The only one I've seen that is sort of cool is a mat with the message "Come back when you have a warrant". That's in the right ballpark, but my concern here is that it would encourage the local busybodies to snoop around all up in my business. I don't want any of that--I simply want to create a sufficient aura of fear and mystery that they leave me alone.

There's your assignment...get to work, dammit...

MMA NEWS:

There's a ton of MMA news this week and I really encourage you to go over to ProphetFighting and read about it. First of all, a heads up on a couple of upcoming events worth watching. This weekend on Showtime EliteXC has a big event headlined by a main event featuring our guy Kimbo Slice against washed up brawler Tank Abbott. There's even a couple of decent matches on the undercard. On Wednesday night, the UFC owned WEC organization will have a live event broadcast on the Versus TV network. That's the one that used to be the "Outdoor Life Channel" and then "OLN" that the NHL games and all of the bull riding is on. No big names on the WEC card but on paper it looks like an action packed event with a bunch of up-and-coming fighters that should go at each other like rabid weasels.

Also in the news--UFC President Dana White has apparently run off yet another top ten heavyweight in the person of Mirko Cro Cop. The Croatian striking machine has announced that he'll be at a Tokyo press conference later today to announce a new MMA organization which involves the K1 kickboxing promotion and executives from Dreamstage Entertainment, which used to own PRIDE. Let's see...Fedor...Josh Barnett...Randy Couture....and now Mirko Cro Cop....that's 4 of the top 10 heavyweights in the world that Dana White either ran off, has a grudge against, or alienated into signing elsewhere.

In more UFC news, the shell company that the UFC owners set up after they bought the Japanese MMA organization PRIDE is suing a bunch of former PRIDE execs. They're essentially trying to pass the buck on their shoddy due diligence prior to the purchase. Also, in another Vince McMahon/WWE-like product failure, the Xycience brand of energy drinks that is well known to anyone who owns a TV set has filed for bankruptcy. The company was heavily bankrolled by UFC owners Frank and Lorenzo Fertita.

Anyway, if you want to stay ahead of the curve on MMA and boxing news head over to Prophet Fighting. We'll be back later in the week with more on the Butterbean/Blaine fiasco and more fight sport news....until then FIND ME A WELCOME MAT, DAMMIT!!