(The people’s philosopher.)

When it comes to getting drunk and going crazy on The Ultimate Fighter, Chris Leben is sort of like the Neil Armstrong of the field. He did it first, when no one even knew whether it could be done, and so forever after people wanted to know what his thoughts were when other people did it. The difference is that while Armstrong stayed pretty involved and interested in the space program (God, this is a terrible analogy), Leben says he doesn’t really keep up with new installments of TUF. Which is why he might be forgiven for getting a little frustrated when asked about Junie Browning‘s drunken freakouts during a media conference call to promote UFC 89:

You know, every time someone gets drunk on that show I get called by one of my friends who says, ‘You know, this guy reminds me of you. He was drunk and out of hand.’ You know, a house full of fighters…I got a saying, fighters are like strippers, they ain’t paying their way through college. What I mean by that is we all got a bunch of problems and skeletons in the closet.

Here’s my question: does Chris Leben have any sayings that don’t involve strippers? This is the same guy who, during the first season, coined the phrase, “I’ll come in smelling like booze and dirty strippers and still put the stamp on kids!”

Not that it wasn’t awesome, and not that his stripper/fighter analogy isn’t many times better than my Leben/Armstrong analogy, but dammit, comparing fighters and strippers seems like it isn’t doing either group too many favors.