(Proving that only quitters stop when they hit rock bottom.)
When it comes to heaping one bad career decision on top of another, Eddie Murphy doesn’t have shit on Tim Sylvia. Showing up fat and then getting knocked the hell out by Ray Mercer either destroyed what few brain cells he has left, or it made him realize that he has to go even lower on the totem pole to find someone he can beat, because now he’s saying that he wants to be on the next season of MTV’s “Bully Beatdown,” and – get this – he wants to fight his actual childhood bullies:
“I was bullied all through high school, where I was never a big guy. I grew and became a big guy. I still have a chip on my shoulder for all those assholes who picked on me and beat me up. …If everything goes right, I will be on the second season of Bully Beatdown. What I want to pitch to them is, bring in one or two bullies that bullied me, and what I want to do is take the money – the ten or twenty thousand dollars you win – and donate it to charity, I don’t need it.”
Jesus Christ, Tim. You have such a knack for making people feel for bad for you and embarrassed for you all at the same time. It’s almost a talent. Almost.
When I try and force myself to think with the same twisted logic that made Sylvia think boxing Ray Mercer was a good idea, I can almost see how he thinks this is his ticket back to the big time. As we’ve previously noted, there’s something genuinely satisfying about seeing bullies get their comeuppance. But there’s also something really pathetic about a thirty-three year-old man still dwelling on how he got picked on in school, and it only gets more pathetic if that man is a professional fighter.
Does anyone really want to see Sylvia beat up some middle-aged dudes from Maine who may or may not even remember bullying him? Is there at least a chance that one of them might knock his ass out just because he needs the money? Is MTV desperate enough to allow any of this to happen?
These are the difficult questions we’re faced with. All we can do is wait for the answers in a quiet, dark room somewhere.
Sylvia just came.