(Guess which of these men doesn’t make his living with his body. Go ‘head. Guess.)

Best-selling author and friend of the Potato, Matthew Polly, won his MMA debut at Saturday night’s Tuff-N-Uff event in Las Vegas after his combination of awkward offense and pudgy middle-agedness proved to be too much for his 24 year-old opponent, who could not answer the bell for the third round. 

If you didn’t know, Polly wrote the hilarious and insightful American Shaolin about his time living and training with the Shaolin monks in China.  He’s been at work on a new book about MMA for what seems like years now, and he spent the last several months living in a flophouse in Vegas and getting beaten up at Xtreme Couture in preparation for his first foray into MMA competition.  Said Polly: 

“I was really nervous. I actually went and hid in one of the bathroom stalls to try and calm down,” Polly said of his routine before the fight. “My first thought when I got out there is, I got Joey Varner (Xtreme Couture trainer), Robert Drysdale (world-class Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu expert) and Randy Couture walking in with me, I was like, I can’t shame them. I can’t go out there and get knocked out in five seconds with them in my corner.  Then it was weird. There was a calm right as the music started. I can do this. I can do this.”

“It was so smoky in there I got lost going to my corner. That was my first panic,” he said. “Then I honest to God got caught myself looking at myself on the big screen and said, ‘Can they see the backfat?’”

The answer is yes.  Yes, they can, Matt.  But much like the women we’ve all known and loved over the years, they were probably too drunk to care. 

Congratulations to Polly for proving that all writers aren’t complete pussies.  He can add this victory to a list of accomplishments that includes teaching the game of basketball to Chinese monks (sort of), and being the only person to ever get kicked out of an IFL event during the national anthem (seriously).  We can’t wait to read his self-deprecating account of the fight when his book finally comes out, assuming that the publishing industry still exists by then.