The Daily Dose/June 3, 2019
By Gaylon Kent
America’s Funniest Guy
Leading Off: Andy Ruiz, Jr.: The heavyweight champion of the world.
We don’t pay any more attention to boxing than you do nowadays, but portions of the headline caught our eye. It read “Ruiz, Jr.” and “heavyweight champion”, words you don’t often see in the same sentence. It caught our eye because for the life of us we could not recall a Mexican heavyweight champion, and some research showed Ruiz, Jr is the first.
Now, this isn’t because Mexicans can’t box. Of course they can; they’ve won their share of titles in lighter divisions. But Mexicans aren’t the biggest race on the planet and decent heavyweight boxers from down south have been rare. Almost curious, we read the article and looked at the accompanying picture showing his trunks almost falling below his gut and thought holy crap, he’s fatter than us!!!
Well, almost.
By any athlete’s standard, except maybe sumo wrestlers, Ruiz is chubby. By a professional athlete’s standard, he’s fat and for the Heavyweight Champion of the World, he is positively obese.
It was great to see, especially since the man he beat, Britain’s Anthony Joshua, looks he was chiseled from a block of marble by Michelangelo. He took Anthony Joshua’s WBA, WBO, IBF, IBO, CIA, KGB, and NRA titles by knocking him down four times, the last one in the seventh round ending the fight on a TKO.
You know, there was a time when boxing was one of the Big Four sports in this country. The others were with baseball, college football, and horse racing, but that time has passed, it’s popularity fading since MMA took away the gloves and the rules to overtake it as American’s preferred sport for watching people beat the living crap out of each other. It’s probably too late to return to the forefront of American sports, but Ruiz, Jr. could be just what boxing needs. He knocked down The Man four times and now he’s The Man himself, a portly, friendly looking sort you’d feel comfortable getting a plumbing estimate from.
Eventually, he’ll run into someone fitter and, perhaps, better. But he’s likable, obviously talented, and now he is the Heavyweight Champion of the World, perhaps the type who help boxing regain some its lost prominence.
Today At The Site
The Diary of a Nobody: The MOD keys are still missing at the hotel, it’s the return of Sunday Spaghetti Night (SSN), and The Wife has a really funny line. Today’s Diary.
…she mentioned how we seem to be getting some different birds at the bird feeder this season, something even a nitwit like me has noticed…This is because The Wife, again, changed the food we’re putting in the feeder to something even more premium than the previous premium crap, and she noted this batch has pieces of macadamia nuts in them…Christ, I said, noting that I don’t even get macadamia nuts…The line from The Wife:
“It’s high class now, even the squirrels are wearing bow ties.”
It’s Sparrow, an average man passing an average life.
The drivel simply does not stop: please click on the button to read The Diary of a Nobody. $5.99 includes all entries, past, present, and future.
On This Date
In 1965 – Gemini 4 launches from Cape Kennedy, Florida, America’s first multi-day space mission. Astronauts James McDivitt and Ed White completed 66 orbits in four days, with White becoming the first American to conduct a spacewalk, spending 20 minutes outside the capsule on their third orbit. (In March, History’s first spacewalk had been performed by the Soviets.) While Gemini 4 conducted several firsts for Americans in space, an attempt to rendezvous with the spent second stage of the rocket that propelled them into space failed.
In 1993 – The Montreal Canadiens win Game 2 of the Stanley Cup Finals over the Los Angeles Kings 3-2 in overtime, to tie the series at one game apiece. The Canadiens were trailing 2-1 and were two minutes away from being down 2 games to none when head coach Jacques Demers asks that the curve on Kings defenseman Marty McSorley be measured. It was found to be illegal and the Canadiens tied it on the ensuing power play on a goal by defenseman Eric Desjardins. Desjardins also scored the winner in overtime to become the first defenseman to score three goals in the Stanely Cup Finals. The Canadiens won the series in five games.
In 1972 – Donna Fargo, born Yvonne Vaughn, is at #1 on Billboard’s country chart – then known as the Hot Country Singles chart – with The Happiest Girl in the Whole U.S.A. It was Fargo’s first hit single and the first of four consecutive #1s. The song would spend three weeks at the top and also peaked at #11 on Billboard’s Hot 100. Fargo last hit the country chart in 1991 and would finish her career with 16 top 10 country hits, including six #1s.
Quotebook
Michelangelo insisted the purpose of art, at least when practiced at the highest levels, was to channel the most profound aspirations of the human spirit.
Miles Unger
Michelangelo: A Life In Six Masterpieces
Answer To The Last Trivia Question
Deniece Williams’ first #1 song both Billboard’s pop and soul charts was Too Much, Too Little, Too Late, a 1978 duet with Johnny Mathis.
Today’s Stumper
How many Stanley Cup titles have the Montreal Canadiens won? – Answer next time!
