By Scott Buckner
I was glad to see that ESPN2 is still the official home of foreigners with big shoulders and no necks with back-to-back airings Tuesday night of the MET-Rx World’s Strongest Man competition. For those of you unfamiliar with it, WSM was dreamed up in 1977 when a group of disqualified powerlifters from the Yugoslavian Olympic team all hooched up on slivovitz somehow stumbled across an unlocked boxcar full of empty beer kegs, railroad ties and cases of MET-Rx dietary supplements.
Since then, it has grown into a very successful annual international event that tests the strength of anyone goofy enough to do things like carry a 400-pound pot between your legs, drag around an anchor and chain stolen from the nearest battleship, or toss 60-pound beer kegs over a 14-foot-high wall. Naturally, it’s an event also popular among chiropractors and hernia truss salesmen looking to write off business trips to far-flung international WSM venues like Iceland, Hungary, New Zealand, and Six Flags Magic Mountain.
Normally, the field is jammed with Vikings and eastern Europeans with unpronounceable names of one vowel drowning in a sea of 82 consonants and umlauts. But last night, American Don Pope was on his way to the finals against defending champ and walking brick wall Mariusz Pudzianowski of Poland. This was a good thing, because an American hadn’t won the event since Bill Kazmaier was told to go home and stay there after winning the event for the third straight time in 1982.
Tuesday night’s event was the 2006 competition, held this year during blast furnace season in Sanya, China. This coastal location was described as an “island paradise” by head commentator and skinny guy Todd Harris, looking rather out of place against fellow commentator Kazmaier, who still retains much of his Godzilla-like physique. The event was well-attended by the locals, mostly because the Chinese are far too scrawny for the contestants to bother to eat. This doesn’t give the locals much of a home field advantage, either. When you’re going up against guys six-and-a-half feet tall who beat up steers for fun and breakfast, shrimpy hometown favorites like Gu Yan Li just don’t have what it takes to drag around cannonballs. So they just turn into mush during the first round and earn all-expenses-paid trips to their choice of fabulous Communist Party work camp destinations.
One of the more interesting events Tuesday was the Car Carry, where competitors had to try to walk 25 meters carrying a 900-pound, stripped-down Yugo with a sunroof. The trick, though, was to walk across an uneven grass field with the whole thing strapped to your shoulders. This proved just as tricky to the contestants as trying to overhead-lift almost 1,000 pounds of smooth manmade stones shaped like cheese boxes and hexagons without the benefit of handles.
I gave extra viewer points to Pope for courteously not wearing Speedos during the keg-carrying water event. Unfortunately, Pudzianowski was not as considerate.
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Meanwhile, on Oxygen’s Bad Girls Club, a beach parking lot fistfight between Aimee and Ty was nowhere as good as Ripsi’s blackout abuse of kitchen furniture and anything with a pulse a few weeks ago, and it resulted in Ty getting booted off the show and reducing the house’s black chick population by 50 percent.
But in a surprise move that allowed them to somewhat reverse the decision to exile the best thing the show had going for it, the producers brought back Ripsi as the official catfight commentator at the close of Tuesday’s show. Looking amazingly rested on her day pass from the substance abuse anger management rehab clinic, Ripsi scored the bout 15-14 in favor of Ty and awarded performance points for it being an actual fight instead of “just pulling hair.”
Back at the house, tipsy blondies Zara and Jodie took a very naked and friendly bath together and found they’re better at spanking wet, naked ass than they are at operating the “off” button to the tub’s bubble machine. A half-hour later halfway across town, the guy who owns the Girls Gone Wild franchise fired everyone in the company for missing such a money-making opportunity.
Visit the What I Watched Last Night library.
Posted on February 7, 2007