A semi-definitive list of people we do not want to fight

Jon and Spencer list the people they do not want to fight.

Jon: MIRKO CRO COP

Mirko Cro Cop was not the best mixed martial artist who ever lived; were I approaching this accordingly, I’d opt for someone like Anderson Silva. Relatively speaking, that would be a blessing: I’d take a kick to the head, and next thing I knew I’d be lying in bed watching a courtroom TV show, which is one of my favorite things to do.

Cro Cop, whose very name evokes two of humanity’s greatest threats in crocodiles and the police, deployed some of the most terrifying leg strikes the sport has ever seen. You can’t make it through any Cro Cop article or YouTube comments section without reading: “right kick hospital, left leg cemetery.”

That left leg might get you in the head, but it might also catch you straight in the liver. He might target a specific internal organ to lacerate. I can’t imagine anything more upsetting than that. Look at the strike he delivers to Bob Sapp at 4:05 here. More importantly, watch the delay. Pay attention to how long it takes Sapp to collapse in agony.

Sapp’s body takes a full two seconds to process that disaster has struck. It’s as though it’s a new language of pain that must be run through a translator before it can be experienced.

If I were to fight Mirko Cro Cop, I would probably not be able to beat him.

Jon: KYLE FARNSWORTH

Those who have known me for a long time may have guessed this one.

Baseball fights are usually very goofy-looking. They’re fought by clumsy dads who have stumbled out of bed in the middle of the night to go investigate a weird noise. Most of them have maintained a resting heart rate for the last 20 minutes. This is a recipe for haymakers that land several miles off-target, some half-hearted shoving, and one or two guys tripping and falling.

This has always presented an opportunity for those who can truly fight to stand out among their peers. Kyle Farnsworth was one of the hardest-throwing pitchers of his era. He stood 6’4, weighed 230, possessed like one percent body fat, and knew how to fight.

Farnsworth was in a few great fights throughout his career, but his most iconic moment was a flawless takedown of the Reds’ Paul Wilson.

Farnsworth nearly beans Wilson during a bunt attempt. Wilson does not charge the mound. Farnsworth charges the plate, drives his shoulder right into Wilson’s belly, puts him in the dirt, and connects on a haymaker that cartoonishly sends multiple pieces of baseball equipment flying out of the scrum.

Farnsworth’s probably the best fighter who ever played baseball. Historians might float some gin-pickled ill-tempered guy from like 1912. They all weighed 140 pounds and none of them ate a banana’s worth of potassium in their entire lives and Farnsworth would have ended every single one of them.

Jon: SEAN HANNITY

Sean Hannity is a devoted disciple of, uh,

strip malls. But the point is, he has put in significant hours studying and practicing some kind of fighting, which is far more than I can say of myself. Even if he spends two hours a week in a kimono shrieking “hi-ya!” and hitting a cardboard cutout of Bill Ayers with a pair of nunchucks, he’s better prepared than I am.

There’s a very real chance that he would lay me the hell out. It’s a humiliation I would be unable to bear.

Spencer: ALEKSANDR KARELIN

Every myth about the greatest Olympic superheavyweight wreslter ever is true. He was 15 pounds at birth. He is from Siberia. He did finish his international career with a record of 33-1, and did not lose a match for twelve years straight. Karelin was once asked who his toughest opponent was and answered “My refrigerator.” This is because he bought a refrigerator and decided to carry it up to his apartment by himself. At the time, Karelin lived on the eighth floor.

Karelin really did work for the Russian Tax Police. He really did win matches by being immovable at 6’3” and 285 pounds, and by picking up his superheavyweight opponents like stray hogs and slamming them backwards onto the mat. He really was built like the man who bullied Ivan Drago in high school, and acted like it in the ring.

Most people might pick someone who could punch well to be the person they’d least like to meet in the ring. I think punching Karelin with any level of force would just make him mad. Someone who can knock out an opponent can end the terror in a few seconds. As a secondary act of accidental mercy, I might not even remember it afterwards. (Thanks, hypothetical 1986 Mike Tyson.)

But getting thrown around a ring, submitted, and torqued into a thousand equally horrible positions by a wrestler the size of an actual bear with strength to match, a shaved head, and a stated affinity for ballet and poetry? It’s all bad, but getting suplexed to hell by the man Dave Barry once called “the bouncer in the meanest bar in hell” would be so much worse than anything else I could imagine. It would go on as long as he liked, I couldn’t do anything about any of it, and he’d be thinking about Mussgorsky arias the whole time.

Spencer: JACK JOHNSON (BOXER)

The bareknuckle boxing legend who once agreed to fight a 45 round fight. Johnson got knocked out in the 23rd round of that fight, yes, but given that it was one hundred degrees outside in Cuba, he was a fugitive from the law, and was a 37 year old man fighting a six foot six cowboy from Kansas, I’ll stand by this as no discredit to his inclusion here. Even his losses scare me.

The matchup gets so much worse when his fighting style is factored in. Fighting bareknuckle, Johnson would often wait out his opponents in early rounds, and then cash in by laying on punishment when the other fighter was fatigued. Against me, Johnson could jog while eating a large sandwich in the ring for ten rounds, watch me puke twice out of exhaustion, and then pick exactly which ribs of mine to snap before felling me out of boredom in the round of his choice.

It’s bad when someone can pummel you. It’s worse when they can choose exactly when to do it.

Spencer: JACK JOHNSON (MUSICIAN)

I can’t think of anything more humiliating than being destroyed in the octagon by the man who wrote the Curious George soundtrack, full-stop. Double humilation if Johnson kicks my ass while wearing some pukka shells and a hemp fiber shirt with an environmentalist slogan on it. Triple if he’s la-dah-dah dah-dah-dah-ing on my ass while he does it. (He’s gonna lah-da-da my ass while he does it, I just know it.)