Ed. note - Jessica ‘Lobster Mobster’ Hudnall’s read-through of Tank Abbott’s Befor There Were Rules, A Trilogy By #1 MMA Cagefighting Legend David “Tank” Abbott, Book One, Bar Brawler, A Novel continues today, and if you haven’t caught up with her SparkNotes yet, now’s the time to do it.
Part 1 – Foreword, Prologue, Chapter 1
Today: Chapters 5-7. Not a lot of fighting, but a ton of introspection, and at least a few racist epithets! Enjoy.
Ed. note - If you’re like me, you want to read Tank Abbott’s debut novel — the succinctly-titled Befor There Were Rules, A Trilogy By #1 MMA Cagefighting Legend David “Tank” Abbott, Book One, Bar Brawler, A Novel — but you don’t want to have to, uh, you know, actually read it.
Thankfully for us, Jessica Hudnall of Leg Kick TKO was nice enough to order a copy of the book and review it for us, SparkNotes-style. You’re going to read some ridiculous shit in here, but please keep in mind that we aren’t making it up for laughs, and that Jessica has a for-real hard copy of the book. I thought it was a figment of my imagination for like a week and a half.
Be sure you’ve read part 1 of her review before you read this one. It covers the forward, prologue and first chapter, and if you don’t read it, you won’t know the “right combination” to Walter’s “throw-down vault”.
Free ridiculous toupée with every purchase!
Ed. note - Brandon here. As regular readers of With Leather know, we have been obsessed with former UFC fighter Tank Abbott’s debut novel, the thoroughly-titled Befor There Were Rules, A Trilogy By #1 MMA Cagefighting Legend David “Tank” Abbott, Book One, Bar Brawler, A Novel since news of its existence broke last week.
So far we’ve written about the book’s Amazon synopsis (“Tank Abbott takes readers from the parking lot to the cage with a realism and honesty about mixed martial arts never before told or exposed”) and Abbott’s incredible follow-up where he says he got drunk to write it and it’s just like The Old Man And The Sea
We need to know everything about this book. Thankfully, With Leather favorite Jessica, aka Lobster Mobster, actually ordered a copy (!) and seems pleased with it (!!), so we’re letting her do the grunt work and create a sort-of SparkNotes for the trilogy. Without further ado, here is everything you ever wanted to know about Tank Abbott’s book trilogy with an ‘e’ missing from the title but were afraid to ask.
They are the same guy. No, really.
On Tuesday, we introduced you to Befor There Were Rules, A Trilogy By #1 MMA Cagefighting Legend David “Tank” Abbott, Book One, Bar Brawler, A Novel. If you can’t figure it out by the title, it’s the first of three self-aggrandizing docu-novels about a tough, cool, successful fighter, written by a fat guy who used to fight and is now mostly famous for farting his life away in backyard deathmatches. Oh, and he has a dog named after Hitler. Because reasons. And “before” is missing an E, which is his thing, not mine.
Anyway, the two easiest jokes to write about Bar Brawler are 1) a sarcastic “he’s just like Ernest Hemingway,” and 2) he must’ve been drunk when he wrote this. Lucky for us, Tank Abbott is in on the joke, and revealed two important things about his debut novel — he was drunk when he wrote it, and it’s kind of like The Old Man And The Sea.
These are actual things Tank Abbott said.
I made sure I had a couple of drinks in me before I’d start taking pen to paper.
There could be 10,000 pages of fights if I was going on my memory, but … every fight in the book has a purpose and a meaning and it’s written very metaphorically,” Abbott said. “Everything has a purpose. It’s not just like a biography where someone says, ‘Oh, I was wrestling in high school and then I went to college and I dropped out because my girlfriend wouldn’t write papers anymore,’ that kind of stuff. … It’s not one of those things. It’s kind of like ‘Old Man and the Sea.’ It’s about finding your meaning in life and being lucky enough to live it. (via Sherdog)
This is the gift that keeps on giving. The book’s fights aren’t based on real fights, they’re VERY METAPHORICAL and there for a purpose. Best of all, Tank Abbott thinks the average person’s college experience is dropping out because your girlfriend stopped writing your papers. Real men don’t write papers, they write THREE BOOKS ABOUT FANTASY BAR FIGHTS.
I can’t with this thing. As soon as site favorite Jessica/Lobster Mobster gets her copy of B4 Their Was Rulez, I’m making her copy and paste the entire thing onto With Leather. I can’t wait to see whether or not the Hitler dog is based on a real dog.
If I told you that former UFC fighter Tank Abbott had taken a break from fighting to the death at cookouts to write a trilogy of old-adult novels about a legendary bar brawler who totally never fought someone at a cookout and is instead a college student and also a WANDERING VIGILANTE who hates “posers” and “bullies,” what would you say? What would you expect him to include in the narrative?
If your answers were “hahah what,” and “dogs named after Adolph Hitler” respectively, BOY, ARE YOU IN FOR A TREAT. Welcome to the wonderful, wonderful world of Before There Were Rules, A Trilogy By #1 MMA Cagefighting Legend David “Tank” Abbott, Book One, Bar Brawler, A Novel. At least, I think that’s the formal title. He should’ve written “A BOOK” and “BY ME” under A Novel, just to make sure.
Here are the opening lines. PREPARE YOUR ASSES.
“Gunslinger of the bars, where a duel was a fist-fight without weapons or you backed down by calling the bouncers. It was just kicking ass or getting your ass kicked. The gunslinger didn’t care if he won or lost, but only about his personal integrity and being satisfied when he woke up in the morning that he had delivered justice to a deserving cockroach.”
There’s no way this is real. The guys at Progressive Boink are just f**king with me. This is a Story Of Intrigue, right? God, I hope the original draft of that paragraph read: “My name is Tank Abortt, I’m am a MNA Fighter, one thing I know is that your a pussy and if we got into a fight I would win because I aren’t a pussy. I’m Tonk Abbott, most legendary of all the bars. Come phase me so I can put the BOMB on you!!” I also hope Bob Sapp is the only person who got to read that draft.
The book description from the book’s — ahem, novel’s — Amazon page is below. Read every word of it. You cannot understand how wonderful this is. His dog is named after Hitler.
