Pictured: Hitler, Dog

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. It still features a dog named after Hitler. I can’t stress that enough.

Part 1 – Foreword, Prologue, Chapter 1

Part 2 – Chapters 2-4

Part 3 – Chapters 5-7

Today: Chapters 8-10. Not-Tank finally watches not-UFC 1! Enjoy.

Read the rest of this entry »

Next week he’s going to be on Charlie Rose talking about Cet obscur objet du désir.

Anyway, R.A. Dickey, the New York Mets knuckleballer who was so good this year he got a biography, a documentary and the 2012 National League Cy Young Award, showed up on ‘The Daily Show With Jon Stewart’ to discuss his magical super pitch, talk about the permanency of the written word and do his very best to avoid Jon’s nonstop string of HOW ARE THE METS PREPARING TO MAKE ME MISERABLE questions. I don’t blame Jon for asking those questions while he’s got the chance … if I interviewed R.A. Dickey, it’d just be “do you know Mr. Met personally,” followed by 10 minutes of silence.

The full, extended interview (courtesy of TheDailyShow.com). It’s a fascinating look into the life of a legitimately interesting baseball guy, and holy shit I miss baseball. Is it baseball yet?

Read the rest of this entry »

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

Part 2 – Chapters 2-4

Today: Chapters 5-7. Not a lot of fighting, but a ton of introspection, and at least a few racist epithets! Enjoy.

Read the rest of this entry »

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”.

Read the rest of this entry »

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.

Read the rest of this entry »

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.