I had a nice chat with NFL legend Herschel Walker about a month ago, and he struck me like a dude that was well-aware of his abilities and limitations, even as a 48-year-old guy training for his second-ever pro mixed martial arts fight. But that judgement has gone out the window after Walker told FanHouse’s Mike Chiappetta that he could still play in the NFL. Oh, Herschel.

“I know I can play,” Walker said on a Monday conference call that was intended to promote his Jan. 29 Strikeforce MMA match. “If I continue to stay in the shape I’m in now, I know I can play when I’m 50. Right now, if you asked if I can play today, there’s absolutely no doubt in my mind I can play football today, that I can help out a team today.

“I 100 percent guarantee you I can help a football team out,” Walker continued.

I’m chalking these comments up to pre-fight hype; his long-awaited match with Scott Carson will finally happen at the Strikeforce event in Miami on Saturday night, and he’s just reminding everyone that he’s the guy that used to play in the NFL. And I mean “long-awaited match” as in long-awaited by Carson and Walker, and almost certainly no one else.

Few people manage to survive 12 years in the NFL, but Herschel Walker did that and continued to look for abuse elsewhere. Walker, now 48, is training for his second professional fight in mixed martial arts. He’s scheduled to fight in the upcoming Strikeforce event in San Jose next month. When Walker won the Heisman Trophy in 1982, his opponent from his first pro MMA fight, 27-year-old Greg Nagy, hadn’t even been born. Herschel brings a freakshow quality to what many already call a freakshow sport, but also the star power earned in pro football to a promotion that needs it to keep up with UFC.

Hershel is now representing ClinchGear, who produce MMA performance gear and apparel, and they were good enough to set up a phone call with the man who, by his own admission, still wears many hats. An transcribed excerpt of our interview follows.

Josh Zerkle, With Leather: I have to ask you, before anything else, how many push-ups and how many sit-ups you did today?

Herschel Walker: I’ve done about a thousand sit-ups so far and about 500 push-ups…and I’ll probably do 1000 sit ups and 250 or 500 push ups.

JZ: So you do them in sets? When I was growing up, I always thought that you did them bam-bam-bam all at once. And then you would go and eat an entire horse, because doing all of that sounds exhausting.

HW: Oh, no. I only eat one meal a day. I’m not a guy that loves to eat. Read the rest of this entry »

This story's a couple days old by now, but it certainly bears mentioning that Herschel Walker has multiple personality disorder, as he reveals in his new book.

That's all news to me," former Georgia coach Vince Dooley said in Friday editions of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. "All I know is whatever personality he had when he had the football was the one I liked."

Yeah, this one doesn't really do much for me.  "Ooh, I have two or more personalities, buy my book!"  Whatever.  I'm not interested unless one of them is a serial killer.

The real reason I bring this up is because our friend MJD, now kicking it over at Yahoo's "NFL Experts Blog" (apparently watching football in a bar and writing about it makes you an expert these days) wrote a relatively harmless post about this, and the comments are pretty priceless.  You thought the commenters at FanHaus were heavy-browed mouth-breathers?  Wait 'til you see the rampant fetal alcohol syndrome in effect at Yahoo.