MUSCLE CHURCH: Our Father, the Iron

The Man from Coldwater, Michigan...that line just reads like a crazy action flick! Dan "The Beast" Severn...yeah, he's kinda good When someone mentions the name Dan Severn, my ears perk up. Not that Dan would ever need me to defend him, but I’d take anyone to task for not agreeing with me that he’s one of the hardest, toughest, meanest fighters of all time and certainly among the most underrated wrestlers in American history. He’s also kind of a teddy bear and I once ate nachos with him while he was in his underwear. Let that last line sink in for a minute, ha ha ha! Back in the early 1990s MMA didn’t really exist and the UFC was a very small entity that had promoted a few shows and gained a dedicated but small following. Dan Severn had emerged as a very blue-collar, no-nonsense kind of man which fit the rough and tumble image that the UFC had during that time. His trademark grey shirt, handlebar mustache and grimace as he walked to the octagon became...

I’ve tried several times to sit down and pen something genuine about a man who really touched my life in a number of ways, perhaps too many to count if I’m being honest. I never hid the fact that I cut my hair and beard to look like Ferg. I could routinely be seen in and around any gym I trained in singing his praises and mimicking his soft-spoken, yet often profane, verbal tirades when given the chance. He was my guy. Everybody has their fighter or their team and mine was Kimbo Slice. Kevin Ferguson AKA Kimbo Slice 2/8/1974-6/6/2016 By all rights I shouldn’t ever have been a fan of his. See I’m an old school MMA nerd and I make no bones about how I think the sport has had a steady decline of testosterone (ironically, despite the many failed drug tests) and a rise in paper champions.  Even during the UFC’s rise to global prominence in the mid-2000s, which coincided with Kimbo’s rise to internet stardom, the MMA world slowly began to get a little too “fancy” for my taste. ...