LIVE Round-By-Round Coverage of UFC 209: Woodley vs. Thompson 2!

Too broke to afford Fight Pass? Your laptop too shitty to stream it for free online? You local sports bar too cheap to order the PPV? Worry not, fight fans - our LIVE round-by-round coverage of UFC 209 will keep you in the loop all night long.

By: Jimbo X
JimboXAmerican@gmail.com
@Jimbo___X

Well, it only took 'em a good three months, but we finally have ourselves a UFC PPV spectacle worth a toot. We've got old school Pride FC heavyweights set to wallop and whale the shit out of each other, a bunch of scrappy young guns in the Lightweight Division trying to make themselves famous, two old ass middleweights trying to score one more triumphant victory under the bright lights before they get sent out to pasture, an absolute barn burner of a 155-pound match-up for the weight class' participation trophy championship (LOL, J/K, we're getting two women fighters you don't care about instead) and wrapping the whole hootenanny up like a warm flour tortilla, a re-do of one of the most entertaining championship bouts from last year, featuring arguably the two most entertaining strikers in the Welterweight fray trying to scramble each others' brains for that sweet, sweet contract extension moolah. So, yeah, to steal a nearly 30-year-old line from The Simpsons, the only reason you should miss UFC 209 is if you're dead or in jail ... and if you're in jail, break out.

Oh, but what's this? You mean you don't have enough cash on hand to order the PPV for you and your loved ones, or the proprietor of the wings-and-titties restaurant you normally watch your UFC shows at finally blacklisted you for trying to give one barhops too many the old magic thumb? Well, don't you worry your precious little heads off, kids, because we here at The Internet Is In America have got your back like chiro-pract. Starting at 10 p.m. Eastern time on SATURDAY, MARCH 4, we're going to be bringing you LIVE updates from UFC 209, with instant results, insight and additional commentary posted in between each round of every fight. Trust us, kiddos - you won't find funnier (or faster) live UFC commentary anywhere (and if you do, they prolly stole their shit from us, so fuck them right in their shitty brown anuses.) 

So what are you waiting for, Holmes? Go on ahead and bookmark this shit RIGHT NOW so you don't miss a single punch, kick, concussion, and/or broken ice pack this Saturday night. And do us and yourselves a favor and tell all your MMA living buddies about our free service - we appreciate the business.

Alright, we are coming to you LIVE from the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas. We've already had two all-time classic comebacks from Iuri Alcantara and Darren Elkins on the preshow ... are we destined to see at least one more on the paid portion of tonight's festivities?

Doing commentary duties tonight is the trifecta of Jon Anik, Joe Rogan and Dominick Cruz. In the light of Khabib's weight-cutting snafu, Rogan said he would like to see the UFC move to having fighters fight at their "natural weight," while Cruz says, "nah, fuck that shit, if you can't cut weight that just means you're not a professional."

HEAVYWEIGHT BOUT

Alistair Overeem (41-15-0-1) vs. Mark Hunt (12-11-1-0)

Well, this has to be the best PPV curtain jerker (based on name value alone) the UFC has given us in a long time. This is actually a rematch from the DREAM FC days; back in 2008, 'Reem pretty much reamed Hunt up the ass with an Americana and made tons of fun tap out in just 71 seconds. Of course, since then, Hunt's overall MMA game has improved considerably, while Alistair has been a model of inconsistency, somehow being able to royally fuck up Andrei Arlovski and Junior dos Santos only to get his face rocked off by Ben Rothwell and Travis Browne. Both heavyweight stalwarts are coming off big-time losses/no-contests (a title fight loss against Stipe Miocic for Overeem, a drug test overturned loss against Brock Lesnar for Hunt), so yeah, both fighters could really, really use them another notch on the "W" side of their respective win-loss columns. And since neither man can really afford another defeat on their records at their ages, methinks both of these chaps don't really have an excuse to not look for a truly spectacular finish here.

Hunt out to some hippity-hoppity shit first. Rogan notes that it's pretty rare to see two K-1 Champions in the Octagon at the same time. Overeem out to some orchestral stuff that sounds like something out of a PS2 real-time-strategy game. Hey, did you know Overeem has the highest striking accuracy in UFC history? Well, he does. Oh, and in case you wanted the specifics: Reem has an eight inch reach advantage and is LITERALLY half a foot taller than Hunt.

Hunt gets a pretty big pop while Overeem is soundly booed. Hard leg kicks from Hunt early. Overeem whiffs on a one-two counter combo. Hunt's foot is bleeding like fucking crazy. Reem with a sidekick. Now he's kicking the shit out of Hunt's legs. Big kick from Hunt to Overeem's midsection. More leg kicks from Reem. Now Hunt is firing some leg kicks. Hunt has painted Reem's bicep and leg with his own blood. Hunt tries to chase Reem down in the waning seconds of the round, and Reem literally runs away from him. Hunt hits a big elbow and a few blocked overhands as the bell sounds. Eh, I give it 10-9 to Reem.

Round two. Hunt has a big gash on his ankle, and it's all vaselined up now. Reem tries to hit a spinning back fist, but he can't land it. Now Hunt's nose is bleeding. Reem with a HUGE knee to the stomach. Then another one. Reem crushing Hunt against the cage. Cruz says getting kicked in the leg is like getting poked in the gut with a sharp broomstick. Just how often does that happen, exactly? Hunt with a HUGE elbow that staggers Reem. Reem responds by hugging him against the cage and hitting him with some of his own elbows. Reem with a knee. Hunt eats a knee to the gut. Hunt's hair is dyed pink from blood. Hunt throws some big elbows as the round concludes. 20-18 Reem in my book.

Round three. Rogan says he has blood spatter on his notes. Reem whiffs on a big overhand. Hunt chases Reem again and he starts running away like a scared little bitch. Reem pushes Hunt against the cage and hits him with knees. He lands a HUGE knee to Hunt's head and he is fucking dead. A few more knees, and the ref waves it off.

The official time of the knockout is 1:44 of round three. I skipped the post-fight interview to get a bowl of chili and I frankly don't give a fuck what I missed.

WOMEN'S STRAWWEIGHT BOUT

Amanda Cooper (2-2-0-0) vs. Cynthia Calvillo (3-0-0-0)

Well, this fight right here wasn't even supposed to be on the free Fox Sports portion of the card, but thanks to Khabib Nurmagomedov almost sending himself to Islam heaven (if you die trying to cut weight, is that enough to score you those 72 virgins?), we get the PRIVILEGE and LUXURY of watching two 115-pound blonde hos nobody cares about pitifully whaling on each other for 15 minutes as a last-second replacement. Of course, the only time I care about women fighting is when they're scratching each others' eyes and yanking on each others' hair in a battle to determine who sucks my dick first, so if I just so happen to dip out for the next half hour, surely, you'll empathize with my decision-making.

Cynthia comes out to "Jump Around." Cooper comes out to ... I don't know, but it sounds like Taylor Swift back when she was still doing country music. Cynthia is the favorite, even though she turned pro just seven months ago. Herb Dean is the referee so you know one of these women have to die before the fight gets stopped.

Cynthia with some leg kicks, then a takedown. Cooper in the open guard. She stands up and Cynthia does a full 360 rotation taking Cooper down again. Cynthia has her back and is looking for a choke. Cruz says women are a lot more flexible then men - feel free to take that one out of context. Cynthia sinks in a choke, Cooper fights it for awhile, she's almost out of it ... and Cynthia sinks it in even deeper and Cooper has to tap. Well, how about that.

The submission came at 3:19 of the very first round. Holy shit, Cynthia sounds like she's a 12 year-old white girl.

Time to pimp UFC 210 and the Daniel Cormier/Anthony Johnson rematch ... and the next fight on tonight's show. Good lord, Rashad Evans looks so much like Tracy Morgan now it's horrifying.

MIDDLEWEIGHT BOUT

Rashad Evans (24-5-1-0) vs. Daniel Kelly (12-1-0-0)

It's been about a year since we last saw Evans in the Octagon. And seeing as how he got KTFO by Glover Teixeira in less than two minutes, yeah, he prolly wants to forget about that unfortunate little episode in the worst way possible. Enter one-loss Aussie judoka Daniel Kelly, who is currently riding a three fight win streak and is 5-1 all-time in the UFC. Although a fairly random sounding match-up, it nonetheless offers plenty of intrigue. With both of these dudes approaching 40 (and neither one expecting a crack at the 205 belt, for any reason whatsoever), expect both of these cagey vets to bring their A-game here; a victory may not do much for either man's legacy, but it might just be enough to extend their viability as UFC-caliber professional fighters for another year or two. Fighting for a belt is one thing, but fighting to keep food on the table and avoid a trip to the unemployment office? Yeah, the prospects of picking up a paycheck from Bellator ... or god help 'em, World Series of Fighting ... ought to be more than enough to get both these motherfuckers swinging for the fences like their livelihoods depend on it.

Kelly comes out to some Pat Benatar-sounding shit. And he could also be Brett Favre's stunt double. "That knee is wrapped up like a mummy," Rogan comments on Kelly's ginormous leg brace. Rashad out to the N.W.A. version of "Express Yourself." Yeah, he looks WAY skinnier at 185 than he did at 205.

Kelly is so white and flabby he could cosplay as the Pillsbury Dough Boy. He gets virtually no reaction from the crowd. Evans gets a bigger pop, but it's nowhere near as big as you'd have expected. Evans whiffs on a big kick. Kelly with a big left hand. Kelly stuns Evans with another hook. Evans lands a takedown. Kelly right back up. Evans lands an uppercut. Kelly responds with a heavy left. Kelly bleeding a little now. Kelly with a big shot in the clinch. Heavy kick to the midsection from Evans. A hard round to score, but I'd give the slight edge to Kelly.

Round two. Dude, Rashad's facial structure doesn't even look the same anymore. He literally looks like a dried out beef jerky version of himself. Kelly using a leg trip to set up the jab. Pretty unorthodox, but hey, it's working. Another clinch. Evans shoots for a takedown. He can't get it, but Kelly does land a leg sweep. Both men back up. Kelly gets poked in the eye, so we have a delay in the action. Oh yeah, Evans thumbed his socket like a Nintendo controller on that one. Evans with a body kick. Kelly with a good combination. Evans with a takedown. He misses a roundhouse kick on the follow through. Body kick from Kelly. Evans really doesn't know what to do with a dude fighting in the southpaw stance. 20-18 Kelly in my eyes.

Round three. Kelly has outlanded Evans 45-18 so far. Kelly with another leg trip. Kelly with a leg kick. The announcers keep saying they don't know who the fuck is winning under the new scoring system. Evans with a good uppercut. Evans with some desperation body kicks. Evans misses on a head kick but lands a nice combo - and then Kelly makes Evans eat a hand sandwich. Both men throwing short range punches. Minute to go. Kelly lands an uppercut and another trip. Rashad grabs Kelly's shorts and gets admonished by the ref. Rashad swinging like crazy in the final 10 seconds, but nothing is good enough to get the last second KO. I've got it 29-28 for Kelly.

29-28 for Kelly; 29-28 for Evans; and 29-28 for ... Daniel Kelly.

He tells Rogan he's wearing the knee wrap because he has a torn ligament or something. Hey, Francis Ngannou and some dude from the Blue Jays is in the house! And there's Tony Ferguson. "Maybe Khabib can take some lessons on cutting weight from Dominick Cruz," Rogan declares with palpable disappointment. 

INTERIM LIGHTWEIGHT CHAMPIONSHIP BOUT

Khabib Nurmagomedov (24-0-0-0) vs. Tony Ferguson (23-3-0-0)

Hey, you know what the UFC could use way more of? INTERIM CHAMPIONSHIPS. Well, this contest here is for the (not quite) 155-pound championship strap, which means whoever wins this one will almost certainly be duking it out with Mr. Money Bags himself at some point in the future (y'know, pending McGregor won't be sitting on the sidelines waiting for that gajillion dollar boxing match with Mayweather for the next couple of years ... which, honestly, sounds like something he would do, the more you think about it.) Regardless, this ought to be a good one, seeing as how it features the most dominant Russian ground and pound death machine since Fedor Emelianenko circa 2005 going toe-to-toe with a guy riding a nine fight winning steak in the UFC's most competitive division, with wins over the likes of Rafael dos Anjos, Lando Vannata, Edson Barboza and Gleison Tibau. So either Khabib's going to extend his unbeaten streak to 25-0 or Ferguson's going to extend his UFC Lightweight Division winning streak to 10-0. Either way, a win here DEFINITELY ought to vaunt the victor to a real championship bout ... and perhaps even a spot headlining the most lucrative MMA show of all-time, assuming old Conor boy ever decides to re-enter the Octagon. (Actually, this isn't happening because Khabib tried to cut 35 pounds the night before the fight and almost died and had to be hospitalized. Ha ha ha, where's your Muhammad now, you commie Muslim Ruskie?)

LIGHTWEIGHT BOUT

Lando Vannata (9-1-0-0) vs. David Teymur (5-1-0-0)

Alright, so 24-year-old Vannata's UFC debut didn't go as swell as he had hoped, since he got D'arce choked by Tony Ferguson last July. However, he looked a lot more impressive in his second bout last December, when he wheel kicked the living fuck out of John Makdessi's face. Now Teymur, on the other hand, is this Swedish guy who is 2-0 in the UFC, chalking up knockout victories against Martin Svensson and Jason Novelli in 2016. So both of these guys are young up-and-comers who each have only tasted defeat once in their professional careers. In a talent-glutted 155-pound market, these guys have a long way to go before they can rightfully consider themselves "elite" lightweights. Alas, the march of a thousand miles begins with but a single step, and for one of these two men, a victory tonight marks their first step towards ... well, who the hell knows, really. As long as someone gets kicked or punched in the face hard and often, I reckon we're all going to be winners when these two fellas square off.

Teymur comes out to some sexy European soft rock. Vannata out to some generic rapping stuff. And if Dominick Cruz ain't bullshitting us, Vannata might just be the only fighter in MMA history to list "BMX" as a discipline.

Vannata looks way too much like Ed Norton in American History X for it to be a coincidence. And of course he would be the one wearing the WHITE trunks. Teymur with a front kick. Now he's throwing some leg kicks. Vannata with a spinning back fist attempt and Teymur tags him a good three or four times. VANNATTA WITH A FUCKING CARTWHEEL KICK. Teymur hurt bad, but he recovers. Teymur with a knee to the stomach and Lando has to put his mouthpiece back in. Head kick from Vannata and then a spinning kick to the body. Teymur with a body kick. Lando shoots for a takedown. Teymur right back up. Both men exchanging leg kicks. Teymur tagging his ass with knees and overhand shots. Vannata lands another cartwheel kick with a few seconds left in the round. Tough to pick, but I'd give it 10-9 to Vannata.

Round two. Low kicks from both men early. Lando with a body kick, but Teymur catches it. Lando almost lands a spinning kick to Teymur's head. Good combination exchange. Lando whiffs on another spinning kick. Teymur with a pair of nasty knees to the midsection. Lando catches Teymur's leg and fucking spin kicks him while he's still holding it. Both dudes land hard shots to the chin at the same time. Teymur bleeding under the eye now. Teymur with a takedown. Both men back up instantly. Lando lands a hard jab. Missed spinning kick from Vannata. Teymur with two hard knees and a hard ass jab to end the round. Another tough round to score, but I've got it 20-18 for Lando.

Round three. Lando still throwing spinning kicks. And Teymur - of course - responds with a knee to the stomach. HARD hit to the skull from Lando. Teymur with an inside leg kick. Clinch against the cage, with Teymur throwing knees. Lando with more low kicks. Teymur with a takedown. Teymur tags him with an elbow in the clinch. Teymur with another takedown. Both men clinching against the cage. Lando staggers him with a hard jab. Teymur with a knee to the stomach. Lando whiffs on a high kick. NASTY combo from Teymur and ANOTHER takedown. Some big shots late, but nothing to knock other men out. I give that round to Teymur, but on my scorecard, it's 29-28 Lando ... although I can certainly see the judges scoring it the other way around.

Well, it's 30-27 across the board for Teymur. It's hard to see how he won that first round, but whatever. In the post-fight interview, he thanks Jesus and asks Dana White for "50 Gs." Then he says something in his native tongue, and kisses Joe's microphone. Eww, germs and shit.

Hey, Luke Rockhold and Nate Diaz is in the house. And we reflect back on UFC 205, which means our main event of the evening is officially drawing nigh.

WELTERWEIGHT CHAMPIONSHIP BOUT

Tyron Woodley (16-3-1-0) vs. Stephen Thompson (13-1-1-0)

Alright, this one here is a re-do of the co-main event of UFC 205 - you know, the fight that's more famous for Bruce Buffer reading the wrong scorecard than the fight itself. While that one was an entertaining bout, for a fight that ended in a majority draw, it really wasn't all that competitive. Indeed, current strap holder Tyron Woodley had challenger Stephen Thompson under his thumb pretty much the entire fight, and he got awfully close to putting "Wonderboy" (yes, he did name himself after the old Sega Master System series) down and out for good several times. Of course, the whole reason we're doing the rematch to begin with (other than the fact there really isn't anyone else in the division available right now that's anywhere close to being a PPV draw) is because - and you've got to give this kid some serious credit here - that Thompson chap absolutely refused to die, absorbing an absolutely absurd number of near-match-ending blows without keeling over, and even putting up a noble (albeit fruitless) comeback-for-the-ages attempt in round five. The plot couldn't be any simpler here, kids. Will fight two play out like a carbon copy of the first fight - with Woodley negating Thompson's ranged strikes and carving him up with quick and heavy shots up close, followed up with a steady diet of ground and pound - or has Thompson watched enough tape and spent enough time on the mat to find up a way to exploit Woodley's standing vulnerabilities in the clinch and less than stellar takedown defense? That's why we have fights in the cage, my friends, as opposed to just gawping at them on paper.

Yes, Thompson does indeed come out to "Wonder Boy" by Tenacious D. Woodley comes out to some rap music. Yeah, a big shocker there, I know. Oh, and this fight is sponsored by Iron Fist, just so you know. Thompson gets a pretty good number of cheers during the fighter intros. Woodley gets just as much applause, if not a little bit more.

Thompson is the favorite in this fight, per Anik. Wonder Boy with a front leg side kick. Head kick from Thompson. And another one. Fans booing the inaction. Woodley with a high kick that misses by a mile. Thompson staggers him with a combo, then he slides right back on out. Woodley with a shitty leg kick. Virtually nothing going on in the last 15 seconds. 10-9 for Thompson, no question.

Round two. Thompson with leg kicks early. A total reversal of the first round, with Woodley now the one pressing Thompson against the cage. OK, and as soon as I type that, they change positions. Holy shit, these two are doing everything possible to not make contact. It's not quite Severn/Shamrock, but it's definitely bad. Woodley gets a quick flurry, and that's literally the first offensive display we've seen in this round. Wonder Boy bleeding a little. Thompson with a kick to the face. It's a 7-7 tie in significant strikes. Nothing happening in the waning seconds but a crappy kick to the midsection from Thompson. The fans are shitting all over this thing and it is glorious.

Round three. Thompson with a leg kick. Woodley shoots for a single leg and he's bullying Thompson against the cage. And now he gets the takedown. Woodley landing some punches on the ground. Woodley landing a million billion shots to the midsection. Thompson up, and we're clinching against the cage. Thompson with a jab to the chest. Thompson whiffs on a head kick. Good jabs from Wonder Boy. Woodley with a good right hand jab. Thompson with a flurry, but nothing connecting. He gets a big left hook as the round ends. 29-28, Thompson, in my book.

Round four. Woodley with a good jab. Woodley leads on head strikes, 13-7. Spinning head kick from Thompson. Another high kick from Thompson. Cruz loses all credibility as a commentator when he says this fight is playing out just like the first one. Woodley with a solid left hand. Thompson with a head kick. Woodley hits nothing but air as the bell sounds. 39-27 for Thompson - Woodley is going to HAVE to finish Wonder Boy to keep the belt.

Round five. Woodley coming out hard, trying to chase Wonder Boy down. The fans are chanting "fight! fight!" and it is damned hilarious. Nobody is landing anything. Two and a half minutes in and ain't Jack Shit happened. Thompson with a head kick. Two minutes left. Woodley with a jab to the chest. Thompson with a leg kick. One minute to go. WOODLEY EXPLODES AND HE HITS THOMPSON A THOUSAND TIMES. Woodley comes *this close* to finishing Thompson, but it just ain't enough to seal the deal. Woodley's round, for sure, but I have it 48-47 for Thompson overall.

And here's the official decision. 48-47 Woodley; 47-47; and 48-47 ... for Woodley.

Woodley booed heavily when he gets interviewed. Joe Rogan said it was an excellent fight, which means he has to be high as hell right now. Thompson said he's going to live to fight another day and the fans boo the shit out of him. Woodley poses for a post-fight photo with his mama and - mercifully - that's all she wrote, folks.

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The Nintendo Switch Sucks And I Hope It Bankrupts The Company

Why the Big N's latest hardware is destined to be a colossal failure ... and why this time, the company may never recover from the financial disaster.

By: Jimbo X
JimboXAmerican@gmail.com
@Jimbo___X

Considering my far from secretive love of all things Sega, it would be rather easy to write off all my musings as the rantings and ravings of a biased fanboy whenever I criticize (well, more like condemn) Nintendo. 

But the fact of the matter? When it comes to just how badly the Big N is fucking up nowadays, you can't say I didn't warn you (raise your hand if you predicted the abysmal hardware failure of the Wii U back in 2012!)

The thing is, Nintendo fans are the Bernie Sanders supporters of the video game world (I used to use the Ron Paul analogy, but despite the divergent political comparison points, the simile still works.) For starters, since all they ever do is circle jerk each other, they never, ever leave their little fanboy enclave, so they totally overstate just how many like-minded dildos and dweebs there are in the world like them. Secondly, they're still acting like Mario and Zelda are totally untouchable platinum pillars of interactive entertainment, when in reality those series have been stuck in tailspin mode for at least a decade. They're literally the only people out there that still vaunt and value archaic franchises like Metroid and Mario Kart and have actually convinced themselves that everybody outside the Nintendo cum bubble is secretly envious and revere their legacy games when in reality, don't nobody anywhere give a shit about Animal Crossing or Star Fox no more.  The only people who think Nintendo is still relevant in this, the post iPhone and iPad era, are the clueless, delusional Nintendo nuthuggers who have tricked their brains into accepting underwhelming crap like Splatoon and Super Mario Maker as alleged "AAA titles." For fuck's sake, Nintendo didn't even reap the bulk of the profits from the one successful thing they've done since the Wii came out ... clearly, this is a digital empire in decline if there ever was one. (And for those of you who want to give me a lecture about the "success" of the 3DS, just remember - the original PSP still has it beat by a good 15 million sales.)

So, Nintendo - as a company, a brand name, and a developer of video games - is pretty much the multimedia equivalent of everybody's favorite senile, 70-something communist from New Hampshire. Nothing either of them propose would work, they don't know a goddamn thing about how mainstream Americans think and both are depressingly stuck in the past, hopelessly clinging onto their gilded age accomplishments like the triumphs of 1994 mean anything to anybody except their most rabid of autistic cult members. 

Or, to put it another way - Nintendo, much like the prospects of a Bernie Sanders presidency, is doomed. 

Yeah, everybody keeps telling me the same old tired shit about Nintendo having so much money in cash reserves so they'll never go out of business (although that allegedly astronomical amount - $4.6 billion as of early last year - doesn't sound nearly as safe and secure when you realize all it took was one economic downturn to make a $640 billion dollar company like Lehman Brothers vanish overnight) but let's cut the bullshit, why don't we? The Big N expected to sell 100 million Wii-U units, but they could barely move 13 million. Just six months into 2016, they were reportig operating losses of nearly $400 million. And the same year, Nintendo saw its stocks plunge to their lowest levels since 1990.

This is a company in deep, deep dookie. And after their most embarrassing commercial fuck-up since the Virtual Boy, how did they respond? By literally sinking all their money into the VERY SAME disaster of a consumer product that put them in the hole to begin with. 

Mark my words, kids: the Nintendo Switch is going to be an even bigger commercial dud than the Wii U. The entire gimmick is fucking stupid, the third party support - again - isn't going to be there (why play watered down versions of Call of Duty and Madden when you can play the REAL versions of those games on a REAL console in your living room?) and the first party games are all going to be major, major disappointments. Nowhere is the substandard prospects of this ill, ill-conceived boondoggle of a video game machine apparent than its launch line-up: you know, the one with a grand total of six retail games. 

Hoo-boy, what do we have here? Another Zelda game sure to disappoint (although all of the hardcore Nin-tards will convince themselves it's better than Ocarina of Time, only to come out 10 years later and refer to it as a piece of over-hyped shit like Twilight Princess), a fucking Bomberman game that has the exact same gameplay as you'd find on a TurboGrafx-16 game released 25 years ago, a glorified re-do of a homebrew game (whose overrated inspiration sucked out loud), a fucking Skylanders game, some stupid dancing title and a glorified tech demo. But hey, what about all of these back-up launch titles, like a barely spruced up re-release of Mario Kart, a Puyo Puyo variation on Tetris, a crappy first person cartoon boxing game that won't work and all those lite-RPGs you could probably run on a PS Vita with no problem? Holy shit, we'll be playing those games for decades to come, no doubt. 

And don't give me none of that crap about how this time - for real, ya'll - Electronic Arts and Bioware and Square-Enix and Atlus are going to finally come through and deliver AAA titles for the platform. Nintendo has fucked over every company that's made anything halfway worth a damn on their systems since the Gamecube, and they sure as shit aren't going to start bringing da' muthafuckin' ruckus for a piece of hardware whose big selling point is you take the sides off of it and use it as a really clunky tablet.

Seriously, am I the only person who sees the glorious structural design problem there? This thing is engineered so clumsily, it's pretty much a lock to be the Edsel of video game systems. People, by nature, are fumbling sorts. Just how many people out there do you think are going to break apart their machine to play it on the go, only to misplace their essential controller pieces and make the whole goddamn kit and caboodle totally worthless? Forget people swinging their Wii-motes into their TV sets ... that little design oversight is going to make Nintendo a laughingstock for years and years.

The stunning visuals in Super Mario meets Katamari Damacy truly are some of the best to ever appear on the Gamecube!

The Switch is one of those things like "New Coke," that in hindsight, can't be seen as anything other than a gargantuan mistake - the kind where you can't help but wonder how in the world the people responsible for the blunder couldn't have realized what they were doing was an all-time commercial fuck-up from the outset. It's hard to believe a company with so many veteran, video game businessmen agreed to double down on Nintendo's greatest marketing snafu in 20 years (or why Nintendo loyalists think the thing would've been a success at all), but therein lies some pivotal business wisdom we can all benefit from. 

Since we're talking about a video game company fucking up, I suppose it's only fitting that I use another video game analogy to dissect the great big error Nintendo has committed in the wake of the DS. You kids ever play Treasure's Advance Guardian Heroes on the GBA? Well, you should, not only because it is a kick-ass beat-em-up, but because it has this thing called "devil mode" in it. Now, what in the world is "devil mode," you may be wondering? Well, it's this feature in the game where - rather than start the game all over again - you can literally sell your soul to Satan and become invincible for about five minutes. Naturally, this sounds like a pretty awesome deal - you come across a really hard-ass boss you can't beat, he keeps killing your ass so you more or less turn on the no-kill Game Genie cheat and fuck him up something wicked. The catch - and you knew there was a catch somewhere - is that once your five minutes of "devil mode" invincibility are up, your character just keels over, Lucifer claims your soul for all eternity and it's game over.

Well, in regards to Nintendo, the Wii was their corporate "devil mode," so to speak. By catering - if not flat out pandering - to the casual non-gaming sphere, they certainly opened the floodgate for cheaper, shoddier games to proliferate en masse. Now, had the softcore, women and children-oriented offerings on the Wii and DS not been as successful, perhaps the first wave of iPhone games - shit like Fruit Ninja and Words With Friends and especially Angry Birds - wouldn't have been as popular or lucrative. By focusing on mass appeal shitware games, Nintendo inadvertently drove the dagger through their own hearts, since it was only a matter of time before some other hardware merchant was to come around and do casual gaming even better. 

The funny thing is, what killed Nintendo's post-Wii success wasn't the expected rivals Sony or Microsoft, but Apple and Google. The rise of iPhone and iPad gaming naturally meant a boon for developers of low-power, minimal gameplay products, and since the adoption rate of smart phones and tablets is way higher than any proprietary gaming system, of course all of the shovelware casual game merchants would abandon the Wii/3DS platform for the far more lucrative iOS and Droid markets. The casual gaming market Nintendo abandoned the hardcore for with the Wii, Wii-U and 3DS - women and kids and old fucks - have since moved on to the new portables of gaming, which, in addition to delivering them precisely the kind of low-intensity, low-challenge games they enjoy, also offer them a litany of other social and business applications that "dedicated" video game platforms just can't supply. And oh yeah - it fits in their pants pocket and they can take it with them literally everywhere they go.

Even Ray Charles can see why the Switch is such a horribly stupid idea, and he's dead. You see, Nintendo thinks people play iPhone and iPad games because they are mobile and usually incorporate some sort of delayed WiFi multiplayer element - hence, this horrible, horrible console unveiling video that shows millennials breaking out the controllers for NBA 2K pick-up games at basketball courts and carrying their machines over to rooftop keggers to play Mario Kart. No, you pedophile-supporting, literal hooker hiring 'tards, people enjoy smart phone games because they're on the machines they spend eight-to-nine-hours a day looking at already. They don't absorb themselves into the games for hours on end like dedicated Madden or Elder Scrolls or Forza players, they just need quick and easy hits of instant virtual gratification to ward of the daily rigors of modern ennui. You can play a game for ten minutes, hop off, check Facebook, and go back to cooking dinner or taking a shit or watching Grey's Anatomy or whatever else you do with your life. Whereas commercial console gaming is all about software commitment, the new-wave mobile games succeed by extolling themselves as nothing more than glorified, low-quality time killers. So, in short, the sort of deep, nuanced, intricate gameplay Nintendo used to be known for back in the NES and SNES days is quite literally incompatible with the iPad-era definition of portable gaming.

Yeah, you won't be seeing this happening in public. Ever.

And on the issue of multiplayer gaming, I've never in my life seen a bunch of smart phone wielding neer-do-wells gathered in a physical space to enjoy any kind of competitive  smart phone/tablet game. Pokemon GO is an outlier, but again, that's already proven itself to be a short-term (dare I say it, devil-mode-esque?) fad that Nintendo barely profited from. The likelihood of Nintendo replicating that success with the Switch is practically zero, since the whole Pokemon GO craze hinged on the fact that the hardware adoption rate to play the game was already high ... if not culturally ubiquitous. Unless Nintendo plans on going cross-platform - which means partnering with Apple and Google, something they almost assuredly would never do under their current leadership structure - there is no way in hell the company can do anything even remotely comparable to Pokemon GO. 

That, and no one has really explained how the Switch improves upon the atrocious Wii-U dedicated console/portable hybrid concept. Indeed, if anything, the Switch represents an even worse variation on the concept, which has no successful analogue in any kind of electronics industry anywhere. Factor in the exorbitant $300 day one price tag ... plus the dearth of quality, exclusive games throughout the hardware's first year on the market ... and you have all the makings of an all-time legendary product failure staring directly at you.

There might be some good games released on the Switch. That one Mario game that has him running around in Grand Theft Auto and appropriating Hispanic Day of the Dead culture at least looks fairly fun, and I've been yearning for Syberia III for almost as long as I've been yearning for Shenmue III (except, you know, with not as much enthusiasm.) And first person Super Street Fighter II is the kind of idea so incredibly stupid, you can't help but appreciate the absurdity of its existence. But the rest of the setlist, to put it mildly, flat out swallows. Minecraft variations and re-releases of years-old Disgaea games and generation-behind ports of Skyrim and Dragon Quest and shitty lite-strategy games like Has-Been Heroes and watered down minimal upgrades of Fire Emblem and BlazBlue? For every halfway decent-looking game like Xenoblade Chronicles 2 you're going to get three dozen turds like Cube Life and Farming Simulator and Stardew Valley. The ratio of great to shit games is likely to be even higher than the ratio of the Wii, and somehow, the third-party support - where are you, E.A. and Rockstar? - is even more scant than on the Wii-U. 

Whether or not the Switch will be a marketing failure isn't even a question anymore. The real question is just how big of a product dud this stupid fucking thing is going to be, and if I were a betting man, I'd venture to guess this thing won't even crack 10 million lifetime unit sales. Hell, it may not even eclipse the lifetime sales of the Dreamcast, which may indeed be the most fitting fate imaginable for the Big N. 

At least Sega went down with a dedication to hardcore, innovative and quality games, while Nintendo's hardware waterloo will forever be associated with a crappily-designed, under-powered retread of a console glutted with god-awful ports, shovelware and disappointing first party releases. 

Sega failed, but at least they failed with their heads hung high. With the disaster-in-waiting known as the Switch, however, Nintendo is destined to for a commercial manufacturing demise not unlike the one experienced by their former arch-rival ... only they're planning on going out with their eyeballs swollen shut and their tongues splayed out over the floor.

From the undisputed kings of video gaming to a cash-hemorrhaging, woefully out of touch market-blinded laughingstock. One day, the history books will reflect on the launch of the Switch as the beginning of the terminal cancer that eventually upended the Nintendo empire.

Alas, I wouldn't shed too many tears, Nintards. After all, theirs is a gruesome demise they wholeheartedly brought upon themselves.

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My 28 Favorite Fictitious Black People

A heartfelt celebration of the greatest dark-skinned people who never actually existed. 

By: Jimbo X
JimboXAmerican@gmail.com
@Jimbo___X

Every February, just about every website out there not operated by neo-Nazis scrambles to put together some kind of cloying "Black History Month" retrospective. Even the nichest of blogs try to cobble together something that highlights the impact/significance of black individuals on whatever random bullshit they cover, even when there's hardly any racial connections to work with whatsoever. Case in point? This dude who year in, year out, desperately tries to tack on a "Black History Month" angle to anime culture. 

Well, we here at The Internet Is In America are far, far beyond such half-hearted, half-assed displays of cowardly, politically-correct tokenism. By golly, if we're going to celebrate black people, we're going to go all out and celebrate black people as if we actually were black people (you know, because black people are known for being among the most festive of ethnic groups.) But why draw up yet another boring ass listicle highlighting why Martin Luther King, Jr. was literally better than Jesus and reminding people that a black dude invented peanut butter (even though some French Canadian fruit already had a patent on it?) Malcolm X and Booker T. Washington already get enough acclaim from us as it is, so howzabout we focus on that oh-so unsung, forgotten brotherhood of brothas' who exist solely in the realm of fiction?

If you ask us, make-believe black people deserve far more recognition, especially in this bitterly divided political climate. Sure, sure, the following pioneering black folks may not have corporeally impacted the world around us, but they sure as shit made an impression on ALL of our collective pop cultural upbringings. If blackness were a brand, consider the following 28 individuals to be among the best spokesmen the world of entertainment could ever hoist upon us - the melanin-challenged and the melanin-unchallenged, alike.  

So here's to you, unheralded fictitious black characters - this is a token of appreciation long overdue for both you and your peoples. 

01. Waldo Faldo (Family Matters) 

I've said it time and time again; Waldo Faldo was the absolute best thing about Family Matters, and considering this was a show that has an evil ventriloquist doll as a recurring character and people using the teleport pod from The Fly to turn into Bruce Lee clones so they can beat up drug runners easier, trust me, that's saying something. Give actor Shawn Harrison (who hasn't really done much of anything since the show got cancelled) all the credit in the world, because he absolutely killed it playing the Bizarro retard to Steve Urkel's boy genius Lex Luthor. It's hard to pick just one memorable Waldo moment from the show, so instead, I'll just recount my two favorite Waldo-isms: the time he took Laura to go see JFK (pronouncing it as "jif-kuh") and when after a bully told Steve to "put his money where his mouth is," he quickly interjected "don't do it, Steve, money's dirty!"

02. Arnold Drummond (Diff'rent Strokes) 

Diff'rent Strokes might just be my favorite sitcom ever, and a lot of that has to do with the little ball of delightfulness that was Arnold Drummond. Played by the greatest black midget actor of all-time (fuck you Emmanuel Lewis) - the inimitable Gary Coleman, who I think was about 40-or-something at the time the show was on - the character brought such an admirable air of pluckiness to the oft-heavy handed program, offering much-needed naivety and comedic relief whenever his best friend got molested down at the bike shop or his sister got abducted and sexually tortured by a guy who said he was an astronaut. Pretty much EVERY episode of Diff'rent Strokes holds up incredibly well today, making it one of the few shows from the 1980s that's not only watchable, but watchable in a non-smarmy, post-ironic way. And you can attribute most of the show's staying power to one thing, and one thing only - our adorable little buddy Arnold.

03. Demon (Friday the 13th: A New Beginning) 

Demon is my favorite victim in the entire F13 canon and don't nobody else even come close. Portrayed by Miguel A. Nunez, Jr. - yes, the same guy who played Spider in Return of the Living Dead, Dee Jay in the live-action Street Fighter movie and was the titular character in Juwanna Mann - Demon is a dude who lives in a trailer with a refrigerator filled with enchiladas, pizza and eggrolls who says "you're gonna' get it, bitch" to his girlfriend while she rocks him back and forth in a tin outhouse. Of course, this being a Jason movie and all, things don't exactly end well for him after he smokes weed and takes a shit will singing "ooo, baby" over and over again. Long story short? Let's just say the kind of penetration he gets prolly wasn't the kind of penetration he wanted.

04. Magneto Jones (Hamburger: The Motion Picture) 

Holy shit, if you've never seen Hamburger, you need to click out of this nonsense, mosey on over to YouTube and watch it right freakin' now. There are literally 9,000 things to love about this movie - from the scene where an old woman tells a drive-thru speaker "fuck off, pickle" to the part where Dick Butkus (yes, that Dick Butkus) calls a black cop "pecker cheese" and tells him to go pick up his check down at the welfare office to the grand finale where two dozen 400 pound-plus fast food patrons get diarrhea simultaneously. Alas, even in a movie jammed pack with highlights, the absolute best thing about Hamburger has to be Chip McAllister's performance as Magneto Jones, a Jermaine Jackson wannabe who's getting a free edumacation at Hamburger U just so the parent company won't get hit with a civil rights suit. Sure, he spends most of the movie handcuffed and kept in lockdown, but at least they let him out of bondage long enough to participate in this beautiful dialogue exchange:

Fred Domino: "All right, who ordered 60 Double Buster Burgers?"

Magneto Jones: "That fat motherfucker right there. That fat motherfucker right there. Them two giggling twin motherfuckers right there. And that skinny walnut headed motherfucker right there ordered 72."

And if you don't laugh your ass of when he receives a lifetime achievement award the minute he earns his diploma, you sir or madam, are not fit to live in our society.

05. DJ Professor K (Jet Grind Radio) 

The mastermind of the single greatest soundtrack in the history of video gaming (well, in-universe, anyway.) Kinda' sorta representing the post-corporate-apocalypse-takeover version of Samuel L. Jackson's character in Do The Right Thing, DJ Professor K operates the titular Jet Set Radio pirate station, which - in addition to slinging' the dopest electro-funk, J-Pop and indie hip-hop you'll find anywhere - also gives you crucial tips and info on overthrowing the man in your rocket-powered rollerblades. Considering how much I love both Jet Grind Radio and Jet Set Radio Future, I suppose you only imagine my exuberant joy when my girlfriend flipped on How To Get Away With Murder and the fucking detective WAS the same guy that used to scream "Rapid 99, gotta' FLAG!" on my Xbox. 

06. Roland Kincaid (A Nightmare on Elm Street 3, 4) 

Kincaid is EASILY the best thing about the Elm Street movies, and that includes Robert Englund. Hell, if New Line Cinema had any sense, they would've had Kincaid break Freddy K in half Bane-style in the first 10 minutes of part 4 and the rest of the franchise just woulda' been him walking around all day calling people "motherfuckers" and telling him how bad he's gonna' whup their asses for trivial offenses. Ken Sagoes - far and away the greatest alumni of Kennesaw State University, and it's not even close - also gets bonus points for portraying yet another iconic black character, Darryl on the short-lived What's Happening Now!

07. Carl Carlson (The Simpsons)

You know, Carl Carlson may in fact be the most flattering depiction of the working class black man in any realm of fiction. Totally devoid of the hackneyed, desperate black mannerisms most African-American stock characters are saddled with, Carl actually comes off as a fairly relatable and respectable blue collar worker (despite canonically holding an advanced degree in nuclear physics) who is far more professional than any of his white coworkers. And if geographical diversity is one of those things you're keen on, the character may indeed be the only pop culture character in history ever described as "African-Icelandic."

08. Clubber Lang (Rocky III)

Forget Apollo Creed, forget Ivan Drago and forget Tommy "Machine" Gunn - the best Rocky "villain" has always been James "Clubber" Lang. Unforgettably portrayed by Mr. T - who is basically just playing a slightly more jazzed up version of B.A. Baracus - Lang actually had a pretty convincing argument for hating Rocky ... because the media was showering him with praise for being "The Great White Hope" and he kept ducking him, knowing he was the far better boxer. Sure, threatening to rape Rocky's wife at a press conference was a pretty bold move, but hey, it DID get him that championship bout, didn't it? That it took an ass whupping from Hulk Hogan and Rocky literally learning how to fight black to get the belt back shows you just how daunting a rogue this Lang fellow really is. 

09. New Jack (ECW Wrestling)

After making his debut in Smoky Mountain Wrestling - where he tried to win matches by "affirmative action" (that being, a win via two-count) and feuded with a guy named "The Dirty White Boy" - one Jerome Young packed his bags to Philadelphia, where he was soon transformed into a "singles" 'rassler whose entire shtick revolved around hitting people with staplers, cookie sheets and old VCR units while Dr. Dre and Ice Cube blared over the P.A. system for the duration of the bout. His career highlights include almost murdering a teenager before a live audience, LITERALLY trying to kill another wrestler by trying to impale him on a ringpost, getting arrested for stabbing a dude FOR REAL during a match and this one time he legit  beat the shit out of an old dude with a baseball bat while disgruntled Caucasian fans kept calling him a "nigger." 

10. Tom Johnson (Shenmue)

Granted, a Jamaican hot dog vendor in rural Japan in the late 1980s may sound a little, uh, unlikely, but there's no denying the affable food truck owner isn't one of the most memorable characters from the Dreamcast classic. After all - the dude did let us borrow his ghetto blaster to play flowery Japanese pop music and taught us how to spin kick glass beer bottles, didn't he?

11. Freddy "Rerun" Stubbs (What's Happening!!)

You know how they talk about actors having their lives ruined by one acting role sometimes? Well, Fred Berry's life was totally destroyed by What's Happening!! and its less heralded late 1980s sequel What's Happening Now!! Until the day he died in 2003, he had to live in the inescapable shadow of "Rerun," the rotund, red beret sportin', hamburger-shirt wearing comedic fat-ass who ran around the hood yelling "hey, Hey, HEY!" and getting arrested for trying to bootleg Doobie Bros. concerts. But come on, was it really that bad of a hand in life if it produced one of the better black family sitcoms of the late 1970s? Eh - probably not, but at least he turned out better than Todd Bridges, I suppose. 

12. Grandma Turner (Fight For Your Life)

The only female African-American to make the countdown, but trust me, she fucking earned it. Longtime The Internet Is In America readers should already know plenty about the immortal blaxploitation/home invasion classic Fight For Your Life, and in a film LOADED with memorable moments, she might very well be responsible for the single best part of the entire movie. Say it loud and say it proud, kids: "don't move or I'll blow your motherfuckin' balls off!"

13. Jericho Jackson (Action Jackson)

Think, for a moment, just how incredible of a career Carl Weathers has had. What would certainly be the career highlights of a good 99.8 percent of the rest of the actors out there - roles like Dreamer Tatum in Semi-Tough - have all but been forgotten because of his even better performances in movies like Predator. Alas, as good as his portrayal of Apollo Creed may have been - and it's the epitome of fuckin' timeless already - the absolute zenith of Weathers' career HAS to be his performance as the eponymous Action Jackson in 1988. I mean, goddamn ... just LOOK at the trailer! There's no way a movie starring Coach as the evil antagonist should be this awesome, but trust me - it is. 

14. Tommy Gibbs (Hell Up In Harlem)

Picking my favorite Fred Williamson role is sorta' like asking me to pick my favorite testicle. Honestly, I'm fond of all of 'em, but if I HAD to save just one Williamson flick from vanishing off the face of the Earth, it would have to be Hell Up In Harlem. Why? Because it has scenes in which protagonist Tommy Gibbs does all of the following:

a.) he hangs an Italian mobster in a noose and says "I'm about to send you to wop heaven"

b.) he forces another Italian mobster to eat soul food at gunpoint

c.) he tells a preacher's daughter "whenever you get tired of talking to the Lord, come find me" and, perhaps most hilarious of all ... 

d.) while being pursued by the mob, he literally stops dead in his tracks so he can impale a dude at the beach laying on a confederate flag towel, even though he had nothing to do with why Gibbs was being pursued and didn't actually do or say anything to him at all.

So yeah, I need to do a review of this one, like, ASAP. 

15. Griff (Married ... with Children)

Al Bundy is one of the greatest TV characters ever, but it seems to me his supporting cast doesn't get anywhere near the appreciation they deserve. Griff was definitely one of the show's more understated characters, a fellow fatty-hating shoe salesman who, in many ways, represented an even better comedic foil than Jefferson D'arcy. And holy hell, could that guy sing, too!

16. FUCKIN' Dolemite!

As with Fred Williamson, I'm tempted to just include every single character Rudy Ray Moore ever portrayed. Shit, if February had 30 days in it, I prolly would have gone on ahead and done stand-alone entries for The Disco Godfather and Petey Wheatstraw. Alas, whenever you hear the name "Rudy Ray," the first thing that SHOULD come to mind, of course, is motherfuckin' DOLEMITE, the revenge-obsessed, impromptu crude couplet-forming pimp who fought a drug runner in cahoots with city hall in his first movie and then ran around slapping fat racist sheriffs with his pimp cane in the sequel. Yeah, Dolemite has been in some subsequent sequels and spin-offs, but really, you're way better off just watching The Human Tornado five times a day. I mean, just generally, in life. 

17.2 Cold Scoprio (WCW Wrestling)

Although 2 Cold wrestled in all three major U.S. promotions throughout the 1990s, his most memorable work was definitely at the beginning of his career in WCW. Shit, who could forget that time he unveiled his Tumbleweed finisher at Clash of the Champions, or that AWESOME back-and-forth match he had against Barry Windham that, even now, is pretty much the best "underdog almost wins it" bout ever? Yeah, he had some decent bouts in ECW, but don't even bother with all that Flash Funk nonsense in the WWF. Also: 2 Cold is single-handedly responsible for Arn Anderson being alive right now (as well as Sid Vicious not serving a life sentence for homicide.) 

18. Black Manta (D.C. Comics)

I think my favorite thing about Black Manta (besides the fact that he breaks a whole bunch of misconceptions about the black community and buoyancy by being an aquatic-themed African-American villain) is that D.C. just arbitrarily decided he should be black one day. The character had been around for 25 years before they decided to give him a proper backstory, and holy shit, did they ever - by making him a Baltimore youth kidnapped and sexually assaulted by pirates who hates Aquaman simply because he didn't rescue him back when he was eight. And if you're thinking to yourself, "you know, there's no way anybody can come up with an even worse way to retcon his origin story" - they turned around and made him an autistic kid with an affinity for cold water whose beef with Aquaman is derived solely from his desire to hold the nonexistent mantle of "Ocean Master."

19. Morris FUCKIN' DAY!

Yeah, there were some good songs in there (not to mention it was hilarious as fuck watching Prince try to act tough) but the absolute best thing about Purple Rain HAD to be Morris Day. The part where he walks by Prince's dressing room right after his dad attempts suicide, then walks backwards just to ask him "how's the family?" before shucking and jiving his way out of the building is pretty much the consensus pick for funniest dick move ever in the history of anything. However, Morris probably put in an even BETTER heel performance in Graffiti Bridge, complete with one of the greatest moments in the history of the motion picture - the infamous "you know, this plant looks kinda' ... thirsty" scene.

20. Ned Tiese (Brotherhood of Death)

Brotherhood of Death is actually one of the better "serious" blaxploitation movies of the late 1970s, but pretty much the only reason anybody remembers it is because its trailer - its glorious, glorious trailer - was included upfront on the VHS version of Faces of Death II. 'Tis a shame so few people have ever actually seen it, because it really is a well-made and entertaining little B-movie opus. And the only thing more hilarious than watching black vigilantes use an armored school bus to fight the Klan is when it suddenly dawns on you that the main character is played by the same dude who played Dudley's dad on Diff'rent Strokes.

21. Martel "Too Sweet" Gordon (Penitentiary)

Fuck Star Wars, the greatest movie trilogy ever HAS to be the trifecta of Penitentiary movies. You might be thinking to yourself, "old Jimbo, buddy, how exactly can you make a movie about the same character being wrongly imprisoned for a crime he didn't commit THREE TIMES and still make 'em entertaining?" Well, for starters, you make the entire franchise revolve around championship inmate boxing, which - as anyone who watched the great 2014 documentary Champs featuring Bernard Hopkins can attest to - actually exists. Secondly, you toss in a super eclectic cast of side characters, including but not limited to Mr. T and immortal WWF midget 'rassler the Haiti Kid portraying a coke-addicted butthole rapist who lives in the sewer. But most of all, you anchor the whole damn thing around one Martel "Too Sweet" Gordon - played with inimitable pizzazz by Leon Isaac Kennedy, who might as well be the Sir Laurence Oliver of blaxploitation movies - as he battles trumped up murder charges in the courtroom and both steroided up Ernie Hudson and a homosexual drug kingpin who makes Milo Yiannopoulos look like Brock Lesnar between the ropes. 

22. Papa Shango (WWF Wrestling)

There's never been a more terrifying/probably racist pro 'rassler than Papa Shango, and that's saying something when your competition also includes a fat black truck driver from Mississippi repackaged into a cannibal from Sudan with Lucky Charms marshmallows painted on his stomach. If you grew up watching WWF 'rasslin in the early 1990s, you no doubt have PLENTY of memories of this voodoo warrior, whether it was that time he set The Ultimate Warrior's boots on fire or made black sludge pour out of Mean Gene's sleeves on live television. Eventually, the suits at the WWF decided that showcasing a black man as a supernatural Haitian zombie prolly wasn't the most P.C. thing to do, so they did what any company looking to repair its image among minorities would do: the rebranded him as a street fighting thug with MMA skills and later, as an actual pimp.

23. "Black" Roper (Double Dragon)

There weren't a whole lot of black people on the NES, and even in the basketball and football games, they were usually more reddish-purple than any actual hue a black person has ever been. In that, the "black" Ropers from Double Dragon deserve some sort of mention for breaking the 8-bit color barrier. Sure, sure, they may have been nothing more than simple palette swaps of the "standard" Roper enemies, but hey - cultural representation has to start somewhere, even if it is in the form of barrel-throwin' ruffians. 

24. Kel Kimble (Keenan & Kel)

Let's end the argument right here and now - Kel was ALWAYS funnier than Keenan. Yeah, yeah, I know everybody remembers him from Good Burger, but the BEST incarnation of the character had to be the (slightly) more nuanced version featured on the mid-'90s sitcom Keenan & Kel - and the fact that he's the only black person I've ever heard of that prefers orange soda to the purple stuff is reason alone to include him on the countdown.

25. Russ Tyler (The Mighty Ducks 2, 3)

But, we will give Keenan his proper, dap, too. Perhaps noting that the original Mighty Ducks movie was - how to put it - whiter than a mayonnaise blizzard, the suits at Disney reckoned they needed to incorporate an African-American angle into their hockey comedy franchise. The end result? A scene where a bunch of inner city L.A. black kids are using a basketball court for a rousing game of roller hockey set to a song with the lyrics "getting' bent and bent and as a I puff on a dankt" and "uh oh, I crave skin, rip shit, find a honey to dip it in" with our main man Russ Tyler introducing his lethal "knuckle puck" technique ... which, of course, is illegal as fuck in real hockey, but seeing as how there's a redneck who literally "lassos" an opposing player in the movie's climactic championship game, it's not even the stupidest thing in the flick to complain about.

26. Peter (Dawn of the Dead)

While Night of the Living Dead gets all the credit for being the first horror film to (however inadvertently) drudge up the topic of racism, I think we can all agree that the black hero in Dawn of the Dead was way more memorable and likable - yes, even if he did look way too much like O.J. Simpson for my comfort. He's really the only character in the movie that seems to have his shit together, and he gives us the best line of the entire flick (you know, that whole spiel about "when there's no more room in hell, the dead will walk the earth.") Also, that look he gives that one bitch early on in the movie when she asks him if he has "real brothers or street brothers" is pretty much the funniest thing ever. 

27. Skeeter Valentine (Doug)

OK, so technically, Skeeter is more turquoise than chocolate, but goddammit, those mannerisms were straight up Afro-American. Even as a kid I knew that Doug's best pal was supposed to be black, even if the show took place in a world where purple and orange skinned motherfuckers were everywhere. And hey, don't accuse me of seeing things that aren't actually there - the creator of the show recently came out and said Mr. Valentine was indeed canonically a negro. 

28. Shaun King (The New York Daily News)

And last but not least, we have the greatest cultural satirist of our day, Mr. Shaun King. Shaun here has delighted readers coast-to-coast with his hilarious post-post-postmodern minstrel show, with only the absolute dimmest of the dim not picking up the surely intended comedy of a man whiter than lite mayo proclaiming himself a leader of the Black Lives Matter movement. Not since the heyday of Amos 'n' Andy has a white performer done so much for the art of racial imitation, and not since the heyday of Andy Kaufman have we seen anyone so committed to living out a public charade that anybody with two brain cells to rub together can figure out is a complete and utter ruse. There's no doubt about it - when it comes to fictitious black people, Shaun King is both our society and our era's literal poster boy, and to think anything less of him, naturally, is plumb preposterous.

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