Illustration by Greg Franklin

Who in the flaming fuck is Aaron Ekhart? Is he the guy with the really big dick on that HBO show Hung? No? Are you sure? He sure looks like that guy. Well if he ain’t that guy, how in the hell did he get billed over Jennifer Aniston in the latest romantic comedy? I mean Anniston’s the most famous woman in the whole god damned world. In every friggin’ supermarket aisle, there she is, staring at me plaintively. We hear who she’s broken up with. Who she’s back together with. Who she longs for. Now that’s a god damned star folks! But somehow this Aaron Ekhart guy who I’ve barely heard of, who may or may not even have a big dick, is billed above her in a chick flick for Christ’s sake – Anniston’s wheel house if ever there was one. If Joan Crawford were around today, she’d rip off Aaron Eckhart’s head and shit down his throat before he’d get top billing over her. Then ol’ Joan would beat Universal studio cheif Ron Meyer with a wire hanger and stuff raw beef down his throat until he sobbed like a little girl.

Hollywood women of today sure are slipping. Bette Davis went to the mat with no less a star than Errol Flynn to keep him from getting top billing in The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (1939). And Errol Flynn was a real god damned movie star too. Robin Hood. Captain Blood. He was a womanizing, boozing, mustachioed, jailbait seducing junkie par excellence but Bette was going to drive one of her spiked heels through that matinee idol face of his and then body slam Jack Warner on a concrete floor covered in thumbtacks before she’d let his name go above hers in those credits.

I first noticed that a gal couldn’t catch a break when Chris O’Donnell got billed above Drew Barrymore in Mad Love back in 1995. O’Donnell wasn’t even in his Batman flick yet (yes, I know Ekhart was in Dark Knight) but there he was billed above Drew Barrymore, who was far more famous than him in every way you could think of. She was in E.T. She had successfully fought juvenile alcoholism and had bounced back. She was on every talk show and on the cover of every magazine. She was a Barrymore for cryin’ out loud but she couldn’t get billed above a comparative nobody. I guess he’d been in Scent of a Woman but he sure wasn’t Al Pacino.

In the trailers for Vicky Christina Barcelona (2008), Javier Bardem gets billed above Scarlett Johansson AND Penelope Cruz. At least Bardem won an Oscar and all for No Country for Old Men 2007, but Bardem is just the latest Euro import. We get them every so often but Yves Montand didn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of getting billed above Marilyn Monroe in Let’s Make Love (1960). And in a slightly less Euro-tinged note, Frank Sinatra still had to play second fiddle to an aging Rita Hayworth in Pal Joey (1957) and Pal Joey was pretty much a Sinatra vehicle!

I’m beginning to wonder if the only way for Megan Fox to get top billing was for Diablo Cody to write a movie for her where she slaughters all of the male characters like sheep. I don’t care how dumb Fox may be or how talentless she is. Like Anniston, You can’t get away from her. She generates copy. She’s one of the biggest stars going but she will forever be relegated to second billing in any film also featuring that towering thespian Shia LeBouf. Hell, even Garbo would be billed beneath Shia LeBouf if she were making movies today.

Last year, they made The Women with Meg Ryan, Eva Mendes and Annette Bening. In this day and age of the devalued screen queen, it seemed daring to make a movie with no men in it whatsoever (not even a gay male shopping mentor). The problem was that The Women is a remake of a 1939 film with none other than Joan Crawford. Joan didn’t get top billing though. That went to Norma Shearer. I don’t know much about Shearer but she must have been one tough bitch to wrest the top spot from Crawford’s claws. That was one of the few times that anyone got one up on Joan. Clark Gable was able to get his name above hers in Strange Cargo (1940) and Lon Chaney, Sr. was able to pull off that feat in The Unknown (1925) when the actress was only 22. But John Wayne, John Garfield, Henry Fonda, Dana Andrews, Sterling Hayden and Jack Palance all fell before her ruthless determination. That’s a whole lotta’ nuts there folks, and Joan Crawford cracked each and every one of them.

I was beginning to think that Nicole Kidman may be one of the few actresses around today who can get billed above a male co-star but then I checked out her listing in IMDB. Next year she’s going to be in a movie called The Rabbit Hole but she’s second billed to that newly crowned king of Hollywood, Aaron Ekhart. Nicole, if you’re reading this, before that publicity campaign ramps up you have to ask yourself: “What would Joan Crawford do?”

Bob Calhoun is secure in his manhood but still felt the deep-down need to lace this essay with lots of profanity anyway. He is the author of the punk-wrestling memoir Beer, Blood and Cornmeal: Seven Years of Incredibly Strange Wrestling (ECW Press, 2008), which is available from Amazon.com.

Kimbo Slice, the standard bearer of “Ultimate Fighter 10: Heavyweights.”

FIGHT FANS: This is both a review and a wrap-up. There are spoilers

Kimbo Slice is the perfect representative of the latest season of the Spike TV reality show The Ultimate Fighter. He has the chiseled torso of a young athlete but the world-weary countenance of a man much older than his reported 35 years. If Slice, whose real name is Kevin Ferguson, were from theatrical pro wrestling instead of competitive martial arts, he’s be referred to derisively as a “back yarder.” His reputation has been earned through bare-knuckled brawls in Florida parking lots and boatyards. While his fights resemble something out of the Great Depression, the millions of YouTube views they have garnered place the brutality solidly in the 21st Century. For Slice, the chance to earn a UFC contract through the rigors of weekly reality show competition represent the rough-hewn street fighter’s last, best chance to compete legitimately at the top of his chosen profession.

With the tagline “Size Does Matter,” the UFC is hyping the tenth season of its testosterone-fueled cable hit around its collection of heavyweights, but maybe the show’s publicists should have added the rejoinder, “and so does experience.” In addition to the hard-living Slice, Season 10 sports three martial artists who have previously fought in the “Octagon” and four former NFL players. Since 2005, TUF (as the show is commonly called) has focused young up-and-comers looking to grapple their way out of whatever dusty burg they hail from. In contrast, Season 10’s combatants have the back-stories filled with triumphs, disappointments and declining options that only come from older men. While it’s doubtful that we’ll see any of these guys chasing chickens in back alleys, TUF’s current offering is designed to give the sport of mixed martial arts its Rocky Balboa story.

While this season of TUF may aim for something a little deeper than just the spectacle of heavy men with heavy fists bludgeoning each other behind a chain link fence, it’s still a reality show where 16 men are divided into two competing teams and then crammed into the most violent dorm-room living situation of all time. The men may be a little bit older this time around (and some of them are still in their 20s), but that only makes the egos bigger. Roy “Big Country” Nelson, a potbellied but determined bruiser with a southern drawl, was the last champion of the now defunct International Fight League. The 6’10” Wes Sims claims a victory against season eight coach and former UFC heavyweight champ Frank Mir, although Sims was actually disqualified. If size does matter, then coaches Quinton “Rampage” Jackson and Rashad Evans will have their hands full. As light heavyweights, Evans and Jackson both give up as much as 60 pounds to any fighter they’ll be coaching.

Coach Rashad Evans, not quite 30 years old.

Hardly the grizzled ring vet, Evans is a fresh-faced kid who earned his big shot by winning the season two finale of TUF back in 2005. He turns 30 next week. “Rampage” Jackson is only a year older and is best known for swinging a chain as he enters the octagon. While their resumes may not seem deep enough to be called coach at first glance, both men are former UFC light heavyweight champs with the desire to win back their crown, something they have in common with many of the men on their respective teams.

Episode one moves at a brisk pace. There’s some trash talking between Rashad and Rampage to lead it off and Kimbo Slice is given a drawn-out entrance that puts a “target on his back,” a point that UFC President Dana White really wants you to remember. White also calls Kimbo “the toughest guy at the bbq” but then fesses up to the brawler’s ratings potential. Teams are chosen quickly with Evans methodically selecting the best grapplers who can take direction. “Rampage” picks flamboyant fighters that must remind him of himself. Sims and Slice are both on his team but Jackson dismisses “Big Country” Nelson for his “big belly” and “titties.”

“Rampage” Jackson meets with his #1 pick, Kimbo Slice.

Dispensing with the tired judging rigmarole of just about every other reality show, each episode of TUF thankfully ends with a bout in the octagon. If only season one of Dancing with the Stars could have concluded with a cage match between Kelly Monoco and John O’Hurley. Because Evans got the first pick of the fighters, Jackson gets to determine the next two matches. Jackson pits his man Abe Wagner, a boxer with some jiu-jitsu training, against technical wrestler Jon Madsen. During the build up to the bout, Wagner, a corporate finance director with a mechanical engineering degree, confesses that he usually vomits several times about 20 minutes before a match. “I try to plan accordingly to what won’t taste as bad the second time,” he explains. He is later shown puking into a wastepaper basket. The Ultimate Fighter is for mature audiences folks.

Despite Wagner’s height and reach advantage, Rashad Evans believes that the boxer will fall to Madsen’s wrestling skill. “Abe has nothing on the ground and pound,” Evans says, sussing up the match-up. “Once he gets down there, he’s going to be stuck on his back.”

“You know we both bleed,” Madsen adds almost prophetically in a separate interview, “but who’s gonna’ bleed the most.”

The fight takes place in an octagonal cage in a mostly empty gym, save for the other fighters, the coaches and the cameramen. The canvas is covered in more corporate logos than the chest of a NASCAR driver. Burger King, Mickey’s Malt Liquor, Tapout sportswear and a really annoying sportsbar chain called Dave & Buster’s all take up a piece of mat space. If that wasn’t enough to ensure the continuation of the broadcast, the bout is sponsored by Need for Speed Shift for the Xbox and Playstation 3. There will be two five-minute rounds and both fighters are 29 years old.

At the beginning of round one, Madsen quickly takes down his opponent and then uses his leverage to push the bigger man up against the chain link wall. Madsen rears back on his legs and comes thundering down on Wagner’s face with fists of granite. “Put your feet on his hips and push him off Abe,” Jackson yells, instructing his fighter from the ringside. Madsen continues to pound Wagner, keeping him pinned to the wall. Wagner struggles to trap one of Madsen’s limbs in the hopes of working some kind of jiu-jitsu submission hold, but Wagner doesn’t have the room nor the skill to pull off such a complicated maneuver. While in a clinch on the canvas floor, Madsen starts to grind his elbows into Wagner’s face. A red mist sprays from Wagner’s forehead and soaks a corner of the octagon with a dark shade of crimson. The bell sounds. The round is over.

Abe Wagner is a crimson mess after round one but is allowed to contine the fight.

Wagner stands up to go to his corner. His right arm and one side of his chest are covered in blood. A flap of gnarled flesh is clearly visible at the crown of his skull. He resembles something from Saw VI or Jennifer’s Body, the horror flicks are also among the show’s sponsors. Dana White remarks that Wagner is the bloodiest “bleepin” fighter he’s ever seen. There are mutterings that Wagner won’t continue, but the “toughest computer geek” that Wes Sims has ever met returns for another round, albeit with a widening cut over his right eye and a split lip.

Madsen takes Wagner down a second time but doesn’t have the energy to mount the offense that he did in round one. Wagner lacks the command of leg sweeps to take advantage of Madsen’s fatique. The referee stands the fighters up and Madsen takes Wagner down again. Flecks of blood splatter across those corporate logos and the mat starts to look like a crime scene. The referee stands the fighters up a third time but the result is the same: Madsen takes Wagner down again, scoring points in the process. The bell rings but there is little suspense in waiting for the judges’ decision. Madsen wins unanimously and Wagner, scarred with a gash that reveals the bone with little effort, probably won’t fight again this season.

One wonders if the image of Abe Wagner, with a laceration that’s one inch wide, another inch deep and several inches long, is really the image that Dana White needs for the UFC as he tries to convince a skeptical public of mixed martial art’s athletic legitimacy. At the close of round one, there was little doubt to the match’s outcome and a prolonged attack to a cut that severe may have caused permanent damage to the fighter. But unlike many of the other contestants on TUF, Wagner has a professional career to fall back on. One hopes that he considers this before he risks damaging his optic nerves by taking more unanswered blows to the head.

The Ultimate Fighter Season 10: Heavyweights airs Wednesdays at 10pm on Spike TV.

My mom tried to drag me to see Dirty Dancing in 1987 just as she had done with The Jazz Singer with Neil Diamond seven years earlier. Dirty Dancing was the movie that was getting older ladies (and probably more than a few younger ones) all hot and bothered. My mom billed the imagined need for me to see it as some kind of act of cultural literacy akin to forcing me to attend the opera. I was 18 in ’87. I wasn’t buying it so I skipped “Hungry Eyes” inspired hip swiveling madness.

Only two years later I saw myself at a multiplex seeing a different Swayze. The mullet was the same and he still practiced balletic dance moves, but he also ripped out a dude’s throat and had “balls big enough to cum in a dump truck” according to no less an authority than Texas wrestling legend Terry Funk. The film was the immortal Road House and it topped my Arnold Free Action Movie list from earlier this year. In addition to being the baddest barroom bouncer of all time, Swayze’s character of Dalton was also a meditating philosophy professor. It was this line between left-brain and right brain, masculine and feminine, intellectual and redneck that defined Swayze’s career and appeal.

Swayze was more of a throwback to the triple threats of Hollywood’s golden era than he was an 80s action star like Stallone, Willis or Schwarzenegger. He could dance his way through Dirty Dancing, make every woman in America cry in Ghost but still be convincing while kicking Anthony Kiedis’ ass in the surfing bank robber epic Point Break or blowing up godless commies in Red Dawn. To compare Swayze to a two-fisted hoofer like James Cagney may be a overdoing it a bit, but Swayze stretched himself while his peers were content just to stand there and flex their muscles.

In 1995, Swayze strutted around in heels and a tight dress in the uneven drag queen comedy To Wong Foo Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar. But even after playing a role that would have been career suicide only a few years before, he was still able to convincinly white-knuckle his way through the 18-wheelin’ thriller Black Dog in 1998. Where I rejected seeing Dirty Dancing over a decade before, I had to see Black Dog on opening day at the Kabuki Theater in San Francisco. After several semis, Mazdas and semis hauling loads of Madas are all cracked up on Southern highways, Swayze takes the time to dispense with some trucker lore in one of the film’s few quiet moments. He tells his passengers of the ghostly black dog that haunts all truckers during the really long drives. “It’s the black dog,” he says with grim awe, “you always see the black dog.”

Patrick Swayze lost his long battle with cancer today and he will be missed. I’ll always be bummed that they never made a full-blown, ass-stomping sequel to Road House with Swayze returning as Dalton to clean up a good bar gone bad . They did make a straight-to-DVD Road House 2 in 2006 without Swayze. It was almost a ghoulish act while the man was still alive. But putting all that aside, I might have to go out and rent Dirty Dancing tonight. It’ll make my mom happy.