I’d like to thank the Academy and welcome you to the 29th Annual (May)Hemmy Awards. These MMA awards are totally unbiased and look past the “big three” letters that dominate MMA in America, and take a serious and stern look at the sport that we all love. Ok, that’s a bunch of crap. This is a made-up award show that takes place in my head, which no one, except you the reader, gets to attend. So put your goddamn rented tux on and hope that they washed the staph infection out of it from the last fighter who wore it back in 2009. Pull up in your stretch hummer limo and plop your flip-flops out on the red carpet. You have to rush by the paparazzi and wave quickly, because you are late for the 2009 Hemmys!
INNOVATION HEMMY
Hands down, Shinya Aoki. I love the Japanese mode of thinking. It’s what makes products invented in America so much better once they are stolen and made by the Japanese. Sure, you could probably wear some gi pants in a mixed martial arts fight like Eddie Bravo would have you think, but you’d have to be smoking a ton of weed to not notice the obvious shortcomings of this strategy. Aoki did the research: I use my guard, how will I make it grip better? PANTS! But what about them grabbing on the pants? SKIN TIGHT! What about ankle locks? CAPRI PANTS! What about them being unfashionable? NEON COLORS! Congrats Crazy Pants.
VILLAIN OF THE YEAR HEMMY
Roy Nelson was on The Ultimate Fighter with Kimbo Slice. Kimbo is a mystery wrapped in an enigma. This man is a legendary street fighter. The way I learned of him is purely from the famous Web video— the backyard street fight with the metal thing and the eyeball popping out of the guy’s head at the end, and the “Let me get my bread” tagline. Roy Nelson has a giant belly, was annoying on the show, and made you want to change the channel. Nelson beat our legend—and along with his detestable personality—he earns the Villain of the Year Award.
Zombie Hemmy
2009’s Hemmy Award winner for excellence in coming back from the dead goes to Kimo Leopoldo, who was pronounced dead on the Internet by infamous online troll and Midwest Champion of the World, Beau Taylor, also known by the moniker “OMA.” Taylor scored the troll of a lifetime by convincing the Internet junkies—and then the highly respected news organization TMZ—that Kimo was dead. Taylor was outed when it was revealed that Kimo was actually a zombie, and has been since early 2007 when he was bit by Stephan Quadros.
Short-Lived Ring Card Girls Hemmy
The highly coveted award for the fastest turnover on ring card girls goes to (drum roll please…) the blond that looked about 17 and the one with giant boobs—I read that she was an escort or something. Goodbye eye candies, we barely knew ye. I’m not sure what these women did—or didn’t do (ahem)—to lose their jobs. Perhaps they didn’t test well with the audience, maybe they had an attitude, maybe they weren’t using Xience, or possibly they were just victims of a terrible economy, but they were turned over faster than a day laborer outside of Home Depot. The only woman in MMA with some amount of job security is Arianny Celeste, who can blow a kiss after she sits down like no other person on earth. Boing.
Oh Snap, It’s Serious Hemmy
This Hemmy is awarded to the person or group that emerged into the world of MMA in a “serious” fashion. The group to shock the MMA world goes to the Strikeforce organization. Before this year, there were some fly-by-night companies scraping together leftover UFC talent to throw together shows around the country, only to quickly fold when things got tough. Enter Strikeforce’s marriage with CBS, add in a dash of Fedor, and a dollop of the Bully Beatdown guy, and then later you get one of the most exciting cards ever (December’s SF from San Jose) headlined by Josh Thompson vs. Gilbert Melendez. BAM! You’ve got yourself a serious contender to the UFC.
GODDAMN HE’S GOOD HEMMY
Anderson Silva. Ok, Jesus, you’re awesome. Like ridiculously awesome. You know how to do everything well, and you keep beating everyone, and if it weren’t for translator/ manager Ed Soares explaining what you were saying, we’d think you were just telling everyone that you suck in helium between rounds to give yourself super, Matrix-like fighting abilities. Fantastic showing in 2009, and the best part about having such a good year is that it makes it all that much more exciting to see who can oust Anderson from his mighty throne. Watch this category next year.
REF DISTRACTION HEMMY
This year’s category was stacked. There was a referee that look emaciated and sickly, Japanese ref Uji Shimada was especially jerky all of 2009, Herb Dean’s dreadlocks were more flowing than they were in 2008, making for the most stacked category ever. In the final hours of judging it came down to two: The frontrunner was the colorful tattoos and bulging muscles of Dan Miragliotta, but by a hair it came down to (drum roll please) Steve Mazzagatti’s moustache! What’s that? Oh, he’s not here to accept the award? Hibernating until the spring? Very well, here to accept the award in his place is Mario Yamasaki’s flattop.
SECOND BEST ENTRANCE HEMMY
This year’s Second Best Entrance Hemmy had some great entrants, including Gono’s Japanese weird crap and Machida fire breathing and piss drinking with two dancing dragons and sword jugglers with ninjas throwing stars at targets in the 14th row. Didn’t happen? Shit, my subconscious is leaking into my articles again. Anyway, the award goes to King Mo in Sengoku. Yeah, I know, I train with him, but the judging was unbiased. Why is it the award for the second best entrance? Because I can’t give myself an award in my own article, and I had the best entrance of 2009 in Strikeforce.
SPECIAL AWARD FOR THE MOST OVERDUE ARTICLE OF 2009
This award is given once a year—extremely deep into the first quarter of the year—to the artist that decided to do an award article in January, forced into it by his editors, made to write an article he thought was too late to write, but stuck to his guns and powered through. Can I have the envelope … and the award goes to … Mayhem Miller for his “Hemmy Awards” article! Yay! I jump up and down with joy and hug the other nominees, the people from Bully Beatdown, and my manager Ryan Parsons. Tracy Lee takes a crap picture of me that she tags on Facebook later, and I run to the front to give my acceptance speech, and then you reread this article as the acceptance speech. You’re welcome.
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