Disclaimer: This story is a part of our April Fool’s edition, The Goofordian. This story was created by Guilfordian staff and is not based in fact.
Mixed Martial Arts has always been a gentleman’s game. The style originally consisted of two men squaring off by regaling each other with monotonous stories for days on end until one of them fell to the ground from boredom or exhaustion. As the sport evolved, the bouts became more physical with the implementation of more complex moves like eye gouging and hair pulling.
Dana Professor of English Jeff Jeske draws from both of these grand MMA traditions.
Jeske, known as a skilled orator and teacher on Guilford’s campus, won his first professional MMA fight against British fighter Albert “Oxford Coma” Oxenfort.
Jeske, a tall and intimidating fighter weighing in at around 123lbs, defeated Oxenfort in an astonishing two rounds.
“I’ve never seen someone so old move so fast and with such ferocity too,” said Dana White, president of the UFC, the largest MMA promotion company in the world. “It was a real treat. First he was a sinkhole, lowering Oxenfort’s defenses with his anecdotes. Then Jeske blindsides him with a powerful knee hit to the cranium. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
However, Jeske chalked up his victory to a foolish move by Oxenfort himself.
“You can call me a sinkhole, but don’t call me Jeffrey,” said Jeske in the post-fight press conference. “The bullies back in grade school called me Germy Jeffrey. It’s not even alliteration! So every time someone calls me that, I’m transported back to those squandered uses of literary flourishes.”
The sports world was astonished by his victory and everyone scrambled to learn Jeske’s pugnacious technique.
“It all started in the late 1970s, which as you know, was a pretty wild time,” said Jeske during one of his 5:00 a.m. walks. “I just saw all the injustice in the world and wanted to fight against it. So, I decided to take up the wonderfully fulfilling field of journalism and the martial art of Romple. That way I could fix problems with both my words and my fists, kind of like Superman.”
Over the next 40+ years, this veritable superman would take what he learned in both journalism and Romple to develop his own unique Style, dubbed “AP style” after the particularly dangerous and unforgiving style guide for newspapers.
“AP Style incorporates and is influenced by a number of unique styles,” Jeske said. “The most prevalent are romple, macrame, pankration, kick punching, ballroom dancing, taekwondo, journalism and hypnogogy.”
However, Jeske also has critics, chief among them Princeton’s Associate Professor of English Ernest “Bulldozer” Butcher, another academic entering the world of MMA.
“I’ve said it once, and I’ll say it again. That plagiaristic pugilist stole my fighting style and says it’s his!” Butcher said in an interview. “I won’t sit idly by and let him do this. I’m calling Jeske out. We will fight one day, and I’m going to take him down.”
“Bring it on,” Jeske told ESPN’s Bob Ley in response to Butcher’s comments. “If he has a problem with me, well, tough tarantula. He’s the one who’s going down.”
DISCLAIMER: This is part of the April Fool’s edition.
