The Badger is annoyed with boxing, but has a peculiar love for The Muppet Show. Why? Well they’re not quite mops, and they’re not quite puppets, and the Badger shares an undying love for Jim Henson. So you can understand how devastated the Badger was when the show ended, and the Badger had to say a sad farewell to the dancing cloth-critters.
Now, after hearing the news that Audley Harrison will participate in Strictly Come Dancing, the Badger can rejoice, as once again there will be a dancing muppet on television. The Badger will be forced to skip Saturday night La Liga to watch Harrison give a different definition to the word Messi.
Okay, the Badger knows Harrison wasn’t as bad as he’s made out to be. He got buried by the weight of expectation after an Olympic gold, one of many who couldn’t make the big jump from amateur to professional.
It’s the greed which annoys the Badger: challenging David Haye with no chance of winning just to get the million pound payout, then truly selling out by moving to reality TV. And ‘Strictly’ of all shows? Harrison is about as suited to dancing as a badger is to writing a sports column.
Meanwhile, in actual boxing, the fight that everyone wants to see, Pacquiao vs Mayweather, won’t go ahead because Pacquiao doesn’t want to take a drug test too soon before the fight. Now, the Badger won’t profess to knowing everything – how Wayne Rooney’s hair implants have made him look even worse still alludes him – but if the Badger learned anything from his good friend Michelle Smith, it’s that if you don’t want to submit to a drug test, it’s probably because you’re on drugs.
So, with Pacquiao-Mayweather slipping through the paws of the boxing world, attention turns to Haye, who says he’s willing to postpone his attempt to become the next Dwayne Johnson and fight Vitali Klitschko. The Badger enjoys a good heavyweight fight, and Haye has made the heavyweight division exciting again, but is it too much to ask for the Klitschko brothers to go twelve rounds?
The Badger realises that the match would consist of two lumbering Ukrainians jabbing continually at thin air, but surely the entertainment value of the build-up would be biblical, like a modern day Cain and Abel. Despite the Badger’s public protests, the brothers claim that the match will never happen, but not because of drug testing issues or financial disagreements. Oh no, much more serious than that: their mother won’t let them.
