You know the guy that staged the whole ‘Kimo Leopaldo is dead’ hoax? His name is Beau Taylor and he made our list of ‘The Top Ten MMA Fighters You Should Build A Shrine To‘. Tonight, he will be announcing XFL’s ‘New Year’s Revolution’ alongside Forrest Griffin. If you finally relocated from that rock you lived under, the you already know Forrest Griffin. For the minority of you who are not familiar with Beau Taylor, here’s what TheSmokingGun said about the self proclaimed ‘Midwest champion of the world’.
JULY 22–The fabricated claim yesterday about the purported death of a former Ultimate Fighting Championship star was the handiwork of a self-described “Internet troll” with a “weird mind.” Beau Taylor, a 31-year-old Oklahoma man, created a thread on a popular mixed martial arts (MMA) web site reporting that Kimo Leopoldo had died in Costa Rica of a heart attack. Taylor told TSG that he selected Leopoldo as the subject of the hoax in light of the fighter’s arrest earlier this year on drug charges. “I thought it would be a good fit,” said Taylor. The fabricated account of Leopoldo’s death leapt beyond MMA web sites and bulletin boards when TMZ.com reported yesterday afternoon that it had “confirmed” the 41-year-old athlete’s demise (this confirmation was presumably delivered by one of the gossip site’s paid sources). The erroneous story was later yanked from the site, which is now batting .500 on recent death exclusives. For his part, Taylor’s eventful week has also included a public intoxication arrest. He was busted early Sunday morning after security officers at a shopping center found him passed out in his car with the engine running, with “an open container of beer in the center console,” according to a Tulsa Police Department report. Cops noted that Taylor reeked of alcohol and had difficulty standing. “Taylor said that he had left his house intoxicated in order to buy cigarettes,” noted cops, who reported that Taylor said he had consumed three glasses of wine and six beers. Asked about his beaming mug shot, seen below, Taylor spoke of trying to strike the right booking photo balance: “You know, I didn’t want to look like Nick Nolte,” he said. “Or that I was too happy to be arrested.”
If you drop $9.99 on the PPV this evening, your reward will be hearing the voice of Beau Taylor as he comments on Houston Alexander, Jeff Monson, Jeremy Horn, Rich Clementi and our Twitter bud Justin McCorkle. But hey, for all we know this could just be one giant troll job. It wouldn’t be his first.
The full card can be found here and if you would like to order the online PPV it’ll just set you back $9.99. It all goes down tonight at 9pm ET/ 6pm PT (and like 700,200,000 GMT…or something) so if you’re still depressed about the ungodly spanking the New Orleans Saints delivered to the Arizona Cardinals tonight, here’s your chance to constructively take out your anger on your computer monitor (but order the PPV before you start breaking inanimate objects in your house). [Source]
