Ray Lewis has a book coming out called I Feel Like Going On, and though it promises to be filled with all the intensely inspirational pontificating Lewis is known for, one of the first passages to be released addresses the subject people could be most curious about in Lewis’ life: His thoughts on the murders outside an Atlanta nightclub in 2000 for which he was convicted of obstruction of justice. (The murder itself has never been solved.)
Lewis has a, let’s say, original take on why he couldn’t possibly have committed violence on that fateful evening: He was looking too damn sharp.
“Remember, I was dressed out, had my jewelry on, my fine mink coat,” Lewis writes. “I wasn’t about to start mixing it up looking like that. That’s the general rule of thumb when you’re doing the town and looking good. The nicer you’re dressed, the less inclined you are to get in a fight — that is, if you’re even inclined in that way to begin with.”
Of course! It all makes sense now. Lewis couldn’t have taken real part in any stabbings that night, for he wouldn’t dare sully his finery, you see. A gentleman never spills blood upon his fine mink coat when he can avoid it.
“There I was, all dressed out in my mink coat, my fine suit,” Lewis writes. “Dude dresses like that, he’s not looking for a fight. How I was dressed, it made no sense with what went down, those shots being fired, all of that. Forget what kind of statement my clothes might have made. Forget that I might have been a little loud, over the top. Point is, when you’re dressed like that, you’re off to the sidelines, and here were these gangbangers stepping out to us from the shadows, looking to make trouble — but it was trouble we drove right past.”
This version of events makes little sense, even if you believe Ray Lewis was innocent. He claims that his crew was “stepped to” by “gangbangers,” yet he was on the sidelines and they “drove right past” the trouble. “It made no sense with what went down” is a particularly egregious bit of reverse-engineered logic. What is he even saying went down?
Even we have to admit, it’s a hilarious thought that a man so associated with toughness on the gridiron is claiming he couldn’t have been involved in violence because he was afraid of getting his clothes dirty.
(Via New York Daily News)
