Earlier this month we reported that Egyptian strongman al-Sayed al-Essawy was in training to boost Egyptian tourism by killing a full-grown African lion with his bare hands at the foot of the Pyramids at Giza. Sounds like a plan, right? Well, the fight went down, and it wasn’t exactly Hercules of Yore, unless the whole “Hercules” thing is exaggerated and he just fed a donkey to the Lernean Hydra and sat around waiting for it to fall asleep.
Here’s the video recap, followed by a quick rundown of carny lies:
https://s.wsj.net/media/swf/main.swf
1. al-Essawy claimed he was going to fight a lion with his bare hands, but went into the ring dressed like a Three Wishes dot com Halloween gladiator, carrying a pronged spear, a machete, a shield and a dagger.
2. When you say “I’m going to fight a lion” people assume you mean “a wild lion that will be trying to fight me back”, not a lion you paid for yourself and fed an “entire donkey” (credit to one of the onlookers).
3. When you say “I want to fight a lion in front of the pyramids” people assume you mean “I’m going to battle a lion in the desert in front of the pyramids”, not “I’m going to fight a lion in the same general country as pyramids”.
4. al-Essawy claimed he was going to fight a lion to boost tourism, but one he actually got in there he said “whoops, sorry, this is about Palestine” and even draped a flag over the lion to make a political point, dropping him from “the mighty Samson” to “that performance artist on Mr. Show who was trouble sh*tting on the American flag”.
5. al-Essawy claimed to be the mightiest man in Egypt, but got his Mom to talk to reporters about how awesome he is.
And it just goes on and on. For his next fight, he’s going to hang upside down for six weeks and call it “magic”.
Vince at Film Drunk got up a bit about this yesterday (because it really should be optioned as a movie), so head over and read more about it there, should you need more details. A quick example of what I mean when I say “more details”:
Having survived, Mr. Al Essawy is preparing to up the ante. In one month’s time, he plans to fight two lions at once. Or perhaps a gorilla, he said. Or maybe a shark.
That would be awesome, because stabbing a gorilla with a spear is exactly like Israel. Maybe in two months he’ll tackle some basic tasks like “reading a book” or “waking up as somebody other than this guy”.
[Pic and info courtesy of Wall Street Journal Online]
