One of my guilty pleasures is Pros vs. Joes, in which “ordinary Joes” compete against retired professional athletes. Actually, I often fast-forward through whole chunks of it — the basketball portions, in particular — but I enjoy the football portions, and I love the combat-sport portions.
And I’ve been waiting all season for the episode with Bob Sapp. In case you’re not familiar, Bob Sapp is a ludicrously huge man — 6’5″ and 375 lbs., lean — who used to play in the NFL before fighting in Japan.
The Joes were terrified. Imagine their surprise when they found out that he was blocking for Jamal Anderson too, before it even came to the kickboxing portion of the show.
One odd element of the show is that the Proes clearly are not giving it 100 percent; they’re toying with the Joes. On some plays, Jamal Anderson slips a tackle, turns around, stops, waits for the Joe to chase after him, run backwards toward the end zone, then stops, drops his head, and knocks down his tackler, before stepping back into the end zone for a touchdown.
Other times, he gets caught.
Anyway, watching ordinary Joes, even really athletic Joes, try to stay in the ring with Bob Sapp is just plain scary.