Looks like that Brock/Etienne rematch is off…

Here I actually intoned the name of the great Clifford Etienne this morning in my Calvin Brock post without any idea that my boy Cliff was in so much trouble. The news just came over the wires that the Black Rhino got himself a 150-year prison sentence today.

I know what you’re thinking, but no, they did not finally bust his ass for stealing money at that fight he had with Tyson where he laid down 49 seconds into the first round after Tyson looked at him crosseyed. “Black Hippo is more like it,” a friend of mine said at the time, and I think he spoke for all of us.

That offense, however, remains unpunished. Etienne now has 150 years of solitude on his hands due to a bit of business down in Baton Rouge, a crime spree that involved some Rhino-plastery at a check-cashing joint, followed by a couple of botched hijackings involving small children and, oh yeah, the whole trying-to-kill-two-cops-but-my-fucking-stupid-gun-jammed escapade, which evidently did not endear him to anyone, particularly cops.

Word is that Cliff’s lawyers hit the jury with the old “brain damage on the mike don’t manage” defense, throwing in just a dollop of “hey, look, brother was stupid high." No dice. One-fiddy.

Which only goes to show what you get in this world when you’re just a lowly Black Rhino and not the Godfather of Soul. I mean, shit, that Etienne “crime spree” was just going out to get breakfast for motherfuckin James Brown back in the day. The Man never threw his ass in jail for a century plus. A couple years here and there, yeah, but never the one-fizzle-dizzle. C’mon, Baton Rouge, free your minds. To quote JB himself – “A man can’t do nothing no more…”