Randall "Tex" Cobb played bounty hunter Leonard Smalls in Raising Arizona.

People admire winners so much sometimes they overlook the losers, who often deserve more of our respect than champions.

For every Muhammad Ali, for instance, there are hundreds—perhaps thousands—of athletes like Randall “Tex” Cobb.

Cobb was a talented heavyweight boxer. But he was not a great boxer, and the few people who are familiar with his career today probably think of him as a loser because he never won a championship belt. In fact, Cobb’s probably most famous for his disastrous 1982 World Boxing Council’s world heavyweight title fight at Houston’s Astrodome against the great champion Larry Holmes.

Over the course of 15 rounds in the ring, Cobb was mercilessly pummeled by Holmes, who was taller, far more skilled and outreached Cobb by nearly 12 inches. It was a bloody, lopsided fight—so much so, that the legendary and controversial sportscaster Howard Cosell vowed never to cover another professional boxing match and retired.

Cobb, 32 years old at the time, could’ve slunk away into obscurity after that horrific bout and nobody would’ve blamed him.

But he didn’t. He came up swinging instead—not with his fists, but with his wit.

Immediately after the fight, a badly battered but grinning Cobb demanded a rematch. “Like tomorrow night,” he said. “And then the night after that, and then the night after that. The s.o.b. has to get tired sometime.”

Later, when Cobb learned about Cosell’s threat to quit, the disgraced boxer described it as his “gift to the sport of boxing.” And when Cobb was asked about the rematch, he joked that Holmes’ “hands couldn’t take it.” Questioned about what it was like to fight a man whose arms were a foot longer than his own, Cobb responded by saying, “Oh, it seemed that way to you, too?”

Suddenly, Cobb became a hero for outmatched underdogs everywhere. By remaining gracious and maintaining his sense of humor in defeat, the boxer endeared himself to sports fans around the world, and was showered with letters congratulating him for his effort in the ring.

Cobb didn’t quit boxing, either; after all, he was a promising fighter.

Cobb had dropped out of college at 19 to become a kick boxer. He trained at the Philadelphia gym owned by fabled boxing champion Joe Frazier, and switched to professional boxing in 1977. In his first two years, Cobb knocked out 13 opponents in a row. Then, in 1980, he knocked out one of the most powerful punchers of all time, Ernie Shavers, who was nicknamed the “Black Destroyer” and had nearly dethroned Ali in a 1977 fight that Sports Illustrated called “Ali’s Desperate Hour.”

Although Cobb’s fight with Holmes was humiliating, it was also a testament to his tenacity because he refused to go down. Cobb proved he was tough that night, and on many other nights during his boxing career. He was knocked out only once, in a one-round 1985 fight against a relative unknown named Dee Collier. He fought many of the best boxers of his time, including Bernardo Mercardo, Ken Norton and Michael Dokes, and although he often lost the big fights, it was never easily.

Randall "Tex" Cobb has never been a loser.

Cobb continued fighting professionally until the early 1990s, amassing a 43-7-1 record along the way. But he’s probably better known to most people today as a television and screen actor. A hairy giant with a rugged face that looks like it belongs to the 1930s, Cobb has appeared in dozens of productions, including TV shows like Miami Vice, Married…With Children, Walker, Texas Ranger and The X Files. He’s also landed starring roles in movies such as Police Academy 4, Ace Ventura: Pet Detective and my personal favorite, the 1987 Coen Brothers’ comedic masterpiece Raising Arizona. In that film, Cobb played opposite Nicolas Cage as the fearsome Harley-riding bounty hunter Leonard Smalls, who was also known as the Lone Biker of the Apocalypse. His taciturn, single-minded intensity was a perfect foil for the fast-talking ne’er-do-well with a heart of gold played by Cage.

Athlete, actor–Cobb’s done it all. And he’s no dummy, either.

Last year, at age 57, Cobb graduated magna cum laude from Temple University with a bachelor’s degree in sports and recreation management. He put himself through school by working construction jobs in the Philadelphia area.

“This was no honorary degree,” Jeffrey Montague, assistant dean of Temple’s School of Tourism and Hospitality Management, told The Philadelphia Inquirer. “He worked hard for this. He’s a tremendous guy, a very, very genuine person. Some of the same qualities that made him a successful boxer made him a great student.”

Cobb accepted his degree with characteristic humor, noting it was odd to hear the cheers of a packed arena without being in a boxing ring. “It was nice to have that opportunity to wear a robe, to step up there and not have to worry about bleeding,” he said.

So is Cobb a loser?

Not to me.

Not by a long shot.

I wrote this post to help celebrate the month-long ”Anti Injustice Campaign” with my fellow writers over at Humor Bloggers Dot Com. Check out the other entries if you get a chance.

I love the salty-sweet taste of barbecued ribs that have been carefully seasoned and slowly smoked at a low temperature until they're ready to be served.

Three things I like:
1. Barbecued ribs
2. Winning
3. Winning

Seventeen things I don’t like:
1. Raw eggs
2. Driving hundreds of miles but going nowhere
3. Losing
4. Losing
5. Losing
6. Losing
7. Losing
8. Losing
9. Losing
10. Losing
11. Losing
12. Losing
13. Losing
14. Losing
15. Losing
16. Losing
17. Spending $12,000 to $15,000 on a Hyundai when I could’ve driven a Lexus

Short-nosed fruit bats seem cute and innocent, but they're nature's horndogs and you shouldn't let them anywhere near your daughters.

Male fiddler crabs will fight other crabs in exchange for sex, according to a new study.

Well, whoop-de-doo.

This took a study?

Fighting’s nothing. I know guys who will wade across a river of shit up to their noses if they think there’s a willing woman waiting for them on the other bank. And I’d bet $100 cash money that many American men would gleefully punch their neighbors square in the nose if they thought it would get them laid. In Texas, I believe it’s not only legal but required to shoot your neighbor’s balls off if you catch him in bed boinking your woman. They won’t prosecute you for it down there–they’ll give you the bastard’s wife for a night as a consolation prize.

Whatever.

Researchers from The Australian National University in Canberra found male fiddler crabs will happily defend nearby females against intruders—partly because the females dole out sex in return, often right out on the open beach in front of the other crabs instead of in the privacy of their sand burrows.

Those sluts.

I’ll bet Girls Gone Wild producer Joe Francis and his crew are rushing down to Australia even as I write this to film a new episode of Crabs Gone Wild: Candy-Ass Can-Cans in Canberra.

At least they aren’t as dirty as fruit bats. The crabs, I mean, not Joe and his fornicating friends. Those guys are as depraved as it gets. As depraved as fruit bats.

Chinese scientists recently discovered that many female short-nosed fruit bats routinely perform oral sex—not as foreplay, but while they’re hanging upside down copulating. The female bats apparently bend up like–well, like Chinese contortionists–to perform fellatio with their tongues in an attempt to prolong the sex act.

No wonder they have short noses.

I haven’t heard of sex that kinky since Mindy and Mike tore the chandelier out of the ceiling in the bridal suite at the Embassy Suites while they were on their honeymoon to Niagara Falls.

Not surprisingly, a little bat-licking works. Male bats never withdrew from their female partners as long as they were getting blown. This behavior surprised the scientists at the Guangdong Entomological Institute.

Guangdong?

Seriously?

Yes, so stop snickering. At least it wasn’t the Longdong Institute.

Fiddler crabs are constantly picking fights in an attempt to get laid.

The research took place at the highly respected Guangdong Institute, and here’s an actual quote from an actual scientist to prove it: “We did not expect fellatio in fruit bats at the beginning,” researcher Libiao Zhang said breathlessly. “We were also surprised at how often it occurred.”

I’m with Zhang on this one. I didn’t expect bats to be engaging in oral sex, either. I thought bats had higher standards than that, especially the openly religious bats. But these bad bats might as well toss their tiny little bat-purity rings into the guano with the other filthy bats’ used condoms and see-through panties.

No less than 14 out of 20 of the female fruit bats did the dirty deed during the study. The other six, still plenty oversexed but more prudish than their peers, weren’t interested in oral sex, but they were willing to give their mates upside down handjobs.

Maybe the mouthy bats were raised by lousy parents.

Maybe their drunken, pot-smoking, liberal parents turned them into aspiring porn stars.

They’re porn stars now, anyway, because the scientists cum adult movie producers secretly filmed the bats humping at night. You can watch the bat porn online for free, no credit card number or e-mail address required.

Enjoy the film.

Sea hare or sex-crazed hermaphrodite? Both. And don't go near a group of them on a Saturday night.

Oh, and in case you’re curious, deviant sex is relatively rare among animals, but not entirely unheard of. Antarctica’s Adelie prostitute penguins, for instance, exchange sex for highly coveted stones used for nest building. Juvenile members of the chimpanzee-like bonobo monkeys often perform oral sex for play, and not just on prom night. Male dolphins have prehensile penises and are known to have sex, sometimes with other species, many times a day, just like our NFL and NBA stars. Sea hares are hermaphrodites that engage in orgies.

Thank goodness we don’t see any of that over-the-top naughty stuff on family shows like Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom or the Westminster Kennel Club. I prefer to think “doggy style” is just a well-groomed poodle.

In my dream, this is the spot in Portofino, Italy where Kerry and I had the best pizza of our lives.

One of the best things about having a sick wife—and, yes, this is me working hard to look on the bright side of a dark situation—is that people practically throw food at us, saving me, the chef in our family, the expense and trouble of cooking.

It all started when Kerry unexpectedly checked into the hospital with heart problems a couple of weeks ago.

Within 24 hours, Kerry’s sisters, Kristy and Kitty, filled the barren shelves of our refrigerator with trays of frozen lasagna, enchiladas, apple pie and Greek yogurt (try it if you haven’t because it’s almost as good as ice cream but healthier) and loads of fresh vegetables. Then people like my father-in-law, Dick, started buying me lunch and dinner every time I looked a little forlorn—which is pretty much all the time these days.

One day, my mother-in-law, Julie, scrounged around in her purse and triumphantly withdrew a $5 bill to stuff into my coat pocket so I could buy a sandwich, which I did. It was delicious, too, piled high with thinly sliced turkey, shredded lettuce, tomato, onion and a thick layer of mayonnaise on bread so French it practically begged to surrender before I even took my first bite.

Once, I got a free chocolate chip cookie from a sympathetic cashier at Noodles—I love their beef stroganoff—because I mentioned that my wife was in the hospital. My family’s received several free drinks in the last two weeks, and my son, Gabe, and I were given free extra-large salads at Red Robin to help balance out the damage we did to our poor bodies with their extra-large hamburgers and bottomless baskets of French fries.

My best friend, Rick, treated Gabe and me to smothered calzones at a local Italian restaurant called Lil’ Nick’s. He also brought Kerry an entire pizza, three-fourths of which was eaten by Gabe, who was still ravenous after eating a large sausage calzone of his own plus at least one-third of mine. Yet he’s as buff as a person can get, and I secretly hate him for it, the youthful athletic bastard.

Then my dad and mom, Clarence and Margaret, treated me and Gabe and my daughter, Lindy, to a fabulous dinner at one of our favorite restaurants, The Elephant Bar, which my grown but malaprop-prone daughter, Rudy, mistakenly refers to as The Elephant Graveyard. Keep in mind that we went out to eat on a weeknight, and it wasn’t even somebody’s birthday or graduation. It was just, “Hey, your mom’s in the hospital, so let’s go spend $80 to eat barbequed ribs and shrimp tonight, OK?”

Wonderful!

My brother and sister-in-law, Dave and Kitty, also fed my kids home-cooked meals many times over 14 days, and let them spend the night at their house several times while I sat, half-dozing, beside Kerry’s hospital bed, dreaming about eating wood-fired pizza with her in Portofino on the Italian Riviera. That was a good dream, by the way, because Kerry was healthy and happy, her long blonde hair looked radiant in Italy’s evening sunlight, and the pizza tasted better to me than any pizza we’ve ever had, even the one we snuck into a movie theater one night when we were still in college.

Back in reality, or what passes for it these days, we’ve been eating like wealthy people for several days thanks to the generosity of Gabe’s hockey team. All the parents on the team chipped in and bought us nine pre-prepared dinners from a company called Dream Dinners. Each gourmet-quality meal is packaged and ready to cook. Entrées include delicacies like grilled honey Dijon salmon with roasted sweet potatoes and butter-garlic garden vegetables, or toasted pecan chicken with a wild mushroom rice-and-whole-grain pilaf–the sort of meals we’d order at fancy restaurants if we ate at fancy restaurants, or if they served lemon chicken piccata at Wing Stop, which they don’t because sports fans feel silly ordering chicken piccata for Monday Night Football.

This is my family having dinner on any given night of the week. Aren't my wife and kids adorable? Love 'em!

I suppose I mention the food here because kind gestures like these constantly catch me off guard, mostly because I expect people to be self centered and myopic, especially where I’m concerned. I’m not important, or especially likeable, and there’s no particular reason why anybody should care enough about my well being, let alone the well being of my family, to actually do something about it. But some of them do, and it’s pleasantly surprising.

Yesterday, for example, I hardly knew what to say when a co-worker I’ll call Susan—because that’s her name—unexpectedly dropped a shopping bag filled with homemade beef stew, a loaf of French bread and a store-bought pumpkin pie on my desk. She hardly lingered long enough for me to thank her, probably because she’s smart and instinctively knew I might embarrass her by bursting into tears—not because I have troubles, but because I love beef stew and store-bought pumpkin pie better than almost anything in the whole world. I was shocked the pie made it all the way home untouched. To be honest, I was shocked it made it through the day untouched.

I guess the long and short of this tale is that with Kerry ill, my family hasn’t eaten this well since….well, never, actually. Which is nice. I’m also really, really thankful to be surrounded by people who care enough about my family to give us food. Food is very comforting in times of distress, unless it’s intestinal distress. Then food seems extremely unappetizing, even repulsive. Fortunately, our stomachs are fine.

In fact, if there is a downside to this gastronomic holiday we’re on, I suppose it’s that this crisis will eventually pass like a painful kidney stone and we’ll return to our normal routine, which involves eating a lot of roasted chicken and spaghetti, the favorite food of men and children everywhere. But I don’t think it’s going to bother me much, because that will be the day I know Kerry’s going to be fine.