Buford Pusser is Walking Tall

“My life was basically a Steven Segal film.”

~Buford Pusser’s Ghost

There is a science to naming your child that most responsible (read as: not currently addicted to Meth) parents have to utilize when they welcome a new American to their family.  Kids can be, and how do we put this delicately…massive doucheholes, so you want to avoid giving your child a name that can easily be turned into an effectively derisive taunt.  For example, John Harden is a perfectly sensible name to have.  But if you name you child Richard Harden, you better not give him the nickname of “Dick.”

“Tee hee why not name him Hard Cock and get it over with?”

However, every once in a while, giving your child an incredibly-easy-to-make-fun-of name is a way to ensure he grows to be an unmitigated American badass.  We call this the Boy Named Sue Property, which seems pretty for a man with such a ridiculous name as Buford Pusser, since here’s a picture of him with Johnny Cash.

That’s right, Buford Pusser, which sounds more like an insulting slur than a full name, is a man so badass that he arrested more people in his life than the amount of sandwiches most Americans consume in a single lifetime.  And America fucking loves sandwiches.

And who can blame us?

Buford Pusser was born in Finger, Tennessee (heh) in the winter of 1937, at which point he handcuffed his placenta and placed it under arrest for unlawful detention.  After joining the Marines at the age of 18, his training was cut short when it was revealed he had asthma, making him the second badass American figure to spit in the face of asthma throughout his life.

After serving two years as a cop in Tennessee, he ran for Sheriff under the slogan, “If you ran for Sheriff with an embarrassing name, you’d probably have massive balls, right?”  This was good enough for him to be elected at the age of 26, making him the youngest Sheriff in state history.  He also had a face that looked like it could be used with a mortar to make guacamole.

“What does that even mean?”

It is at this point that we feel it is necessary to point out that Buford Pusser not only was a badass law enforcer, but he also once wrestled a Grizzly bear and fucking won.  We now go back to our regularly scheduled program.

Many readers might have recognized Buford Pusser’s name from the fact that he is the character from the “beating people up with a 2×4 movie”, Walking Tall.  That’s because the movies are based off of his life.  That’s right, this man was such a badass that the only people badass enough to portray him in the remake of the original semi-autobiographical movie about him were The Rock and Hercules.  But how did a man with a face shaped like a lego figurine become such a historical figure?

Well, being a terrifying physical specimen while taking on the mob is a good place to start.

“Mob?  SMASH!”

Over the course of his six years as Sheriff, Pusser arrested 7,500 people.  We’re not good with Math because, come on, math?  But if our calculations are correct, that means that every year Buford Pusser arrested one million criminals.  He also did not limit his arrests to just the typical, “Freeze you’re under arrest!” types either.  One time he was ambushed by six men, three of whom he arrested, and three he sent to the hospital.  In another instance, a car tried to run him over, so he jumped over the hood, through the windshield, and beat the ever-loving shit out of the would-be assassin.  Oh and we should probably mention that he was shot 8 times and stabbed 7 times after warding off numerous assassination attempts.  He straight up killed two people in self defense, meaning he had a higher body count than goddamn Andrew Jackson.

Whenever Buford Pusser sweated, each drop would spontaneously turn into bottles of whiskey and boxes of cigars.  Every time he punched a punk, a hummingbird would explode because that would be the only way to make the sight of Buford Pusser punching a punk even more impressive.

Eventually, Buford Pusser died an early death, in just about the only way you could expect it to be possible.  When his super-charged Corvette hit a highway median, flipped, shot him out of it, and then caught on fire.  To this day, we can only assume that the reason why Corvettes get poor gas mileage has nothing to do with the high performing engines, and have everything to do with the fact that every Corvette is haunted by Buford Pusser’s ghost.

Yeah you better run!