You are reading Books & Biceps #289!

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If you’re a new subscriber or missed my yearly book round-up, The 15 Most Memorable Books I Read in 2023, you can read it here.

DON’T MISS THIS: Yesterday, we released the World Premiere of the Macho Man book trailer to the entire Books & Biceps crew. If you missed it, you can watch it here. If you watched it yesterday, witness the madness again!

And don’t forget to pre-order Macho Man: The Untamed, Unbelievable Life of Randy Savage (out April 2nd). If you do, e-mail me a screen shot & I’ll send you a hologram sticker of the cover AND a signed book plate.

Oohhhh yeahhh!

BOOKS

Trash Talk: The Only Book About Destroying Your Rivals That Isn’t Total Garbage by Rafi Kohan

I love unique, awesome book ideas executed to perfection - especially when they’re about fascinating topics.

In this case, author Rafi Kohan does a brilliant job fleshing out the origins, traditions, stories, masters and uses of one of the best parts of sports and competition: trash talk.

Here’s a little inside baseball: writing a book like this is HARD. You’ve got a sprawling topic that covers everything, then you have to come up with a structure, do your research, interview a ton of people and weave everything around the main spine of your subject while hitting it at all angles with interesting stories and differing perspectives. I’m telling you, this one is impressive.

So impressive, in fact, that I wanted to talk to Rafi for us about some of my favorite parts of the book, how he pulled it off and, of course, trash talking. This is one of the most thorough, detailed, behind-the-book Q&As we’ve had here in Books & Biceps. And we end with each of us building our Frankenstein monster of trash talk (Larry Bird makes an appearance).

You’re gonna love this interview and I didn’t want to trim it at all, so you can read the first half here and I’ll link to the rest - and buy the book here. Here we go:

FINKEL: Since this is Books & Biceps, I have to open on a question about a man whose nickname was The Beautiful Bicep. Actually, that was only one of his nicknames. Of course, I’m talking about Gorgeous George, the most famous, wealthy wrestling heel in the 1950s. What was his #1 trash talk trick to get audiences to hate him?

KOHAN: Oh, man. He had so many! But really, everything about the character of Gorgeous George was designed to get a rise out of wrestling crowds — to overcome them with a kind of lust to see him lose. He was haughty and garish and would flaunt his wealth in ways that not only flew in the face of modesty and humility, but also subverted people’s ideas of gender and machismo. He carried himself with a cocksure femininity, and he was decidedly NOT a man of the people. George would show up to new cities and take media interviews in beauty salons.

Just before matches, he’d appear inside the arena bowl dressed in richly-made robes and gowns, and accompanied by a tea-serving manservant who’d perfume the ring and lay out a patch of red carpet on which George would wipe his feet. These entrances could take up to twenty minutes to unfold, and you can imagine how much tension would build in that time. In response to hissing crowds, George would turn up his nose or spit out a dismissive remark, calling the fans “peasants.” But my favorite — and what I think served as a critical, nearly climactic piece of all this trash-talking foreplay — was what he’d shout when it was time for the ref to check the wrestlers for foreign objects, just before the start of a match. As the ref reached for George’s body, he would flinch back and shriek for all to hear, “Take your filthy hands off me!”

I grew up watching 90s NBA hoops and Reggie Miller was always trash talker #1 or #1A with Gary Payton, who you also cover in this book. BUT, you do a deep dive on the real Miller who could talk smack and back it up: Cheryl. You had several conversations with her for this book. What was the most surprising thing she told you about her one-on-one battles with Reggie when they were growing up?

I’m with you. It may just be because I’m a Knicks fan and I absolutely hated him, but Reggie Miller was definitely the type of guy who’d most get under my skin. Gary Payton would come at opposing players with a largely straight-ahead style of aggressive antagonism. But Reggie knew how to needle in ways that would infuriate and linger. Really, I think he was such a great pest because he had so much experience annoying his brothers and sisters — and being annoyed by them. After all, nobody knows how to torment you quite like your siblings.

Getting to spend so much time chatting with Cheryl Miller was one of the thrills of getting to write this book, for sure. Not everything we talked about went into the manuscript, of course, and our conversations went pretty deep at times. At one point, Cheryl even said to me, “Why do I feel like I’m going through therapy?”

In terms of her battles with Reggie, Cheryl would dominate those games, which isn’t the surprising part. She’d also talk plenty of shit to her little brother while she was beating him, which isn’t surprising, either. The thing I was most taken aback by was Cheryl’s admission that Reggie could basically cut her as deeply — if not even deeper — as he did guys like John Starks. Specifically, the thing that Reggie could say that’d get under Cheryl’s skin was calling her a girl. “You’re a girl. You’re a girl and you play like a girl,” he’d say. Cheryl would often respond by increasing her aggressiveness. She’d say, “Okay, Reggie. When I put this elbow in your neck, am I girl? Do I hit like a girl? Do I drive like a girl?”

Cheryl was never one to run away crying — she responded on the court — but she can still remember the feeling of genuine hurt that burned inside of her when Reggie would say these things. As I write in the book, this had nothing to do with not wanting to be a girl; it had everything to do with actually being one. With his verbal digs, Reggie was essentially telling his sister he rejected a part of who she was, labeling it contemptible and insult-worthy. And as a young woman grappling with all sorts of social and biological changes, Cheryl says, “that was hard.”

If you could go in a lab and create the perfect trash talker, what parts of the greatest trash talkers of all time would you use?

I think for me, I’d take Kevin Garnett’s intensity with Larry Bird’s insults and Connor McGregor’s cockiness. Man, that would be one insufferable human to go up against.

Ha! I love this, and I certainly wouldn’t want to compete against your Frankenstein’s monster. I’m going to get a little wild with mine. Let’s start with Satchel Paige and his otherworldly confidence. Paige would not only tell batters what pitch was coming and dare them to hit, but would also at times raise the stakes even higher by calling in his fielders, knowing he’d strike out the side. On top of that, let’s layer Sean Avery’s creativity. Avery was a legitimate menace on the ice, obviously. But I want him for his creative mind: Avery came up with so many novel ways to fuck with guys during games that they had to write new rules to counteract his tactics. Next, let’s go with John Randle’s research skills. In the days before the internet, Randle left no stone unturned in his effort to uncover personal info about his opponents that he could then unleash against them on the football field. Got divorced? Had a DUI? Recovering from offseason surgery? Randle knew allllllll about it.

I also want Philip Rivers’s vocabulary. Rivers was an infamous and pretty damn intense trash talker — he just never said the word “damn.” A god-fearing man, Rivers never cursed, and his aggressively G-rated trash talk was in many ways even more distracting for opponents. “Get ready for daggunnit,” opposing coaches warned their players. Finally, to round things out, I’ll take Gary Payton’s relentlessness (“When you’re done [playing against Gary], you just want to go find a library or something, someplace totally silent,” former teammate Michael Cage once said), longtime NBA heckler Robin Ficker’s booming voice, and Jackie Robinson’s mental toughness. To be a great trash-talker, mental toughness is paramount, and there may be no athlete who was asked to demonstrate more mental toughness or a greater ability to focus under pressure than Jackie Robinson. Plus, in his later years, Robinson became a pretty good bench jockey in his own right.

Should any athlete ever come close to approximating this unholy combination of trash-talk abilities, you’ll probably find me hiding in the library, too...

For the full interview, where we cover Green Beret training, Special Forces stress testing, MMA legend “Who’s Your Daddy, Dempsey”, wrestling promo school and more, read it here. It’s one of my favorite B&B conversations ever:

BICEPS

If I’m being completely and totally honest, my favorite lifting split would be:

DAY 1: Chest/Shoulders

DAY 2: Arms

And that’s it, hahaha. No legs. Maybe some pull-ups for back. No abs. Nothing. Lifting chest, shoulders and arms are fun.

Lifting back, abs, legs and more is work

But the work is where the payoff is, so we lift everything and lately I’ve really forced myself to add high rep leg work after my weekly sprints.

This week, I finished on a really tough superset in the Flex Factory:

1) Heavy Medicine Ball Split Squats: 15 each leg (slow and controlled)

2) Hex Bar Deadlift: 15 reps

Repeat 3 times and feel your legs wobble.

BONUS: Get your very own Flex Factory T-shirt or tank here.

QUICK FLEXES

I miss Blockbuster Video. Don’t you? Here’s my column on why modern kids are missing out:

YOU ASKED FOR IT, YOU GOT IT

INTRODUCING: THE FLEX FACTORY GUN SHOW TANK!

FACT 1: You skip leg day to double up on arm day.

FACT 2: You don't bang out curls and dips and more curls to failure just to hide your pythons under sleeves.

FACT 3: The best way to let the world see your glorious pipes is to lift in, wear everywhere and live in the official Flex Factory Gun Show Tank. Get yours.

Show the world you’re part of the sophisticated meathead crew with the ALL NEW Flex Factory Gun Show Tank (our #1 seller) for 20% off this week using the promo code: BICEPS

Use promo code ‘BICEPS’ to get 20% off:

How to Honor Our Meathead Agreement

In the gym there is an unspoken agreement that if a fellow dude needs a spot you jump in and help, one meathead to another.

If you enjoy reading this newsletter every week, let’s spot each other.

Let’s consider my writing and sending each issue of Books & Biceps my spotting you the best books, interviews and meathead content around.

Your spot to me is that you share this issue with ONE person who you think would like it.

That’s the deal. I spot you. You spot me. Just like the gym. Thanks!

Here’s your personal sharing link to get free stuff for every share:

STRONG LINKS:

1) Want to make extra $$$ freelance writing? Have you always wanted to learn how to write for your favorite publications, blogs or magazines? My Freelance Fortune Course has you covered. Everything I’ve learned in 20 years of writing for the world’s biggest publications like: The New York Times, GQ, Men’s Health, Yahoo! Sports and more.

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3) I know squats, not stocks. I know the QB option, not trading options. I could make more bad analogies, but I won’t. What I will do is share the link to the Bullseye Trades email written every week by world-famous 20-year trading veteran Jeff Bishop. If you’re into getting daily hot stock ideas and learning options trading strategies, this email is for you. Subscribe here.

4) Readers always ask me what supplements I take or what pre-workouts and protein powder I use. I’ve been using the same brand since they launched about a decade ago: Jym Supplements. I’ve known the owner and founder for fifteen years and it’s the best tasting, highest quality stuff around. Try my favorite pre-workout (Blue Arctic Freeze) and protein powder (S’mores) here.

Thank you all for reading and have a phenomenal weekend!

And don’t forget to buy Macho Man! - Jon

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PPS: Hey Gus and Mallory! Thanks for reading the whole thing! No skimming!