Nothing entertains me more than Steven Seagal’s wild claims, like having invented the front kick, or correctly predicting every UFC fight. But credit where credit’s due, he did get sort-of thanked by both Lyoto Machida and Anderson Silva, for sort of kinda teaching them a kick they mostly already knew. Recently, Seagal showed up to UFC 139 to watch Jon Jones, whom Seagal calls “a friend,” despite Jones declining Seagal’s offer to train him before the fight. I don’t want to take Seagal-Kun out of context, but he did repeat the “friend” thing like three times. Here’s a partial transcript of his interview with Ariel Helwani after the fight:

[answering Helwani's question about why Seagal was there] “These guys are my friends too, I’m just teachin em, but they’re my friends too.”
Helwani: I noticed him [Jones] go for the front kick to the face there, did you see that as well?
Seagal: Yeah, him and I did talk about that, but he… he… hasn’t, you know, he hasn’t learned it yet. [laughing] And I haven’t taught it.
Helwani: When did you speak to him?
Seagal: Uh, yesterday? Day before yesterday?
Helwani: Wow, so you actually have a relationship with Jon Jones?
Seagal: Well, he’s a kind of a friend.
Helwani: How do you think Jones would match up against Anderson Silva? What do you think about that fight?
Seagal: I don’t really want to see that fight. Because Anderson’s a close, close friend, and Jon’s a friend… I’d rather that they don’t fight.

With that in mind, here’s what Jon Jones told Jim Rome yesterday:

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I realize many film blog-readers such as yourself probably don’t follow sweaty man-hugging as closely as I do, such that when I posted this picture of Steven Seagal at the weigh-ins for UFC 129 a few months back, many people thought it was Photoshopped. It was not. Trust me, thanks to teaching Anderson Silva a few (illegal) eye gouges and neck strikes, and eventually getting thanked in Lyoto Machida’s post-fight speech, Steven Seagal considers himself a UFC trainer, perhaps as fervently as he considers himself an honorary Russian or a blues musician. Seagal has been close to the Silva, Machida, and the Nogueira brothers’ Black House camp for some time now. None of them were fighting at UFC 135 on Saturday, but Seagal showed up anyway. He tried to talk to light heavyweight champ Jon Jones before the fight, but Jones declined out of respect to his trainers, Jones says. Luckily, Seagal was still on hand for a post-fight interview with Ariel Helwani (who tweeted that Seagal dictated the specific angle he be shot from), and it is a masterpiece of Steven Seagalyness.

Click to the 35-second mark to see one of my all-time favorite Seagal interview moments.

HELWANI: Was that how you expected the main even to go, Jon Jones submitting Rampage?

SEAGAL: (without a moment’s hesitation) Oh yeah. (scoffing) Definitely.

HELWANI: Really, why so?

SEAGAL: (flabbergasted that he could even be asked such a question) Uh, because I think I have a pretty good eye.

My God. Just look at his face as he answers that question. Have you ever seen such confidence?

Not only is he convinced that he predicted the winner and the method of the fight, and not because of luck or a gut feeling, he KNOWS beyond the shadow of a doubt that his psychic martial arts powers make him an INFALLIBLE PROGNOSTICATOR. To the point that he is legitimately surprised that a person might have to ask how he could know such a thing. He scoffs sadly at Ariel Helwani as if to say, “Are my psychic abilities not obvious to all? Clearly I must be talking to a child.”

You know, we have a lot of fun with Steven Seagal. His unique physiological reactions, his inability to keep track of space and time, his ornate saddles, his sleeveless kimonos and songs about poonani. I could go on. For pages. But in all honesty, confidence this unshakeable is almost a superpower.

[via AOL]

Back in March, I told you about how Steven Seagal (filming for Steven Seagal: Lawman) was on hand for a raid in which Arizona police brought the SWAT team, four armored vehicles, and a tank (in which Seagal was riding) to break up a suspected cockfighting ring. If it seems like a slight case of overkill, call it a rare lapse in good judgment for the department who deputized an overweight former actor with a unique physiological reaction to arousal who can’t keep track of space and time. At the time, Seagal told local news, “Animal cruelty is one of my pet peeves.”

Well sure. I bet it’s right up there with mortality and light mayo. Unfortunately, the raid was a disaster. The suspect, Jesus Sanchez Llovera, was home alone and unarmed at the time, and 115 chickens had to be euthanized on the spot (whether by front kick or otherwise, it’s still unclear). Now Sanchez says he’s innocent, and that he was only raising the chickens for show (mm hmm, show chickens, sure, buddy). He claims his 11-month-old puppy was shot and killed during the raid, and wants $100,000 from Seagal and the Maricopa County Sheriff’s department run by Joe Arpaio.

The notice of claim is the first step towards a lawsuit — and Jesus’ lawyer tells us his client is demanding $100,000 for the damage and he wants Seagal to issue a “formal written apology” to his children “for the death of their 11-month old puppy, a beloved family pet.” [TMZ]

New York Post-ready headline? STEVEN SEAGAL KILLS JESUS’S PUPPY. Eat your heart out, Chuck Norris facts.

No, that’s not Photoshopped. My penchant for Seagal ‘shops notwithstanding, you can believe this is the real deal, because I hadn’t heard the name “Joe the Plumber” in so long that I’d forgotten he existed. Sadly, he’s still around, has a Facebook page, and posted this picture of himself with Steven Seagal, taken at an Arizona Republican fundraiser a few weeks ago. So, Steven Seagal is a Republican? I’d never heard anything about it before now, but knowing that he’s a Buddhist Irish Jew from Fullerton who considers himself Russian and wears sleeveless kimonos while playing blues music about loving poonani, I can believe anything. It’s quite possible they just saw him front-kick a few Mexicans in his movies and figured he was good peeps.

In other Seagal Watch news, there’s a new fat Lawman in town, and his name is Butterbean. Despite weighing 416 pounds, ‘Bean still managed to climb atop Seagal’s shoulders to promote his new show at the television critics awards. Luckily, Seagal’s back is very strong from his training with Shaolin monks in the 5th and/or 27th centuries (get it? because Steven Seagal doesn’t keep track of space or time too well? Jesus, these Seagal posts need annotations).

The fighter, whose uniform has “Deputy Butterbean” stitched into it as the camera follows him on the job, wants viewers to realize that he’s not a flash in the pan law reality star like other celebrities, like Seagal’s Lawman and Erik Estrada’s Armed & Famous, who have joined law enforcement ranks for the camera.
“I was deputized before the show even happened,” Esch said Friday during the series’ stop at the Television Critics’ Association summer press tour in Beverly Hills.
Deputy Adam Hadder, his partner on the Sheriff’s Narcotics Unit in Jasper, notes that Butterbean is not a flash in the pan and that his hometown celebrity status helps a lot.
“It draws attention to our department,” Hadder noted, adding that it helps in fighting the town’s drug problem. “I don’t think people took the Seagal show serious because he didn’t live there.”
“It’s not all about arresting people and throwing them in jail,” Esch noted. “It’s about trying to make a difference where we live.” [THR]

Yeah, yeah, it’s different because you’re a real cop. You’re all real cops, we get it. By the way, have you seen most local cops? It’s not as as impressive as you think it is. Kind of like me telling girls I’m a blogger at parties. Call me when you bring a tank to break up a cockfight.

It’s a bit of a slow news day today, so I thought I’d take this opportunity to catch you up on our favorite film/martial arts/music/TV/poonani personality, Steven Seagal, who’s always fascinating, whether he’s campaigning for immortality research or bringing a tank to a cockfight. The AV Club recently sat down with veteran character actor Steven Tobolowsky (NED RYERSON! BING!), who related a story about working with Seagal on The Glimmer Man, whom he met through director John Gray, with whom he’d worked on a 1991 TV movie called the Marla Hanson Story. We pick up with Tobolowsky describing his audition, which was at Seagal’s house for some reason:

[Gray] called me and said that I had to audition for Steven for the part of the serial killer.

So I show up at Steven’s home on Stone Canyon Road. My audition was at 10 a.m. And I sat in his living room, which was filled with saddles. Saddles. All over the place. Like, ornate saddles. And I waited until 12:30. Steven came downstairs. He had been asleep.
[...]
They wanted me to shoot one of the first days of shooting. They called me at 7 in the morning, which I’m used to, but the crew call was 9. So I came in two hours early. The reason they wanted me two hours early was that they wanted to discuss hair with the hairdresser. But because I was bald, the hairdresser didn’t come in, so I was stuck waiting in the parking lot for someone to show up for two hours.

When, finally, people showed up, John Gray came in and told me in a panic that Steven Seagal wanted to rewrite the script. He decided it was bad for his karma to constantly be killing people in movies, so he didn’t want to kill me anymore. And I said, “Well, it’s important in the script that he kills me, because I’m, like, a serial killer.” And he said, “Don’t get into it with him. He believes it hurts his karmic development if he were to kill people.” And Warner Brothers is furious, because they told Steven, “Steven, we hired you because you’re good at killing people. And you know, you dance with who brung you. We’re not casting you to do a peace-loving cop, we’re casting you to murder people.”

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