At 35 years old, Los Angeles Clipper turned Memphis Grizzly Matt Barnes is entering the twilight of his career, averaging his lowest points-per-36-minutes in a decade last season and clinging to relevance like a wiry, tattooed José Canseco. So, of course, now is the perfect time for him to challenge Thunder big man Serge Ibaka — who stands 6 feet 10 inches tall, weighs 245 lbs., and is in world-class athletic condition — to a good, old-fashioned squabble.
Barnes and Ibaka have a history of being meanies to one another, as demonstrated by this heated kerfuffle back in the 2013 NBA Playoffs. But the idea of an organized quarrel to settle their differences once and for all seemed highly unlikely — that is, until Barnes’ appearance on ESPN’s (truly awful) SportsNation program on Tuesday.
“Me and Serge can fight right now if he was here. I just don’t like him,” Barnes said. “He’s got that air about him that he’s the toughest guy on the planet. He’s not.”
Ibaka, who honestly actually might be the toughest guy on the planet, responded in a way tough men often do: with a tweet.
@danawhite @ufc are you interested? LOL https://t.co/tgXNbDxBPq
— Serge Ibaka (@sergeibaka9) July 21, 2015
Unfortunately, Barnes is more likely to win a scoring title than he is to step in the ring with Dr. Nasty. Because, as we all know, Ibaka would absolutely destroy him. The question becomes, then, “How badly would he destroy him?” Well, we’re leaving that up to you, our loyal Oxford Karma readers, to decide. Since Mortal Kombat GIFs cannot be included as poll answers, we’ve narrowed it down to the following options:
Photo by Keith Allison is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Based on a work at https://www.flickr.com/photos/keithallison/.
