Dudley Ray Saltser

From The Great Outdoor Fight

Born in 1953 to a grizzled warehouse worker and a woman of ill repute, Dudley Ray Saltser grew up in the streets of Chicago. A hustler and two-bit thug from the age of 14, "D.R." made a name for himself working for the east street gang with his expertise in bone-snapping.

Saltser saw his first Great Outdoor Fight in 1973, invited to view from Tower 1 by friend of the family Branden Manuel Bousum. Inspired by Rodney Leonard Stubbs' rampage across the Acres, Saltser left his criminal life behind for the life of a fighter.

D.R. began training vigorously and entered the 1975 fight. He fought a long and hard first day, eliminating sixteen men and a woman before having his arm torn off by Raymond Marlowe. Remarkably, rumor says he flung Marlow ontop of the fence, where Marlow's own arm became ensnared and torn free. D.R. shortly passed out from blood loss, and was removed from the Acres.

After his defeat Saltser all but disappeared till qualifying rounds in 1981. The now 31 year old Saltser claimed to of gone on a long walk after his elimination, and returned with refined fighting spirit.

Since returning he had acquired a prosthetic arm, crafted from solid oak. Many of his competitors argued the arm was a weapon, but after deliberation the Ruling Body allowed him to continue to wear his arm in the fight.

Some have tried to credit his brutality and numerous eliminations on Day One to the dreaded dutch fugue, but all those he eliminated survived. Many would remark on the unsettling calm Saltser displayed as he laid into them. In all, D.R. eliminated a hundred and seventy-three men on his first day.

Though he did not actively court an army, a band of some thirty men followed Dudley by the end of Day One, on Day Two he used his share of the turkey and whiskey to cull the herd, offering it to "Which ever of you what need it." and then eliminating any of those who did.

Day Three brought with it a torrential downpour, leaving the Acres little more then a mud hole. None the less, by four in the afternoon only Saltser and Freddie King (BOC, son of Dino King) remained in the Acres. The fight went down just below Tower One, and though King snapped Saltser's prosthetic in two, Saltser used the broken fist and his stump to beat King into bloody submission. After an ill-dvised referance to Saltser's mother being a prostitute (While true, not something one brings up in polite converstation) Saltser planted his broken prosthetic fist into King as a suppository, and King later died days later due to complications in surgery.

Though the Ruling Body has awarded Dudley Ray Saltser the record for Most Contestants Dispatched By A Single Contestant Without a Fatality (two hundred and four men), he blamed himself for King's death. He was found by the maid of the Sleep Easy motel just outside Bakersfield a week after the fight, dead from alcohol poisoning.

Dudley Ray's snapped prosthetic arm remains in the Great Outdoor Fight museum as a gristly memento of the fighter, the fist still stained with King's blood.

[edit] Record

• 1975- Eliminated on Day 1, 1419th Man Standing
• 1981- Champion, Last Man Standing

[edit] Quotes

• "Any sonuvabitch that gets his ass handed to him by a sonuvabitch with one arm, and has the tenacity to whine about it deserves to have had his ass handed to him." Young Jude Surrency, after hearing complaints of Dudley Ray's prosthetic arm.

• "There be somethin' surriosly wrong wit a man who takes time 'nuff ta maim yah, insted a just killin ya. No fugue does that, He's jus' a pissed man wit goals."- Jae Mesoloras, 1975 competiter, eliminated by Dudley Ray