Dylan Berkheimer

From The Great Outdoor Fight

1931 Champion. Though a fair enough champion of the Fight, Dylan Berkheimer is best remembered in popular culture after his and his victory was in an episode of the original Star Trek entitled "The Great Out-Temporal Fight." He was portrayed on the episode by Dade Waters.

In the episode, Kirk, Spock and McCoy travel back to 1931 and participate in the Great Outdoor Fight. They intervene to ensure Berkheimer -- a tall, handsome, honorable man -- wins the Fight "as history decreed" against the despicable Tor Babcock. Kirk is placed in a moral quandary when Babcock is eliminated early, and has to take his place. In the end, Berkheimer defeats Kirk (in part thanks to a sedative Kirk injected into himself to slow his reactions and make it certain Berkheimer would win without it looking like Kirk threw the fight).

In reality, Tor Babcock was not particularly villainous, and Dylan Berkheimer was not particularly virtuous -- or tall and handsome, for that matter. Oh, Berkheimer was tall enough, but thin, with a severe face and a hook nose. He had been raised as a Cape Cod fisherman and had been in plenty of scrapes growing up, and he believed quite firmly that "walking away from a fight by any means beat lying dead in a gutter with your honor." He had a decent enough reputation going into 1931, having been the veteran of six Fights before. While he had done well enough in those previous Fights, his only significant contribution to Fight history up to that point was when Bigger Bill Kayser punched him into the path of an oncoming motorbike operated by the Gurneymen. Kayser protested, after the Fight, that he hadn't meant to get Berkheimer run over -- the "bike just got in Berkheimer's way!" Rather than protest, Berkheimer stood up for Kayser, saying that he had been eliminated from the moment Kayser punched him, regardless of where he landed.

It was that incident, interestingly enough, that caught the attention of amateur Fight student and screenwriter Jacob Stoltz in 1969. Stoltz thought that the incident made Berkheimer sound honorable to a fault, and so he decided to base his Star Trek episode around the Fight Berkheimer won.

In the Fight, Berkheimer's strategies were relatively standard. He gathered his forces, used them effectively, fed them on day two, giving up his own feast and thereby holding their loyalties a little longer, and expending them as necessary on day three. When the field got down to the 12 left standing, however, it was seven lone fighters -- and Tor Babcock and four of his toughest iron men. The seven, realizing none of them wanted to be the sixth man against those five, turned their attentions to eliminated Babcock and the iron men. This was successful, and the group went into the 6 left standing as independents.

Babcock was the last of his group to survive, however, and he was carefully able to set up situations where his enemies turned on each other instead of him. In the end, it came down to Berkheimer and Babcock.

The pair spent five minutes catching their breath and preparing, by unspoken mutual consent, and then engaged in a fight that lasted a good twenty minutes. There were no sudden takedowns or killing blows, just a slugfest where they sought to wear each other down, beating on one another until one fell. That one was Tor Babcock, and Dylan Berkheimer was the Champion.

Berkheimer never returned to the Fight, choosing instead to retire on top. He married June Merch and had a son, Dwight Berkheimer. Dwight entered the 1954 Fight as Blood of Champion, and proceeded to join each of the next seven Fights -- one of few B.O.C. to enter more than one Fight. Berkheimer himself enjoyed being a part of the Fight behind the scenes, and acted both as a commentator and as an officiant at different times.

Dylan Berkheimer and his wife passed away in 1967, when their sailboat capsized in Cape Cod and they drowned. It would be two years later that the episode of Star Trek would air, making Dylan Berkheimer one of the most famous Champions of his era.

[edit] Record

• 1925 - eliminated day 2, 442nd left standing.
• 1926 - eliminated day 1, 1,244th left standing.
• 1927 - eliminated day 3, 35th left standing.
• 1928 - eliminated day 3, 15th left standing.
• 1929 - eliminated day 3, 21st left standing.
• 1930 - eliminated day 3, 9th left standing.
• 1931 - Champion, Last Man Standing.