Jeremiah Merryman

From The Great Outdoor Fight

1959 Fight Champion. Jeremiah "Reverend" Merryman (1930-2001) was a hard edged, severe man from the deep south. Dressed all in black and wearing a preacher's frock coat, he had a tendency to recite Biblical verses while dealing out truly vicious assaults on his opponents. A participant in four Fights, he is of course best known for his 1959 win.

[edit] Early Life

Raised a strict Independent Fundamentalist Baptist in Alabama, Merryman worked his family's farm from an early age. Taught a strict code of honor based on scripture, and a member of a Church that believed in the Ministry of the Common Man, Merryman had it instilled early on that it was the responsibility of all Christians to preach the Gospel, save souls and fight evil wherever it lurked.

No pacifist, Merryman served a tour in Korea, actively fighting to stop "the Godless spread of Communism" before returning home. Once there, his family long since dead, Merryman sought a place where he could have meaning. Learning of the Great Outdoor Fight, Merryman realized that was it -- a place where men, all too many of them drunkards and fornicators, would come together and do battle would be a fertile ground for Merryman to witness to them. With words if they would listen. With his fists if they would not.

From 1956 through 1959, Merryman acquitted himself well enough. Claiming that the Lord protected him from wickedness and inequity, Merryman waded through the battle preaching and punching. And it is worth noting that none of the men who took him down -- even in the infamous 1958 fight -- could be called wicked or particularly sinful. However, it was 1959 that saw Merryman's mission become one of the great crusades of the Great Outdoor Fight.

[edit] The 1959 Fight

The climate on the Acres was bleak in 1959. For one, the weather was foul, and grey, and cold all three days of the Fight. For another, a pall hung over the Fighters after the controversy of the previous year. Chris Matta's win through bribery. Of particular concern was the fact that two of the three top fighters who accepted Matta's bribes to take falls the previous year, Wilford Geldum and Johnny "Snakeskin" Lakesbin, had managed to avoid the "accidents" that had befallen so many of their fellows and had qualified for the Fight. There was considerable concern that Geldum or Lakesbin would take the Fight that year, and compound in the eyes of many the dishonor they helped Chris Matta foster.

Merryman, who had been eliminated the previous year by a pack of four men obviously paid to take him out when he refused Matta's offer, considered it a sacred duty to see that Geldum and Lakesbin received just payment in blood for their "sinful avarice."

Geldum and Lakesbin, of course, were quite wealthy after the several hundred thousand dollars they were paid to throw the Fight the year before. Despite the dishonor and outcry, they felt that Matta had been on to something. However, rather than pay men to throw the fight, they decided it would be "honorable" to pay two hundred men ten dollars each to join up with them. This gave them a solid army even before they got through the gate, and the Blood Mercenaries, as they were called, were quickly the most dangerous faction on the Acres.

Merryman, on the other hand, offered nothing but his shrill, hard voice, calling out Biblical verses and calling upon his fellow Fighters to rally to a higher cause than victory itself -- the cause of Honor. Merryman's army called themselves the Black Watch, and stood seventy eight strong, including several top contenders. Right from the beginning the Black Watch savagely tore into the Blood Mercenaries. By Day two, the Blood Mercenaries were reduced to less than eighty, while the Black Watch remained forty-seven strong. Almost two to one outnumbered, certainly, but Merryman's followers were all crack fighters, while any number of Geldum and Lakesbin's followers were of lesser caliber.

Geldum and Lakesbin tried to counter this by giving their feast to the Blood Mercenaries on day two. Their thought was to get their followers off the field for several hours, giving them a chance to rest and recover. The Black Watch, on the other hand, refused the feast to a man, from Merryman straight through to the youngest surviving rookie, as "we will not break bread with the likes of them!" Tradition stated that Merryman report to the Snack Tent regardless, and he did so. However, instead of sitting and eating with the Blood Mercenaries or sitting to the side with Geldum and Lakesbin, he stood on a chair and loudly preached to the Blood Mercenaries -- a seven hour sermon promising all those who worship Mammon before the honor of the Lord nothing less than the Lake of Eternal Fire. Merryman's voice was harsh, and could be clearly heard even outside the Snack Tent. Meanwhile, the Black Watch fought off other attackers, their numbers dwindling to nineteen before the Blood Mercenaries exited the Snack Tent.

When the Blood Mercenaries emerged, however, any number of them were in no psychological condition to continue, having been hammered for hours by Merryman's zeal. Though outnumbering the Black Watch almost four to one at this point, and well rested, the Blood Mercenaries still found themselves unable to contain the suicidal frenzy of the Black Watch. By the dawn of day 3, only seven Blood Mercenaries remained, and two of them were Geldum and Lakesbin.

However, of all the Black Watch, only Jeremiah Merryman himself remained. The other nine combatants on the field were not affiliated with either faction.

Merryman was savage, devoting all his time to taking down the Blood Mercenaries one by one with considerable brutality. He was not merely defeating them. He was punishing them for choosing the "dirty money of dishonorable men over the sanctity of honor!" Geldum and Lakesbin themselves hung back, figuring they would let Merryman exhaust himself -- or even be taken out by one of the other fighters.

Eventually, they came down to the Final Nine Left Standing. Geldum and Lakesbin had two Blood Mercenaries left with them. Merryman, though determined, was fatigued -- but likely still able to take the Blood Mercenaries, if not Geldum and Lakesbin themselves. The other four Fighters were among the toughest ever to stand tall on the Acres. The strongest of them was Dwight Berkheimer, the Blood of Champion son of Dylan Berkheimer and participating in his sixth Fight in his own right. The remaining Blood Mercenaries collected Berkheimer and made him an offer -- one thousand dollars each from Geldum and Lakesbin if Berkheimer would take down Merryman.

Berkheimer was far from wealthy, and with a new wife and a child on the way he hardly could discount two thousand dollars -- that was much of a year's salary for the young fisherman. He stared at Lakesbin and Geldum long and hard before replying, "I'm sorry, Wilford. Two thousand dollars isn't nearly enough money for my soul." He then launched an attack. The four men worked in concert, tearing Berkheimer down quickly, but in the process were distracted long enough that Merryman could come up behind Cold Hands Coleman, perhaps the strongest of the Blood Mercenaries outside of Geldum and Lakesbin themselves, and break his neck.

With that, the final seven were launched into battle. Geldum and Lakesbin were able to eliminate the final two unaffiliated fighters, while Merryman savagely and efficiently killed their last two hired Blood Mercenaries. In the end, it came to the three of them.

Geldum and Lakesbin had not seriously fought through the three days, of course. That was why they had hired the Blood Mercenaries. Merryman, on the other hand, had fought savagely the whole time, except for the seven hours he had spent standing up and ranting his sermon at the Blood Mercenaries. He was ragged and tired.

Geldum walked up to the preacher and (reportedly) said "look, you made your point, boy. Now let me make mine. Ten thousand dollars -- five from me, five from ol' Snakeskin here. You could save a lotta souls with ten thousand dollars, boy. A whole lotta souls."

Merryman stared the man in the eye for a long moment, and then began to speak -- quietly at first, but then louder and louder he spoke. "The Lord Jesus Christ said to us upon the Mount, boy! And there he said 'Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal! But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal! For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also! The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light! But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness! If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness! No man can serve two masters! for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and Mammon!"

At that point, he thrust his finger towards Kenneth's Gate. "Let me break it down for you, son! Three thousand come in through Kenneth's Gate! One walks back out through that gate! For all the rest, it's the Crane!" He shifted, stabbing his finger in Geldum's face. "And that Crane's waitin' to throw you into Hell!"

Geldum swung but Merryman ducked under. Reaching up, he thrust his hand into Geldum's mouth and tore his jaw off. "As Sampson fought his enemies with the jaw of an ass, so I fight mine with the jaw of an asshole!" he shouted, and proceeded to beat Geldum to death with his own jaw. (A maneuver now known as the Sampson Assault.)

Lakesbin attacked on the other side with a savage leg kick that broke Merryman's leg in three places, piercing the skin. Merryman braced on his good leg and hurled himself at Lakesbin, driving the sharp part of the edge of Geldum's mandible up through the bottom of Lakesbin's own jaw and into his sinuses. "God locked the Lion's jaw for Daniel!" he shouted, locking his hands around Lakesbin's throat and squeezing. "Seems I can do the same with a snake!" (This takedown is now known as Merryman's Daniel Closure.)

Holding on until Lakesbin's convulsions stopped and his body began to cool, Merryman fell backwards and cried out "It is done!" before passing out, the Last Man Standing.

[edit] After the Fight

Merryman's injury healed, somewhat, but the bone was weak and twisted, and Merryman needed to walk with a cane for the rest of his days. This marked the end of his days on the Acres, though he attended the Fight as an observer every year until his death in 2001. A kind of contentment came over Merryman following his victory in 1959. He felt that though there was still much work to be done, he had saved not just the Fight's reputation but its very soul. Even before the Jeeps had become well known as the enforcers of 'sportsmanlike' combat, Merryman had exacted a very public justice for Matta's crimes.

In 1961, a now old Logan Ingalls -- the 1922 Champion and the third top fighter (along with Geldum and Lakesbin) to accept Matta's large bribe to exit the 1958 Fight early -- showed his face at the Fight for the first time since that dark day. Enduring an overtly cold and hostile crowd, he sought out Merryman and asked Merryman's public forgiveness.

Merryman smiled slightly, looking the old man in the eye, and proceeded to drive his cane into Ingalls's stomach, doubling him over. He then sharply slammed his cane down onto Ingalls's back, driving him to the floor. "Forgiveness comes from God, not Man," he said in a loud voice. "And God listens better when you're on your knees." Ingalls managed to stagger out of Tower One and made his way to a nearby hotel, where he was found the next morning having committed suicide by forcing eighty pages of a Gideon Bible down his own throat.

In 1963, Merryman was offered a chance to lead a prayer before the Fight started. Told he had three minutes, Merryman launched into a six hour prayer over the loudspeakers, which involved sermons, life lessons, many quotes from Scripture and at least one recipe for grits. Mindful of Merryman's place in the lore of the Fight, the Organizers let him pray as long as he wished, quietly opening Kenneth's Gate and waving the fighters in after the first ten minutes. That year, over 1,300 men were eliminated during Merryman's prayer. The Organizers never offered Merryman the chance again.

Merryman lived a long, if somewhat austere life, passing away in his sleep in 2001.

[edit] Record

• 1956 - eliminated day 2, 916th left standing.
• 1957 - eliminated day 3, 84th left standing.
• 1958 - eliminated day 1, 2,195th left standing.
• 1959 - Champion, Last Man Standing.

[edit] Quotes

• "It is done!" -Jeremiah Merryman, at the end of the 1959 Fight.
• "Huh. Looks like Reverend Merryman finally found a good way to shut Snakeskin up," -Young Jude Surrency, after the 1959 Fight.
• "Ricky, if this dumb sonuvabitch doesn't shut up in the next ten minutes, you know what to do." - Young Jude Surrency to Rico Petelli at the 5:59 mark of Merryman's 1963 sermon.