The Tribune

THIS Sunday we all bore witness to quite the spectacle between Carolina Panthers cornerback Josh Norman and New York Giants wide receiver Odell Beckham Jr.

In no way, shape or form am I condoning their actions; what both of them did to each other was clearly wrong and way out of line and has no place in the NFL ... oh but how entertaining it was.

The WWE and its entire writing team had nothing on this.

In fact, I had such a good laugh at the whole debacle it got my mind wandering back to the mid-1990s to another ‘instant classic’ - a brawl between another braggadocio, vociferous CB and a certain mercurial WR.

Mind you, it lacked the ‘aerial’ maneouvres of Sunday but it made up for it with a trailer load of fisticuffs and ‘blows being t’rown’.

Deion ‘Primetime’ Sanders v Andre ‘Bad Moon’ Rison, 1994.

It took place in the Georgia Dome. Former Falcon all-pro CB Deion Sanders, now the prize off-season acquisition of the San Fransisco 49ers, going up against his former Atlanta teammates. Especially one all-pro WR, Andre Rison.

These two had battled for years in practice, so they should have been all too familiar with each other. Somehow Rison allowed ‘Deion’ to get in his head and get him completely off his game.

Rison was no slouch in the ‘trash talking’ department either, and he managed to fire back some juicy tidbits of his own, which in turn had Sanders fired up. No one talks back to and down to ‘Primetime’.

For varying yet all too similar reasons these two pros were seething, and after countless bumps, shoves, head slaps, trips, bites, scratches and lots off ‘blah, blah, blah, blah, blah’ the pressure was too much. And almost as if it were scripted, after the QB said ‘hike’ neither Sanders nor Rison ran the play that was called. Instead they just squared off toe-to-toe like two veteran ‘pugilists’ and proceeded to ‘duke’ it out.

It didn’t last long. ‘Primetime’ landed a viscous head slap followed by a barrage of well placed and landed left-right combinations that left ‘Bad Moon’ far from rising. It was more like a lunar eclipse!

Rison landed his first two punches, then proceeded to turn into a punching bag, taking an onslaught of Sanders’ blows before the Head Linesman mercifully stepped in and stopped it.

Needless to say the 49ers won the contest in a blowout.

That wasn’t the only hit Rison took that season. After the loss to Sanders, Rison proceeded to lose his then girlfriend Lisa ‘Left Eye’ Lopes to a bitter break-up in which she torched his Atlanta mansion. He was then cut from the Falcons due to a dispute with management.

Ultimately Rison rebounded, signing as a free agent late in the season with the Green Bay Packers, helping them to win the Super Bowl the following year against the Patriots. Rison also had a long touchdown reception from Brett Favre in that Super Bowl, letting him go out on top in his last year in the NFL.

So I guess ‘Primetime’ won that battle, and ‘Bad Moon’ the war.

Until next week, “if you are going to talk the talk, be prepared to walk the walk.”

Merry Christmas to you all!

• Naughty presents ‘Mischief and Mayhem in da AM’ from 6am to 10am, Monday to Friday and ‘The Press Box’ sports talk show on Sunday from 10am to 1pm, on KISS FM 96.1. Comments and questions to izenicazelaya@tribunemedia.net