Me, I’m not about change - said the guy who was single living in a po-dunk east Texas town three years ago and is now married with a child in Arizona.

So maybe I am about change. But not in sports. And especially not with team names. That’s something that’s sacred and not to be taken lightly.

When the biggest laughingstock in baseball, the Tampa Bay DEVIL Rays, dropped the Devil from their name, I laughed. The worst franchise in pro sports history - except for maybe the Vancouver/Memphis Grizzlies - think a name change will help.

Well, the Devil Rays are winning, and it’s not because of a name change. It’s just a silly hook the club came up with to do the media’s job for it - and it’s working. If you read the sidebar in that link, you’ll notce the thing abut the $1 donation they dmand every time the term Devil Rays is used instead of Rays.

But a Devil Ray is fearsome. Heck, a Devil Ray is solid, unlike a Ray, which presumably means a ray of light looking at their knew logo.  So I’m offering a dollar donation to my favorite charity (The Let’s Buy Eddie a PS3 So He Can Finally Buy Grand Theft Auto 4 Foundation) for every time a media member DOES say Devil Rays.

And its not just the D-Rays. Same thing with the Angels. It’s bad enough they want to be the L.A. Angels, but the L.A. Angels of  is ludicrous. And damnit, its still the Washington Bullets!

Well, as that note in the last blog indicated, the big fight is off. Which is too bad.

Apparently, according to the legal department of The Sun’s parent company, there are two big problems with this fight - a massive increase in our workers’ comp should I be injured is one. The other is pretty strange (I’d insult it, but I don’t want to be sued). Apparently, I can be sued if I hurt someone too badly in the ring of a boxing tournament where the goal is to hurt someone badly. And, by extension, the paper can be sued.

So instead, we’ll be following David Encias. He’s never competed in a boxing tournament before, although he has been training for years. Like me, he’s in the heavyweight division. Unlike me, he knows what he’s doing.

So keep an eye out for updates.

It’s so hard not to talk about Michael Waltrip. I mean, recently it seems like every time we turn around, he’s in the headlines for one reason or another.

The most recent controversy swirling around Mikey involves his being “parked” by NASCAR for intentionally ramming into, and then pushing Casey Mears down the track following a wreck that involved the same two drivers Saturday night at Richmond.

Translated, that means Mikey was told to go home, that he wasn’t welcomed to play anymore with the big boys at Richmond.

And then he comes out on Monday during testing at Lowe’s Motor Speedway and says, ” … I lost my cool for a split second and ran into the back of (Mears).”

Mikey, Mikey, Mikey, you pushed him down the track for a few hundred yards. That’s a bit more then a “split second.”

But that’s not all. Mikey also said, “I’ve never gotten parked before. I read in the paper where people got parked, but I didn’t know how you did that. Now I do.”

What? Really? You’ve got to be kidding me.
Maybe it was tongue in cheek, I don’t know. But my first reaction was he believes he’s never done anything wrong, until now. My second reaction was he’s trying to make us believe he doesn’t hang around the type of driver who might or has been parked, hence, he didn’t know what it takes to get parked.

Give me a break! He hangs out in the NASCAR garage, and so does Kevin Harvick, and Robby Gordon, who, as we all know, have both been parked, so Mikey must have a clue as to what’s going on when NASCAR tells you it’s had enough of your antics for one day, or night, or whatever.

The disturbing part is, if Mikey was just screwing with us, making light of the situation, that’s even more serious. I mean, first of all, I don’t believe any penalty handed down by the front office should be taken lightly.

Secondly, he was off the track for the last 58 laps, which calculates to somewhere around 60 points lost in the NASCAR Sprint Cup standings. And if he thinks NAPA or some of his other sponsors are laughing at or are happy with that little development, well, then I just don’t know what I’m talking about.

Lastly, I’d like nothing more than to see his happy, smiling face replaced by someone else on Speed TV’s “This Week In NASCAR.”

Note: Due to legal reasons, I am not going to be allowed to fight in the event. But, hey, I had this written already. So here’s the last installment, unfortunately, of Eddie’ Boxing Adventure. It’s too bad. Because I coulda been someone. I coulda been a contender.

“Quote me on this: the odds are stacked heavily against you, even against amateurs who have never fought.”

That’s Chance Farrar, MMA expert talking on behalf of his Arizona Athletic Club. They’re training me, in two scant weeks, to box in a Bad Boy Boxing Tournament at Paradise Casinos on May 17.

Also up here at the top, I want to stress the Farrar, Haile and everyone at AAC want me to train non-stop for the next two weeks - two sessions a day, six days a week. Of course, I’m a working man and a new father, so I wasn’t able to devote that much time - though I plan on more than four session, which was my first mind.

After talking with Farrar and Haile, I immediately became scared. I thought I was in for more than I could handle.

“I foresee a clobbering. The two guys from this gym will knock you on you’re ass in 1 minute,” Farrar said. “Then when you try to get up, they’ll knock you back down.”

So why on Earth am I still going through with this?

Aside from the issues covered in yesterday’s blog, I did come to find out while I may get the tar beat out of me, serious injury is not a possible outcome.

“The way to get hurt in boxing is a sustained amount of blows over the course of time,” Farrar said. “That’s just not going to happen. Even if we beat the (feces) out of you for two weeks, you’d still not suffer any long-term effects from it.”

So the discussion with Farrar and Haile focused mainly on the fact I’m going to get my butt whupped. Bad. And, really, I knew that. And with no serious injury possibilities, still count me in.

But can I at least look good?

“The odds of you coming out okay - and you’re going to be fine because there’s head gear, there’s protective gear - but the odds of you coming out ‘Hey, you looked good in there, you almost had the guy,’ are slim.”
And I’ll be bruised. Battered. Maybe bloodied a little.

“You have to remember, with head gear on or not, with big gloves, you don’t have potential for serious injury, but you could get knocked out,” Farrar said. “Which again, is a quasi-concussion. Serious injury, probably not. But you could get a little hurt. I don’t anticipate that if you come in every day.”
So that’s where I am. Gearing up for a smackdown. But I’m learning a skill - how to beat the bloody hell out of someone - plus I’m building some character. And let’s face it, this is multimedia gold.
Farrar said that it takes six months to learn to box. It takes two months to prepare for fight. It takes six years to become proficient.

See y’all in two weeks.

Right now, I have about 35 minutes of interviews sitting on my recorder.

These interviews are with Chance Farrar and Anthony Haile, the frontmen of the Arizona Athletic Club, as well as with two of their boxing trainers.

These interviews, however, are staying on my recorder. Because after the interviews, I had my first training session. And I can barely type this, let alone transcribe interviews.

Let me back up. On May 17, Paradise Casinos is hosting a Bad Boy Boxing Tournament, put on by Felko Promotions. It’s not professional. It’s not even amateur. People entered in the event have extremely limited -as in mostly zero - tournament experience.

So when my editor Scott approached me with the idea of doing a story, I asked if he meant following a boxer training, or doing it myself. He asked if I was willing to do it, and I responded, “Why not?”

I guess I should point out, I don’t like pro boxing and have never taken any boxing classes or lessons in my life. And because of my deceptively fat frame, I’m going to be a heavyweight.

Here we are a week later. I am fresh back from the AAC from what was supposed to be a talking session with Farrar and Haile. But when they got with me, they told me I need to train every day for the next two weeks until the event. I had planned on four sessions in that stretch.
Needless to say, the word naive came up. And they were right.

So they put me in training right away. I had no workout clothes, I had to work out in my business attire. And what did I learn?

Well, I already I knew I was uncoordinated. I knew I was out of shape. I knew I was weak. I knew my body looks like an albino eggplant. I know I’ve had a nagging cough for like two months. I figured I’d learn a defensive pose or two and pray for the 3 minutes - three 1-minute rounds - and hope not to suffer a serious injury.

Wrong.

One of the boxing instructors, Joey (I swear I’ll get his last name once I transcribe my notes) told me that the best defense is a good offense.
So I tried to learn basic punches. The jab, the power punch, the hook. I can’t throw a hook. Well, maybe I can. But the lesson on the hook came 30 minutes into my session. And at that point, my body would have made Bill Cosby proud - it was made of Jell-O.

I had jumped rope already. Well, I’m so uncoordinated I had to mime the rope. And after 4 minutes, I crashed and basically stood still for the last 2 minutes of the session.

Then came the punching bag. Apparently, the key in boxing is quick, snapping punches like a rubber band, then returning your hand to a defensive position. When you throw more than one punch in a combo, your first hand should be back in a defensive position before your second hand strikes.

And if you think that’s a convoluted sentence, try putting it into practice - and at fast enough a speed to still defend yourself from the other guy doing the same.
By the time I spent 10 minutes on the treadmill, I was thankful, considering that a rest. And I know my workout was, oh, 5 percent of a “real” boxer’s workout.

I came into this taking it lightly. But after talking to the crew at AAC, I found out I have two choices, and coincidently they rhyme: Quit or Commit.
Well, I’m not a quitter.

So over the course of the next two weeks, I’ll be blogging all about my experience doing this. But that’s not all. There will, at various points, be newspaper articles, podcasts, photo galleries, video and every other multimedia tool we have at our disposal chronicling my journey.
Originally, I was trying to win one fight. Now I see that was beyond naive - it was the stupidest thought ever hatched in the history of mankind.

Now, I just want to last 3 minutes, and not look like a rank amateur. And it’s going to take more than four sessions to do so. It’s going to be a personal test of my will - because frankly, I’m a lazy, lazy man.
But if I can put in the training to do this, commit to this all the way, it will make me a better husband, better father, and just a better person.

A better person, that is, with some pretty nasty bruises. But to quote the greatest football movie ever: Wounds heal, chicks dig scars, glory lasts forever.
(Yes, that was Keanu in The Replacements and yes, it was sarcasm.)

Coming Friday: What the professionals think of this challenge.