Do You Remember Rufus Hannah?
I was on the internet today doing my daily search for Radass material when I ran across this guy named Rufus Hannah. My son Ryan was sitting next to me at the time and said, “is that Rufus? He’s still alive?” I had no idea who this dude was but now my interest was sparked. I asked Ryan who Rufus was. He said he was famous for being a Bum Fighter. Rufus did “Jackass-Like” videos running into signs hurting himself or fighting other homeless and hurting them. To Ryan’s surprise, Rufus was still alive.
I then search the net to find out more about this Rufus dude. What I found was sad and disturbing. Rufus and other homeless people were being paid $5-$10 for stunts they performed for a group of six punk-ass teenagers, who made Bumfights Videos and posted them on Youtube. The stunts included things like riding a shopping cart down a flight of stairs to ramming heads into steel doors. Rufus was also paid to fight another homeless man by the name of Donnie Brennan. Donnie was hurt so bad in the fight that he required surgery to repair the two places his leg was broken in. Both men were also paid to get “Bumfights” tattoos. Hannah’s tattoo was on the knuckles of both hand while Brennan’s was plastered on his forehead.
Now the good news:
Rufus has been sober since 2003. He is now a property manager and spends 40 hours a week on the job painting apartments, constructing fences, and many other things. He has a goal of one day to be able to remove the ‘Bum Fights’ tattoo from his knuckles. In 2010 he co-wrote a book with Barry Soper entitled ‘A Bum Deal: An Unlikely Journey from Hopeless to Humanitarian’ detailing his ordeal from becoming a homeless alcoholic, his time during the filming of Bumfights and his struggle to get sober.
