To create a caliber of Ring-Card Girl sufficient for a contest like the one associated with Saturday?s Manny Pacquiao-Shane Mosley pay-per-view bout via Showtime, surely there must be an academy they have to attend. And there is! It?s a few hours from the Bay Area, as I discovered a couple of years ago:
Nevada’s lower institutions feed into HBO
Looking for the Bunny Ranch, I took a wrong turn in Bug Light, Nev., and stumbled onto the Bimbo Slice Ring-Card Girls Academy.
I was slow to catch on to my mistake because five bikini-clad coeds paraded into the foyer to herald my arrival, carrying cards numbered 1 through 5. I assumed it was one of those cattle-call line-ups on Cathouse, and I said so.
“Cathouse is where our ?D? students wind up,? said the business-suited lady I had mistaken for Madam Suzette. Her nameplate identified her as Brigitte Barbeau, Dean of Girls. ?Our ?A? students wind up at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, working exclusively on pay-per-view,? she huffed. ?And several of our undergraduates have been awarded summer internships on HBO?s Boxing After Dark.?
Interest thus piqued, I then did what any red-blooded sports writer would do: I tried to interview the lot of them.
* Lana Santana, wearing a cheerleader outfit over her bikini, had matriculated at Bimbo Slice after failing a dance-girl tryout with the Los Angeles Lizards.
* Fauna Pirana, ironically, was an ex-boxer. She had a 42-21-31 figure, but augmentation surgery had ruined the former light-flyweight?s boxing attributes. Advertisement
* Carmina Burana was a graduate student. The Naomi Campbell wannabe had returned to the Academy after Showtime fired her for heaving a cell phone at promoter Gary Shaw that is still embedded in his hair. So now she was back in Nevada renewing her ring-card girl career contacts and boning up on the curriculum. ?You always have to keep up with ring-card girl innovations,? she said, without elucidating.
* Four and five wouldn?t talk to me. Four was a former Miss Alaska who can field-dress a cruiserweight. Five was the former American Idol sensation Sanjaya.
My hopes for meeting a brighter coed perked up when I gazed into the adjacent Michael Buffer Tanning Room and saw a Tricia Nixon-cute blonde seated at a large table. Wearing a bikini, of course. Slouching, yes, but reading a book. ?Is that The Brothers Karamazov?? I asked. She yawned and said, ?Lord, no. Nobody cares about those Russian heavyweights.?
I must say the book she was holding, The Definitive Ring-Card Girl Textbook, by Pamela Anderson, seemed to have some commercial potential from my vantage.
And that?s when I woke up. I had fallen asleep watching Boxing After Dark again. There, on HBO, was that Bunny Ranch paterfamilias, Dennis Hof, with his noggin that out-pumpkins Dan Goossen?s, bragging again about his little piece of heaven.
