The Star of "Bumfights" Bares His Scars in a New Memoir

One of the men featured in the infamous "Bumfights" videos of the early 2000s is clean and sober and filled with regret. Rufus Hannah, a 50-something homeless man, published a memoir this month and was given the profile treatment in the New York Post. He says he can't forget the day in 2001 that a 17-year-old cameraman paid him in alcohol to beat his friend until the man had a broken ankle and was carried off in an ambulance. How could he? He has "Bum Fight" tattooed across his knuckles. He admits that he was manipulated, calling himself "a human pinata." But unlike so many similar victims, Hannah has been redeemed. Sober for eight years now, he works full-time as a property manager and, apparently, part-time as an author.

Before he became the stumbling, mumbling alcoholic seen in the videos (I refuse to post them here), Hannah was a regular kid growing up in Georgia. By 19 he was a dropout, married with two kids, working construction. From there he joined the Army, where he was bullied by bigger soldiers. After a broken elbow and a medical discharge, Hannah started drinking heavily and can't remember much of what he did in the 1980s. He made it to California, where the "Bumfights" videos were filmed, in 1991.

He spent most of the next decade living behind a grocery store with another alcoholic, Vietnam vet Donnie Brennan, the man whose ankle he would one day break for a bottle. One day a high school student named Ryan McPherson showed up and offered the men alcohol to do stunts. Hannah says he was nearing withdrawal symptoms at the time. Just like that, "Bumfights" was born.

Despite the fight with Brennan, and the many dangerous stunts he performed, Hannah remembers a phone call prompted by McPherson to be the most painful event of all. On Thanksgiving, McPherson gave Hannah a cell phone to call his sister, only to be informed that his wife had told their children he was dead. Cameras were rolling the whole time, of course. Then Hannah jumped two stories onto the concrete. For this and other provocations of violence and self-harm, McPherson and his buddies got community service and, when they didn't serve it, a few months in jail (along with millions of dollars in profits).

Hannah is telling his story in full for the first time in A Bum Deal: An Unlikely Journey from Hopeless to Humanitarian, written with Barry Soper, who chairs a local treatment center, out this month. From what I've read about, it's a painful look back at a painful life. No matter how many wasted years and exploitative individuals he describes, though, it's also a success story. It's hard to believe that the man in the "Bumfights" videos could turn his life around. Indeed, it wasn't easy; Brennan is still drinking and living on disability payments, according to Hannah.

His story is not just uplifting — it's also vital. At a time when violence against the homeless is increasing, at a time when homelessness itself is increasing, the movement to end homelessness needs all the humanizing it can get.

Photo credit: Amazon.com