Lou Perez is Luis Amate Perez

My article, “The Gospel According to the Power Ranger,” has been published in Religion Dispatches under the title, “It’s Marketin’ Time!: Ex-Power Ranger Morphs into Fighter-Entrepreneur for Jesus.” The article is about ex-Mighty Morphin’ Power Ranger turned cage fighter Jason David Frank, who, for the past couple of years, has been bringing his Jesus Didn’t Tap clothing line to the Christian Mixed Martial Arts enthusiast.

Please read the article, leave comments, and share it with others.

Some things that never made it into the article:

1. When I spoke with Jason David Frank on the phone—Friday November 13, 2009 at around 12:22PM ET—he was both confidant and amiable. I wanted to fly out to Texas to interview him and watch him train in the days leading up to his first MMA fight against Jonathan “The Mack Truck” Mack. When it was looking like I wouldn’t have the money to make it happen, J.D.F. volunteered to fly me out on his own dime. I never took him up on the offer. I was afraid it wasn’t the right thing to do. But, damn, I regret not making it to Texas in one way or another.

2. The Mighty Morphin’ fight scenes were taken directly from the original Japanese series, which explains why sometimes you would see a mid-battle crotch-shot of the Yellow Ranger, played by actress Thuy Trang, and she would be sporting testicles.

3. The Megazord was pretty much a Transformer knock-off. Am I right?

4. Frank wants to fight Jean Claude Van Damme for some reason. Frank already cleaned Jose Canseco’s clock in an unsanctioned stand-up bout at one of Frank’s Rising Sun Karate schools, so I guess calling out a different celebrity-cum-douchebag makes sense.

5. When I asked him how he comes up with the ideas for the Jesus Didn’t Tap line, Frank said, “Ideas for designs come in my dreams.” These dreams are telling. Just look at the T-shirts.

6. I quote Eugene Cho, a Christian who was originally interviewed for The New York Times article “Flock Is Now a Fight Team in Some Ministries.” According to Cho, his hour-long conversation was “reduced to one quote” in The Times. I never spoke with Cho, but I did reduce his blog post about the incident to about two sentences.

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So now I’m the asshole?

Tags: Christianity, Eugene Cho, faith, Gospel, Green Ranger, Jason David Frank, Jean Claude Van Damme, Jesus Didn't Tap, John, Jonathan "The Mack Truck" Mack, Jose Canseco, Luke, Mark, Matthew, Megazord, Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, Mixed Martial Arts, MMA, Religion Dispatches, Rising Sun Karate School, Skylar Deleon, Texas, The New York Times, Thuy Trang, Tommy Oliver, Transformer, UFC, Ultimate Fighting Championship, Yellow Ranger

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 11th, 2010 at 2:54 PM and is filed under Lit?, Really?, Religion, Sports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.