Ranking the Monkees

Ranking the Monkees

I've been thinking long and hard about this.

If I were to travel back in time, to the time when their television show ran, and had to make the TV musical group The Monkees fight, hand-to-hand, UFC style, this is how I would seed them in an single-elimination format

1. Mike Nesmith
2. Davy Jones
3. Peter Tork
4. Mickey Dolenz

Mike Nesmith is the easy choice for the one seed. He's bigger, stronger, smarter, and from the South. Plus, he wore the toboggan. He's got not only the brains to train smarter for such a venture, but also the vast Liquid Paper fortune to rely on to pay for the very best in trainers. But when it came down to it, I just don't know how you could compete with his reach. Michael Nesmith had a wingspan measuring some 78 feet.

A lot of people will argue with Davy Jones being seeded at #2. I stand by my choice. I think there's a wiry, tough, drunken longshoreman underneath that Moe Howard haircut. He'd fight dirty. He'd have to. I mean, what was Davy, 4'10"? He's right at nut-punchin' level. I think Davy Jones is a cannibal.

It was tough for me to seed Peter Tork at #3, and I think he may surprise us all in the long run. I think he's probably got that unbelievably strong carny muscle on that drifter's build of his, and I think he's got just enough lack of sense to know when to stay down. I think fighting Peter Tork would be like fighting a zombie. May be easy to stun, slow to learn, but relentless in his goal to eat your brains.

Mickey Dolenz is, was and always will be a pantywaist. He would fold like a lawnchair in the opening seconds of just about any bout. In the first bout, I think Mike Nesmith would grab him by that Afro of his and knee him in the face until the refs stopped the fight.

However.

Such a thing would never come to be. Let's set aside the whole implausibility of my traveling through time, and the improbability of the whole idea of crafting a tournament with UFC rules and finding an Athletic Body to license such a thing in the late 1960's. I think it would be impossible to break up the team, for any reason.

We all know that the Monkees were put together for a lot of reasons. TV appeal. Believability as musicians. And their cohesiveness as a fighting unit.

Little known fact? The Monkees were the United States' top fighting squad in Viet Nam.

Littler known fact? The TV show The A-Team is actually a chronicle of The Monkees' adventures after they were convicted, in 1972, by a military tribunal for a crime they didn't commit. The Monkees promptly escaped to the Los Angeles underground, where they survived as soldiers of fortune. For several TV seasons, if you had a problem, and no one else could help, and if you could find them, you could have hired, The Monkees.

Mike Nesmith drove the van. But you knew that. He's the badass. (Think about it...Peter Tork=H.M. Murdock; Mickey "Pansy" Dolenz=The Faceman; Davy Jones always did love it when a plan came together....)

Sadly, the Monkees were killed in 1989 by Col. Decker and his men, who had been specially trained to actually hit the targets they were shooting at. It was very sad. It happened the same weekend the first Tim Burton Batman movie opened.

None of the Monkees ever got to see the movie.