The job Ben was made for

benIt’s official: Ben is the new (and first ever) mixed martial arts columnist for Sports Illustrated. His first column published today. I can’t tell you how proud I am or how quickly I will spend his paycheck. From here on out, it should publish every Thursday until he is inevitably fired.

You can read it here.

Even if you’re not an MMA fan, please click the link to give his stats a nudge.

Today was also his first day working fulltime for another MMA website, CagePotato, which is a bit more casual, to say the least. On that site, he posts four times a day, although he only has a byline for his longer opinion pieces.

Four times a day is casual???? *mouth gaping*

wow! and his SI photo is very nice.

This is very exciting. Even friends of his who haven’t cosmically speaking, known him very long are wildly proud of him.

His first piece should have been on Kimbo Slice. (Sarcasm)

Congrats on the handsome photos, Ben!

Oh, and like writing or whatever…

Fantabulestic! The power writing couple. You should celebrate with new style books and a matching Cross pens.

Ummm…. do people even give Cross pens anymore as gifts?

I need to leave the house more.

But congratulations to you both!

And placed right between Chris Mannix and Frank Deford on the SI.com main MMA page: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/mma/.

Congrats!

Awesome! Congrats to Ben on both the extremely impressive steady writing gig and, quite possibly, the best Bemused/Annoyed/Barely Tolerating this Suit and Tie Shit photo ever.