The Official Bacon Salt Blog: Launch Event Gone Wrong: The Story of Mayonnaise Wrestling

In the weeks leading up to our upcoming launch event for J&D's Bacon Ranch Dip & Dressing Mix, BaconPOP bacon-flavored microwave popcorn and our newest but still top secret invention, we thought it would be fun to take a stroll down memory lane and recap the story of last year's launch event gone wrong for Baconnaise. Namely, Mayonnaise Wrestling.

It started out as a simple idea - get a whole bunch of mayonnaise, fill up a ring with it, and stage a wrestling match between a giant strip of bacon vs. a giant jar of mayonnaise for condiment superiority. So we invited the guys from Seattle Semi-Pro Wrestling (SSP) and The Seattle Mudhens Women's Rugby Team to participate. We invited the SSP guys over to our HQ to film some pre-fight smack talking that you can see in this video:

This is actually where things started to go wrong. At the very end of the video, you can see Josh (aka Mayonnaise) falling on his face while running after bacon. When he fell, he actually split his lip in half - and needed a ton of stitches. There may still be blood in the parking lot...

The rest of the preparations went a bit better. We found a venue that was willing to host (Heaven Nightclub in Pioneer Square), a great charity to support, a food sponsor, and somehow managed to get our hands on 6,000 lbs of mayonnaise through one of our manufacturers. Along the way, we actually had to test the theory that mayonnaise could sting your skin or eyes - the answer was a surprising no. Justin's girlfriend also spent two days nonstop making approximately 2,000 slices of bacon. Her house smelled like the inside of a slaughterhouse - for 3 weeks.

When we arrived at the club the day of the event, the wheels started to fall off the bacon bus. Here's a short but not complete summary of what went wrong:

We had no idea what 6,000 lbs of mayonnaise actually looked like. Turns out that it got delivered in VERY heavy and wide steel drums that not even the Canseco twins could carry. And the only door we could get the dollies through had a very long, very old and narrow staircase. It took about 8 guys per drum and there were 6 drums. Backs were almost broken.
We intended to make the ring out of hay bales and neoprene sheets. Not so fast, the club owner said when we got there - that's a fire hazard. You need to cover those up! It took a couple of hours of driving around to find garbage bags that big to get it done, and then some serious hay bale surgery.
I'm not sure how many towels we actually brought - but it wasn't even close to enough. By the end of the bout, people were using cocktail napkins to clean themselves.
We didn't have nearly enough people making BLT's - which left Dave's wife and several of her friends to do it while Dave ran around like a madman making sure no one got hurt. Sorry honey!
The Giant Bacon costume we had literally came apart in about 3 seconds under the weight of the mayonnaise. The wrestler in the costume didn't realize this, and only had tidy whitey underwear on underneath. To the delight of the crowd...
When you have $3 tequila specials, people WILL do things you don't want them to do. Like jumping in or pushing their friends into the mayonnaise ring or throwing it all over the place. It's almost like we didn't learn anything from the Nickel Beer Night Riots in Cleveland... and we paid a price. Which leads us to the worst mistake we made...
We didn't have anything close to a clear exit strategy. I even remember asking Justin when we walked in - which was clearly too late - how we would clean up the inevitable mess. We both looked at each other and shrugged our shoulders. Big mistake! After the event, we spent 5+ hours cleaning up mayonnaise and hauling it up those narrow wooden stairs. The mayonnaise was behind the bar, in the bathrooms, in the sinks, under the tables, in the office, and eventually, all over us when we tried to clean it up. As it was approximately 7am when we finished, we ended up leaving a disgusting pile of mayonnaise covered junk in the parking lot to be picked up at noon by a garbage removal service - and trust me when I say that these guys charged their standard fee but felt like they got robbed.

But on a good note, 800 people showed up for the promised free BLT's and $2 drink specials. We made over 2,000 half-BLT's and served more booze than Heaven Nightclub had ever served. We also raised $3,000 for charity. And we put on a spectacle that will probably never again be repeated in human history. Here's a video we made after the event that captures the event in most of its glory:

Comments

You forgot to add the price of Dry Cleaning from the patrons. Nothing like taking in a suit in covered in Mayo and looking at the guy behind the counter and telling him "it's Mayo".

Posted by: Mattco | November 05, 2009 at 03:52 PM