It's always been obvious that Ron Artest was a little weird.  When I woke up today and saw some excerpts from an interview he did for the December edition of Sporting News Magazine it confirmed that belief.  In case you missed it, Artest admits in the interview that during his time playing for the Chiacgo Bulls from 1999-2002 he used to drink Hennessy at halftime.

In case admitting to taking a page out of the Keon "I never played a game sober" Clark's playbook wasn't enough Artest continued on.  He discussed his time at St. John's where he revealed that he smoked a lot of reefer (Basketball players smoke pot? Big surprise) and drank every single night.  

Did the Bulls really do their research before they drafted this guy?  You'd think it wouldn't be to hard to discover if a guy is drinking every night.  His college coach stated he did not know Artest had any kind of drinking problem, or more likely ignored obvious signs because Artest was the best player on that team.

Artest also claims that the brawl that started in Detroit was not his fault at all.  He can't see one thing that would have changed his decision, well other than God pausing the moment and telling him to stop.  Ron iyou probably didn't need to run into the stands and beat the shit out of a guy who wasn't even the one to throw the cup at you.  

We also now know that on defense Kobe, Odom, Gasol and the rest of the Lakers are Artest's supporting cast. Ron Ron also states he is one of the greatest defensive players of all time. That explains why last year the Rockets used Battier to defend Kobe in the Western Conference Semi-Finals and Artest stuck with Ariza.  

Artest also talked about his decision to become a professional boxer, which he has been training for over the past two years. Within the next four years Artest plans on having his first fight, obviously excluding any bout that takes place between him and Big Ben during the NBA season, who he admits he feels like fighting everytime he sees.

With Friday Night Fights returning to ESPN2, the perfect way to build that up would be to have Artest and Ben Wallace as one of the undercards, hell make them the main event.  They could even hold the fight at the Palace for old times sake.

Since Artest has only been able to train on and off for a couple of years, I'm not sure how much his advantage in pure boxing skills would be.  It looks like Wallace has a strong jaw and his reach advantage might be enough to offset Artest's technical prowess.  I think if push came to shove, Artest is just a crazy ass dude so I would go with Artest with the KO in round 9.  Who you got?