It’s been widely noted that Senate candidate and accused sexual abuser Roy Moore was allegedly banned from an Alabama mall at some point in the late 1970s or early 1980s because its proprietors got tired of the way he “repeatedly badgered teen-age girls.” Sadly, however, it is less well-known how Moore responded to this apparently difficult time in his life: by leaving the state to train as a kickboxer. (Moore’s version of the story, to be clear, is that he left Alabama for Texas in 1983 because he’d lost a race to become a circuit court judge the year before. Also, in a bizarre Wednesday appearance on MSNBC, a lawyer representing Moore appeared to admit that there had been “reports made” about Moore’s conduct at the mall but asserted that his name was never formally added to any list of banned individuals.)
Here’s an excerpt from Moore’s book So Help Me God: The Ten Commandments, Judicial Tyranny, and the Battle for Religious Freedom:
Punching! Kicking! Pow, bam, Roy Moore! Unfortunately, no records seem to have survived from that year’s Greater Gadsden Tournament of Champions. So Help Me God does mention, though, that Moore “won all [his] fights” after setting up a boxing ring in Vietnam for the purpose of allowing the troops under his command to release their frustrations after he told them to stop doing drugs, so it’s fair to assume he won the entire thing and was named the Greater Gadsden Tournament of Champions Kickboxing MVP for Life.
