Victor Penney:
Interim writer Victor Penney, Sporting Life
It was the best of tweets, it was the worst of tweets.
It was a pearl of wisdom, it was a moment of misguided masculinity.
It was a tale of two men that began with a social media post by one of the most controversial influencers on the internet.
On Feb. 16, Andrew Tate let the world know his opinion of fatherhood and monogamy in 65 characters, posting the following statement on X: “If all your children come from one woman you are not a conquerer (sic).”
The message isn’t surprising when you consider the source.
Tate, a four-time world kickboxing champion, brags that he became a millionaire after starting an online business where customers paid women to perform pornographic acts on camera. He claims to have launched that company, by the way, by hiring two of the six women he was dating at the time – what a charmer!
That “charm” doesn’t end there, though. For example, Andrew has been in legal trouble for years, facing various allegations, but he strongly denies any wrongdoing.
His latest turmoil began in Dec. of 2022 when the former kickboxing champ and his brother, Tristan, were arrested in Romania on charges of human trafficking and rape. Since then, Andrew has faced multiple periods of house arrest, with his most recent stint ending back in January. The brothers were also barred from travelling, but once prosecutors lifted the ban in late February, this dynamic duo hightailed it out of Bucharest and flew to Florida. Andrew and Tristan have dual U.S. and British citizenship, but they face legal trouble in the U.K., which could help explain their exodus to the States.
I could go on and on here, but I think you get the picture.
Andrew isn’t exactly a “swell guy,” not in my books, but there are folks out there who can’t get enough of him – he has 10.8 million followers on X (formerly Twitter), after all, and those numbers amplify his social media presence … which brings us to the second man in our tale.
Enter Benjamin Watson, a former NFL tight end and Super Bowl Champion with the New England Patriots, a man who also happens to have his own account on X.
In response to Tate’s post, Watson fired back with a message of his own: “Indeed. More than a conqueror.”
To underline the point, the tweet included a photo of him and his wife with their seven children, the perfect antidote to the pride and hedonism from the Gospel of Tate.
It’s not like this was the first time, though, that Watson used his status as a former pro-athlete to defend traditional marriage. Have a look at this excerpt from one of his Facebook posts in July of 2018: “Marriage is not a 50/50 proposition. It is a 100 percent commitment where two individuals become one flesh and in doing so serve as an earthly representation of Christ’s love, sacrifice and sanctification of [H]is body, the church. This is what makes marriage so simultaneously difficult and overwhelming beautiful and rewarding. The daily call to die to self is the very action that in turn gives incredible joy, fulfillment and life.”
Watson and Tate are polar opposites.
One man celebrates being a pimp and the other cherishes the dignity of Chrisitan marriage.
While one man is busy advocating for vice, the other advocates for the unborn.
The cultural significance of these men is striking, too, especially when you consider our current crisis of masculinity.
The Tate-schtick feeds into the problem, encouraging young men to focus inward. There’s nothing wrong with self-improvement, mind you, but when the primary goals are chasing pleasure and material success, the end result is always disastrous. How do we know? Well, Christ tells us so in the Gospel of St. Mark: “For what shall it profit a man, if he gain the whole world, and suffer the loss of his soul?” (Mark 8:36)
On the other hand, Watson’s philosophy takes the biblical “iron sharpens iron” approach to masculinity, where self-improvement isn’t just on the physical level, it looks at the moral and spiritual aspects of life, too. This is the way, Western man. This is the path to follow, because going down this road, as Charles Dickens might say, is a far, far better thing to do and will lead to a far, far better rest for us to go to, than you or I have ever known.
