One mad act

 Of course the Blob will address this, even though it's only peripherally about sports. Everyone in America is talking about it, after all, and the Blob is nothing if not a slave to fashion.

We're talking about the Slap Heard 'Round The World, naturally. Will Smith channels Ali again -- but only half-so, because had he gone the full Ali, the credits would have read "co-starring Chris Rock as 'Joe Frazier in Manila.'" 

The tweets/memes/headlines immediately followed, as day follows night.

"Will Smith got into a fight and won an Oscar. He's an assist away from a Gordie Howe hat trick"* someone with the Twitter handle @jeffisrael25 tweeted.

(* A goal, an assist and a fight, for the uninitiated)

"Can we talk about how the guy who played Muhammad Ali should have had a better punch?" tweeted my friend and former colleague @SportsiCohn.

"Best Smacktor" read the headline in the always reliable New York Post.

The Blob, meantime, weighed in by guessing Will Smith would have to move back to West Philadelphia now, referencing the "I got in one little fight" line from "The Fresh Prince of Belair."

Yes, we all played it for laughs. But the reality wasn't funny in the slightest. Watching a man blow up his career by losing his mind in front of a worldwide audience never is.

That's a tad melodramatic, admittedly. It's doubtful the Slap Heard 'Round The World means Smith will never get another gig; he's too gifted an actor for that (See: "Ali," "The Pursuit of Happyness," and, yes, "King Richard.") But moviegoers will never see him onscreen again without seeing him through the prism of his One Shiner Moment. It will follow him the rest of his career -- just as Mel Gibson has never fully escaped his public persona as The Nutty Anti-Semite.

Yes, Mel still makes movies. Yes, some of them are still quite successful. But who can go to a Gibson flick now without thinking "Yep, there's ol' Crazytown again"?

Simply put, a moment of immaturity will cost Smith, in ways obvious and not-so. He's a 53-year-old grown-ass man, not some punk kid. Yet that was some unfiltered punk-kid stuff last night, simultaneously shaming both himself and his family and hugely disrespecting a fellow performer of some accomplishment.

To Chris Rock's credit, his ability to keep it together after that and not break character showed an admirable amount of, well, character. Unlike his attacker, who showed none.

In any event, the Rehabiliation Tour now begins, and how it goes will be how it goes. But at least one thing's for sure.

Smith's PR people are about to earn their pay. And then some.